At the start of the 19th century: two men set out to explore the world. One focuses on the visible and the other on the imaginable. Alexander von Humboldt, an offspring of a noble family, travels to South America to measure the continent and to discover a different way of life. Carl Friedrich Gauß, who comes from a poor family, conducts research at his desk at home and is a famous mathematician. Eventually, the now-famous Germans meet – they are old and have not necessarily found happiness. For the film adaptation of this international bestseller, which is a rare occurrence in recent German literature, the novelist Daniel Kehlmann was personally involved in the writing of the script.

Their childhoods couldn’t have been more different: Alexander von Humboldt, born into a noble family, had the best private tutors in Berlin, a wealthy and prestigious family home and the protection of the powerful. Carl Friedrich Gauß grew up in poverty, was beaten by his classmates and teachers and then, once his mathematical talents could no longer be overlooked, he received a scholarship from the Duke of Brunswick. The fact that Alexander von Humboldt is drawn to distant worlds, while Gauß wants a safe and secure home where he can pursue his research, is no less plausibly explained by the different childhoods and early years of the two scientists, as by their almost contradictory talents which have a common denominator: boundless curiosity. The film doesn’t focus on the definition of both men’s scientific achievements, but rather on the different methods they use to satisfy their curiosity and creativity. At least Alexander von Humboldt has a travel companion accompanying him; the Frenchman Aimé Bonpland, who debates on the subject of joie de vivre with the German, and once angrily asks him the question: “Why do you have to be so German?”

Just as in the original, the film describes the life and ventures of the two men in parallel sequences. The story becomes even more tangible through the visual rendition (filming took place in Görlitz, Vienna and Ecuador) – and the humour, which appears rather sublime in the novel, is more direct, and sometimes even bawdy, in the film. In that regard, the director and his prominent cameraman managed to present the images of the German province at the beginning of the 19th century in an equally intensive way as the exotic scenes of the Ecuadorian jungle, or those of Humboldt’s legendary ascent up Chimborazo. The story does not end with the glorification of the ‘great Germans’, which is how they’ve been portrayed in numerous German films for decades: a feeling of melancholy prevails in the end. Gauß has become an old man and didn’t gain as much as he had hoped for from his encounter with the much-admired, but now senile Immanuel Kant, and Alexander von Humboldt is travelling once again, trying to reach Asia through Russia, where he is falsely labelled as a miracle healer. “What’s left?” he asks in the end. He provides the answer himself: “Curiosity!”

Press Reviews:

In 2005, the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper described the film as “A philosophical adventure novel of rare imagination, power and brilliance”; just one of the many praises the novel received. The film fared less well with critics: “You can’t merely say that Detlev Buck’s film adaptation is a failure due to the fact that its makers failed to understand the book – after all, Kehlmann co-wrote the screenplay and is a narrator in the film. What is clear is that he and his co-writers, Detlev Buck and Daniel Nocke, failed to reflect the book’s literary sophistication in the cinematic version.” (Der Spiegel)

”In the film, the characters are unavoidably given a face and a voice. They are closer to the viewer, more so than what Kehlmann’s literary technique allowed. Unfortunately, the film entangles itself in all the pitfalls of a cinematic interpretation. Thus, the protagonists appear to be more like caricatures; Humboldt a vain and uptight fun killer, and Gauß an easily irritable grumpy old man. To put is mildly, the actors are not able to solve this problem.” (Die Zeit)

Perhaps, these reactions could have been predicted from the outset: Throughout the history of cinema, it has been the rule that cinematographic adaptations of highly-acclaimed books will never be as appreciated. And the same stands for the comparison between the book and film adaptation of MEASURING THE WORLD.

Hans-Günther Pflaum

Production Country

Austria (AT), Germany (DE)

Production Period

2011/2012

Production Year

2012

color

color

Aspect Ratio

16:9

Duration

Feature-Length Film (61+ Min.)

Type

Feature Film

Genre

Literary Adaptation, History Film

Topic

Colonialism, Literature, Work, Science

Available Media

Blu-ray Disc, DVD, Blu-ray Disc

Original Version

German (de)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

German (partly), German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil)

DVD

Subtitles

German (partly), German (full), English (en), French (fr), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Italian (it)

Blu-ray Disc

Subtitles

Lithuanian (lt)