More (1969)

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

A Masterpiece!

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

By the time the dramatic fireworks start popping off, each one feels earned.

"In the midnight hour, she cried, 'more, more, more'", or, if you will, "You're more than life to me, more than eternity, and the more I know of you, all the more I love you." And it just make me remember a day before today, a day when you were young.More is a fantastic example of counterculture of the 1960s.

I didn't find it as terrible as some people. It's really a chronicle of the times (1967). Klaus Grünberg is an innocent young German lad who meets the American girl Mimsy Farmer at a party in Paris. The chief reason they're there is so that Grünberg's good friend, Michel Chanderli, can sneak into the bedroom where all the coats have been flung and go through the pockets looking for money. That's how poor the two of them are.But, having met Farmer, Grünberg is struck with her and pursues her to the paradisiacal island of Ibiza, where he finds her somehow mixed up with a vaguely genial Landsmann named Wolf. The sun is blazing, the buildings are white, the scenery magnificent, and the descent into the maelstrom begins. First she introduces him to "pot." He kind of likes it. Grünberg and Farmer sneak away from the town and from Wolf, and relocate to a mountaintop retreat where she reluctantly involves him in "horse" -- that is heroin -- showing him how to cook it and how to hold the tie with his teeth. She doesn't tempt him and in fact tries to discourage his use but before you know it they're both addicted and have stolen from Wolf and begged on the streets for more.Winter descends, the weather turns cold and bleak, the tourists depart and take their gaiety with them. We last see Farmer squirming around on the floor and screaming for a fix, and Grünberg OD's in a dark hallway and his body is sniffed out by a dog.It's a sad tale, rather like "The Panic in Needle Park", in which a user sadly watches his amour become hooked, except that in this case the addiction is unintended by both parties. You really DO get addicted too, because of something called the opponent process theory. Your body has a number of built-in receptors for naturally produced "happy" substances. If you begin using opiates, what happens is that your body adjusts to the new inputs, and develops still more "happy" receptors, so you need more heroin just to remain normal, never mind high.I didn't find either of the principles unlikable, but rather tragic because of their flaws. Grünberg isn't receptive to good advice, either from his friend Chanderli or from Farmer. He turns possessive because of his love for Farmer and slaps her around. She, in turn, loves him but she disappears mysteriously from time to time and seems to have nothing constructive in mind for the future. Both may be bad, in their own ways, but neither is evil. At the same time, there's barely any plot. I have no idea what the writers had in mind besides the exploitation of a prominent culture movement of the period.It's a thought-provoking movie too. The thought it provokes is, "They're living in this whitewashed Taj Mahal overlooking the Mediterranean and neither has a job worth mentioning. So where the hell is the money coming from?" That's the thought it provokes. I'd love to know the answer because Ibiza looks pretty tempting, regardless of the season.

Returning from a magical holiday touring the Balearics I was keen to watch this movie filmed extensively on Ibiza and Formentera and was in for a lovely surprise. I had always put off watching the film, fearing it would be either embarrassingly idealistic or just plain dull, but it is a remarkable achievement. Schroeder is making this at the very time the hippies were settling in the Balearics and he manages to get things just right. Whilst all is certainly not all sweet and light, it is so clear to see how one thing could lead to another and the joys of intoxication could turn to becoming a desperate need. He also illustrates very well the wonders and otherwise of 'free love'. There seem to be four people particularly responsible for this being such a success, Schroeder himself, his cinematographer, Nestor Almendros, the Pink Floyd soundtrack and Mimsy Farmer. Farmer's bold and uninhibited performance is central here and if she has a slight awkwardness and fragile beauty then all to the good. Not really and story here, just the most slender of ideas and yet this is probably the finest example of the period.

A German freshman, Stefan hitch hikes to Paris during summer break were he falls for a mysterious young woman he meets in the Paris freak scene. He then follows her in the famous isle of Ibiza, the hippie joint were meets Wolf, a man who throws Hitler-Jugend knives, owns bars and hotels and keeps Estelle under his thumb with dope. The couple tries to escape Wolf, Stefan gets hooked with dope and jealousy for Estelle, who's groovy and a free spirit. Great photography and music, plot is quite usual for the period but it's not an exploitation kind of movie, cold and dramatic. The moral is quite strong (he was looking for the sun...) but I would not say it's a film against drugs even it puts enphasy on drug use.