Another early George Lucas short - he's so serious about it he doesn't even go by his Christian name, goodness - and here it's basically just Randall Kleiser running, stopping, and then running some more before getting shot. Maybe it's this was Lucas's own warped take on the Richard Lester short (who was one of the director's early idols by the way) The Running Jumping Standing (etc) film. This could also be called the Running, Stopping, Panting, Running, Dying film. While it's title refers to the word 'Freedom' in German, it makes for an unsettling experience by how it's shot, by how little is explained (this was Lucas when he was in pure abstract-experimentation mode, discovering his voice through pure visual grammar, and any emotion came out of the force of the picture and editing), and that the voices in the last minute sound like they're taken from stock audio clips, not recorded by Lucas himself. It's certainly not terribly sophisticated as much as it thinks - it's a guy clearly being first given sight to the more heady concept of the 60's and post-JFK/Civil Rights era of thought - but the force of the filmmaking works in its favor, and Kleiser is an apt guy to personify it with his glasses and gangly physical demeanor.
Review of Freiheit
