THE STORY – When a viral video of a student threatening his classmates surfaces online, the school spirals into escalating violence. Crushed by the pressure of teachers and parents, three outcasts take refuge in a nearby forest. There, play hardens into ritual and pain becomes an escape, until old wounds surface and the boundaries between them are redrawn.
THE CAST – Florian Geißelmann, Anton Petzold, Mathilda Smidt & Godehard Giese
THE TEAM – Jannis Lenz (Director/Writer) & Alexander Dirninger (Writer)
THE RUNNING TIME – 118 Minutes
For most, teenagers have two lives: the life they portray to the authority figures in their lives – their parents and teachers, namely -and the one they live with their closest friends, or even simply within their own minds. Adolescence is a difficult time for anybody, but for the generation growing up with unlimited access to the internet and a much wider social circle than ever before, that challenge becomes even more severe. Jannis Lenz’s “Oasis” explores this social dissonance that teenagers are facing in today’s schools, interrogating how this constant exposure to violence, sexuality, and independence can manifest in disturbing and ultimately dangerous ways.
The story unfolds from the perspective of Lukas (Florian Geißelmann), a teenage boy who struggles to fit in with his classmates due to the fact that his father, Martin (Godehard Giese), is their teacher. But there’s another aspect that makes Lukas somewhat of a social outcast: his best friend, Andy (Anton Petzold), is currently under investigation by the school for a schoolyard incident where he threatened to kill his bullies. Lukas and Andy, alongside their friend Maja (Mathilda Smidt), take refuge from the crushing pressures of school life in the nearby forest, where their innocent play gradually morphs into a dangerous, ritualistic practice that exposes the cruel, sensitive, and intimate parts of themselves that the rest of the world never sees.
Lenz takes a very distant, abject approach to filmmaking in “Oasis” that intentionally separates the viewer from the characters and allows us to watch their behavior from afar. There’s very little camera movement, very subtle editing, and plenty of lengthy, uncomfortable shots that place us in the center of their stories and don’t give us the breathing room that cinema so often does. This is a fascinating approach that generally works to the film’s benefit, creating an ominous atmosphere that forces us to reckon with the bad decisions these teenagers continue making, while presenting it in a very personal, authentic way that means we can empathize with them nevertheless.
So much of “Oasis” centers around the dissonance between the true personalities, emotions, and feelings of these lost teenagers and the versions of themselves that they deem acceptable to present to the world around them. Lenz and Dirninger’s screenplay does an excellent job of explaining why this suppression of expression is so dangerous for young people, and especially why it’s becoming more and more of a substantial problem in the digital age. We empathize with characters like Andy, whose absent parents and obvious anger issues make him an easy target for school bullies, and the fact that he doesn’t have a true escape from this abuse means he equally doesn’t have any way to regulate his negative emotions. Instead of talking to his school therapist or spending time with his family, he’s forced to resort to violence, anger, and cruelty. Lenz’s screenplay is an extremely profound, thought-provoking one that asks important questions about how we deal with this crisis among young people. It doesn’t simply present these in a cold, objective way, but rather does so with real critical thought and empathy – this feels like a very necessary conversation to have, and “Oasis” genuinely contributes some meaningful ideas to the debate.
“Oasis” is also a film that essentially hinges on the relatability of its characters, and the three central performances do an excellent job of making that connection easy for the audience. Florian Geißelmann, Anton Petzold, and Mathilda Smidt deliver three excellent performances that are intentionally shrouded, closed-off, and sometimes even unlikeable, but those rare moments of genuine empathy and self-expression that they share in their own company are executed brilliantly. The story simply doesn’t work if the audience can’t get inside the minds of these individuals, and they make it impossible to do otherwise.
There are admittedly moments in “Oasis” that feel slightly disconnected from the story’s wider issues, and this prevents the film from reaching its full potential as a piece of social commentary. The ideas behind the screenplay are vital and deserve to be discussed in such an interrogative way, but the screenplay by Lenz and Dirninger doesn’t always feel as streamlined and focused as it could be. By the final act, there are lots of subplots crashing into each other, and this sometimes distracts from the film’s clear focus, which is the issue of self-expression among teenagers and its suppression by constant digital observation. The film also feels marginally too long, as it has multiple profound moments in the third act that could’ve made for very memorable endings, but opts instead to drag the story to its extreme and end on a much dimmer, less remarkable note. Ultimately, “Oasis” is a film with very strong ideas, very impressive execution, but a few writing misfires that hold it back from being truly great.
