Last summer Patrick introduced me to Christiane F. – a beautiful, middle-class but essentially hopeless young girl of 13 from Berlin, West Germany.Okay: it was a movie. But Christiane F. is a real person. And her story is terrifyingly disturbing. The movie was filmed in 1981 and unapologetically realistic in recounting her struggle with drug-addiction against the backdrop of a dark, black and gray Free Germany still trying to overcome its Nazi past.
The film is brutal. Filmed in documentary style we see beautiful, prepubescent Christiane living with her mother and new boyfriend after her sister has left to live with their father. Like many teens coping with pain, Christane escapes from her seemingly abandonment issues by losing herself listening to music in her room – in this case, David Bowie records – and daydreaming of the new disco, “Sound” which assumes in her mind some sort of fantasy world. She is not poor, not abused, not even unloved – and, yet, she feels utterly empty.
Eventually Christiane starts to frequent the “Sound”, lying that she is age 16 to get in. In a dreamlike state she wanders her dream world amongst other angst-ridden youth all the while with her beloved Bowie songs playing on the dance floor. She befriends some older teens and meets gentle, chivalrous Detlev – with whom she falls in love with. After a few months stint of hanging out with her new friends and boyfriend at the underground Zoo train station where the kids would drop acid and sleep there if homeless, Chistiane eventually becomes addicted herself to heroin - even though her friends warn that she would become hooked after only one try - and loses her virginity to Detlev at 14.
Her mother finds her one day collapsed at home and in a very open-minded (almost insightful) gesture – fetches Detlev and locks them both in her room to quit cold-turkey. The scene is harrowing – with nothing left to the imagination. The 2 young lovers vomit, sweat, bleed, writhe in pain and shake uncontrollably while alternating trying to consol one other. It is absolutely ghastly to watch. (And I join the critics who believe it should be mandatory viewing in schools.)
They do, eventually, make it through and are clean – but only for a moment. As they visit the old gang at the station to encourage sobriety they immediately relapse suggesting to each other to just “do it one last time”. Devastatingly, they are hooked again....Immediately.
Her life spiraling out of control, Christiane is forced to steal, sell her beloved Bowie albums, see friends die from overdose, and eventually enter prostitution herself. Her once angelic, unmarked child’s face is now bloated, with dark circles, her long hair matted and ratty. When her love, Detlev, moves in with a homosexual client as a last resort of survival – albeit the most unhealthy, reckless and hopeless way of life – Christiane finds herself even more alone and isolated than ever before. The movie ends with her voiceover stating that her mother sent her away from Berlin to live with a grandmother. She never saw Detlev again. A couple years later her autobiography was published before the age of 20 and she became an overnight news and talk-show sensation. Amazingly, her battle with drugs remained off-and-on until 1996 with the birth of her son.
Even with the dark, unforgivingly realistic subject matter of the movie, it remains one of my all-time favorites. For 8 years I have been working with teenagers and have been moved and mostly disheartened at their plight. Whether or not kids turn to drugs, alcohol, lying, gangs, immoral or promiscuous behavior to deal with life, the underlying common denominator is the universal feeling of having no sense of identity and belonging which leads to feelings of utter isolation. Virtually all youth experience this as “growing pains”.
As “weak” or “naïve” as one can judge Christiane F., upon watching the film one cannot help but still root for her as a young heroine, all the while relating to her youthful crush that then blossoms into her first Love. We’ve all been there. We recognize her excitement when she attends her first concert of her larger-than-life idol, David Bowie (who believed so strongly in the story as to score the film and make a cameo appearance reenacting his 1975 Berlin concert).
The best scene of the movie literally makes me ache a mix of nostalgia and yearning of some unattained youthful dreams. With “Heroes” (my favorite Bowie song of all time) as accompianant - and before she and Detlev have yet to become hooked on drugs – this magnificent scene follows them as they run hand-in-hand like nymphs along with their gang of friends in the middle of the night through a darkened downtown Berlin building. Playfully falling down only to get up and do the same again, their laughter, camaraderie and free spirit echo what youth so desperately crave while belying the angst that they, in fact, truly feel. Even when Detlev breaks a window to steal money and the kids suddenly become criminals outsmarting and running away from the police, one still finds themselves rooting for the young lovers’ escape and eventual first kiss. The scene says so much – without any dialogue – with Bowie singing, “I can be King. And you can be Queen. There's nothing that can drive us apart. We can be Heroes: just for one day.”
And so they were…
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