Nicos Weg: German Film Review

Diving into a new kind of culture packed in a form of cinematic art is a bit of a jolting experience. Not that I have never watched any foreign films other than those old-dusty English-spoken movies, but the thing is Nicos Weg is not just a European film shot commercially just for the sake of grasping viewers. The intention of making this movie is also to educate the learners.

Oh, before "Nicos Weg", I've watched a TV Show and a movie in German "Dark" and "Issi und Ossi", which are both distributed through online movie streaming platform, Netflix. Those motion pictures I formerly said were just films made for entertainment. The producers of both the TV Show and the movie had the intention to publish the story in a form of a motion picture to the world, and Germans are not the exceptions.

However, Nicos Weg — especially the A1 version — is made for learners. There's no way German's native speakers, even kids, would be enjoying this as a form of pure resemblance of their daily-dose of entertainment. I personally feel the difference watching Nicos Weg and other German-spoken movies. How come? Well, just a little note that making this purposely for learning is a great choice and I don't feel it's a downside if we're gonna compare these movies because Nicos Weg and other kind of movies are made for different reasons and different purpose. Okay, Nicos Weg basically tells us about Nico's lost bag and his journey to find it. The movie tells us about the struggle being foreigner in a new environment, the people he meets, and so on and so forth. 

Nicos Weg has a sense of hilarious whimsy throughout the movie, but as a 16-year-old high schooler, I feel like I'm watching a soap opera back when I was a kid. But, looking it through a perspective of a German-begginer, I enjoy it because the language that are spoken is easy to grasp even though I encounter some of new words I didn't know before.

There are some things that disturbs me while watching the entire movie from the beginning. I just wonder why Nico is so fast in learning German and picking up new words let alone putting them into coherent sentences. Like, I'm so jealous of him. Maybe because he's also European? Spanish is not really that different than German? There are a lot of similarity between his mother language and this language that he just learned? Or I don't know, maybe Nico is some kind of a miracle landed in Cologne, Germany, then lost his bag and God just took a pity on him then finally give him a blessing to learn and pick things up just as fast as that?! I like that theory of mine.

Next, I also wonder how friendly Germans are. I mean, in the real real real reality. Is that supposed to be that way? To be that helpful as Lisa, to be that generous as Inge, to be that cheerful as Selma? Does that really happen in Germany? Would that happen to me if I lost my bag? Hahaha. Well, just movies. I know. It seems to me that their generosity and kindness are kind of hyperbolic. Adding antagonists and some sprinkle of realistic situation would be superb.

Overall, I love Nicos Weg. As a learner myself, having to watch this movie at a weekday's night made my day, plus we could, uh, get off of our struggle of assignments at school. I'm hoping to watch other German films. Education or entertainment wise.