Mission: Sputnik

Even though this children’s adventure movie set in East Germany at the end of the communist regime seems rather boisterous and playful, it is at its core extremely problematic it its trivialisation of history. The film’s main drawback consists in the fact that the child protagonists are not merely participants in major historical events, which could thus be connected with personal stories in the mould of Forrest Gump, but – as in the case of the insipid Czech film Tender Waves, set in the period of normalisation in Czechoslovakia – they rewrite history in the form of anecdotes taken out of context. In particular, the fall of the Berlin Wall is shown as an incidental side effect of a pseudo-scientific apparatus devised by the children based on a fictional series (which apparently must have been Star Trek). However, the period has no real influence on the narrative (the uncle’s escape across the border is presented in such a way that children will not understand from the narrative where he went or why, so the film could just as well have been set in the present and the uncle could have gone abroad for work). It definitely cannot be said that the film familiarises children with history in this way, or rather that children wouldn’t be able to bear a realistic depiction of the era. For comparison, it suffices to recall the children excellent What Have We Learned, Charlie Brown?, which has the clear purpose of presenting major historical events to young children, but with respect for history and the intellect of children, which it does not underestimate, and superbly balances accessibility and comprehensibility with seriousness. Mission: Sputnik does not present history to children in an instructive form, nor does it put the adventure story in the context of history, but merely shows history as a fairy tale in which historical events do not anchor the narrative in reality, but are instead transformed into a fantasy element that loses its primary meaning. (08/04/2014)