Lux - Krieger des Lichts (2018)

The young man Torsten Kachel wants to do good in Berlin. To that end, he puts together a superhero costume. Along with a mask and cape, it includes motorcycle gloves with the fingertips cut off, because, as Lux puts it, a superhero needs to have a delicate touch. Lux helps homeless people by buying toiletries for them or salvaging unsold goods from a bakery’s dumpster. When he learns that the Towo Immobilien property company wants to drive long-standing tenants out of Berlin’s apartment blocks to increase profits, he organizes demonstrations. Because he is masked, however, he cannot stay with them to the end: the police question him for violating the ban on covering one’s face. Jan Zogg and Lina Peschke believe they have found their breakthrough as documentary filmmakers with a film about the superhero Lux. They pitch the concept to the media company “Brandt – Neue Medien,” headed by Holger Brandt. Brandt is initially somewhat skeptical, but recognizes the potential of the person behind Lux. He sees Torsten as a freak whose naivety and awkwardness people could laugh at. With a little scripted reality—of which Lux need not know anything—they could surely make the format a hit with mass audiences. After the meeting, Lina tells Jan she has ethical reservations about possibly working with Holger Brandt. She feels the planned format would not do justice to Lux’s interests and intentions. Jan, however, persuades her to change her mind, making his delight at having found a producer abundantly clear. Jan also equips Lux with an action camcorder so that his heroic deeds can always be recorded from a first-person perspective. The team films several rather clumsy attempts by Lux to do good. For example, he is caught scavenging from a dumpster and sent away because it is theft and a criminal offense. In another scene, Alan, a homeless acquaintance of Lux’s, is thrown out of a shop. When Lux tries to persuade Alan to join his demonstration for more affordable housing, Alan makes a fool of him. He stresses that no one gets anything for free in life, and drives the point home by noting that even Lux has no euro to spare for him at that moment. On the street, passersby laugh at Lux because he is masked. Kitty, a table dancer who wears a mask similar to Lux’s, gives him a business card and invites him to the club where she works. The supposed heroic deeds are interspersed with scenes of Lux talking about his good intentions. Lux’s mother is also repeatedly asked about her son’s actions, and seems to embarrass him more than anything. The production team, and Holger Brandt as well, are dissatisfied with what they have filmed so far, considering it neither sensational nor interesting enough. Jan suggests sending Lina out onto Berlin’s streets in revealing clothes so that she will be sexually harassed and Lux can then show his heroic potential. Lina expresses her displeasure with the idea. As a compromise, Lux suggests that Jan present himself in Berlin dressed that way. Desperate to get sensational footage, Jan takes Lux up on the suggestion—but without success. The team’s attempts to get interesting, usable footage take a turn when Lux sees a street robbery and bravely pursues the perpetrator into a side alley. The perpetrator escapes into a courtyard, then comes back out of a shed with guard dogs. Terrified, Lux collapses and urinates in his pants. The perpetrator finds this amusing. He films himself with his phone alongside the masked Lux and uploads the video to YouTube under the title “Wetman.” Overnight, Lux becomes a viral laughingstock across the country. Even Torsten’s coworkers at his day job in a warehouse—who do not recognize him behind the Lux mask—make fun of the video in his presence. Holger Brandt sees an opportunity to capitalize on Lux’s newfound fame and arranges an interview for him with web-video producer Joyce Ilg, who plays herself in the film. Lux is skeptical and realizes that he does not actually want to become popular, since his activities as a superhero come from within. But Holger Brandt persuades him to take part in the interview with flattery and a newly designed, professional-looking superhero costume. In her format #JoyceRide—which exists only within the film—she takes Lux for a drive around Berlin and even squirts him in the crotch with a water pistol without warning him first. Despite this fresh humiliation, Lux remains friendly and gets a chance to talk about his efforts against Towo Immobilien. At the end of the drive, extras hired by Holger Brandt rush up to Lux, asking for autographs and selfies. As a result of the interview, the property company fears damage to its image and abandons its gentrification plans. Lux’s success is reported in the newspaper, and his mother is proud of him. Together with the filmmakers, they celebrate the fact that she too can now stay in her apartment with Lux. Holger Brandt tells the production team that a little more eroticism has helped every format. The team decides to seek out Kitty. With Kitty and Lux in the lead roles, they record a rap song and shoot a music video. Holger Brandt is thrilled, but still feels that the project is missing that crucial “something.” He suggests expanding the Lux character into “Lux and Kitty – Warriors of Light.” Kitty enjoys appearing in music videos and getting media attention, but has no interest in roaming the streets at night with Lux and playing superhero. Without Kitty’s participation, the format still is not sensational enough. Jan arranges for Lux to receive an anonymous tip telling him to watch someone at a particular time in a scrapyard. Lux goes there with Lina and her cameraman, and tells them about the tip. Sure enough, someone breaks into the scrapyard and takes an item from a car’s trunk. Lux pursues and catches the person, who turns out to be his homeless friend Alan. It emerges that, out of financial desperation, Alan accepted a job from an unknown person: to retrieve an envelope from the car and hand it over to someone. The group discovers, however, that the envelope contains cocaine. Alan insists he knew nothing about it. Panic spreads through the group, and the police arrive, even though apparently no one has called them. In the Berlin media, Lux is once again hailed as a true hero, since it looks as though he has tracked down a cocaine dealer. But he is torn up inside because, as a result of his own heroic actions, a friend of his is now in prison, presumably innocent. Jan edits a video of Lux’s supposedly heroic intervention at the scrapyard. Lina notices shots in it that she and her cameraman could not have filmed. She confronts Jan and accuses him of having been the anonymous tipster to Lux and of staging the whole situation. She says he is even responsible for Lux’s friend being in prison. Jan argues that the homeless man has a better chance of surviving in jail than out on the street in winter. His response makes clear that he does not care how Lux feels about it. Lina, whose moral boundaries have already been crossed several times, ends her partnership with Jan and finds a temporary job at a children’s home. Lux visits his friend in prison and asks how he is coping. His friend is furious with Lux, has a fit of rage, and is taken back to his cell by the guards. Jan does have a guilty conscience, but lets Holger persuade him that the Lux project is on the verge of a major breakthrough and that they have to carry on now, or everything will have been for nothing. Lux visits Kitty at the strip club, where she also works as a prostitute. He is supposed to have a good time with her. The two spend time together in a booth and talk, but Lux does not let himself be seduced. Instead, he shows interest in the person behind Kitty. A platonic relationship develops between them. Still suffering from the consequences of the scrapyard incident, Lux once again wonders whether the whole project still makes sense. He withdraws more and more. Holger Brandt again pressures Jan, saying it would be unfortunate for the project to collapse at this point. Lux ignores Jan’s calls, but discovers that his mother has left him a message on his answering machine. She says she has gone to a hospital for the weekend because of her lung problems. Previously, despite coughing up blood, she had always refused to see a doctor, something Lux had reluctantly respected. When Lux goes to visit her in hospital, he learns that she has died. In his grief, Lux withdraws even further, and Jan becomes nervous, especially as Lina seems to be gaining more and more influence over Lux. Jan plans to appear as a superhero at the children’s home where Lina works, to make the children happy. Lux goes to the strip club with flowers, hoping to surprise Kitty. In the club’s parking garage, Jan tries to stop him, but Lux sticks to his plan and sees Kitty having sex in a car with her boss. Shaken, Lux runs away. Later, he checks his answering machine and hears Kitty say that her boss is forcing her into prostitution and that she needs Lux’s help. Lux responds immediately and goes to the strip club. He searches the owner’s office, where the owner surprises him with a gun. The owner insists that he employs all the women on above-award-rate contracts, and that he merely tolerates their additional earnings from prostitution because the women themselves want to do it. He shows Lux footage of Kitty, who appears to have a serious cocaine problem. The club owner presents it as though she prostitutes herself to fund her drug addiction. He says the scene in his car happened because she seduced him and stole 300 euros from his wallet. For this reason, he now has to fire her. During his conversation with Lux, the owner buys him several drinks, which apparently contain knockout drops. Just before Lux falls asleep, he is brought together with Kitty, who seems completely overwrought, presumably because she is high on drugs. In the next scene, Lux wakes up at home, visibly confused about what happened the previous evening. The doorbell rings. Kitty comes in and greets him with a slap. Lux is bewildered. She shows him surveillance-camera photos in which she was raped by someone wearing the Lux mask after being rendered helpless by knockout drops. Lux insists that he is not the person in the photos and would never do anything like that. Kitty does not believe him, calls him a “sick weirdo,” and storms out of the apartment. Lux tries to kill himself with a carpet knife, but Jan finds him. For the first time, Jan realizes that the reality-docutainment format is out of control. Lux makes a second suicide attempt, trying to hang himself from the ceiling of his apartment. Holger Brandt finds him and manages to save him at the last moment. They argue. Lux slaps Holger, disappears, and remains missing for the rest of the film. Holger Brandt had apparently fitted Lux’s entire apartment with hidden cameras. He also brings Kitty back, and she is delighted to be able to appear on camera in the successful format. He hires someone else to fake a suicide attempt by hanging in the Lux outfit, but in the staged scene Kitty stops him. They kiss, and the two finally form the team Lux and Kitty: Warriors of Light. Jan, trying to find Lux at his apartment, sees the remains of Lux’s attempt to hang himself. Since he sees no body, he does not know whether the attempt succeeded. He does discover that the apartment is full of hidden cameras and that Holger Brandt has long since taken over production of the show. Holger Brandt finds a buyer for the series and invites Jan to a private premiere party. Jan shows up, and when Kitty and Lux appear on stage, he is relieved to see Torsten, whom he had thought missing and even dead. But up close, he realizes that it is actor Oliver Korittke playing the masked Lux. Jan wants to confront Holger Brandt and find out what really happened in Lux’s apartment. Jan’s cameraman manages to steal a USB hard drive containing some of the hidden-camera footage from Holger Brandt’s office. However, they find no incriminating material about what happened in Lux’s apartment, and they cannot prove that Holger Brandt staged any of it. The film ends as it began: with a web video that has fewer than 100 views, in which the distracted, desperate-looking cameraman Marek tells his story and searches for Lux. The impression is that an unsuccessful cameraman is spreading conspiracy theories online about a successful TV format. During the credits, a sequence shows a food-sharing initiative, where Torsten Kachel—the real Lux—can briefly be seen helping out.