A serial killer dispassionately discusses the nuts and bolts of his grisly avocation, as well as the youthful traumas which helped to mold him into a psychopath, in this disturbing independent drama from Germany, based on a true story. Young Jurgen Bartsch (Sebastian Urzendowsky) was raised in a family where his father (Walter Gontermann) barely acknowledged his existence and his mother (Ulrike Bliefert) displayed an inappropriate degree of affection toward him. When he reached puberty, Bartsch
(played as a teenager by Tobias Schenke) was a young man confused and bitter about his growing sexual maturity, and possessing a deep hatred of those around him. Bartsch was a 15-year-old apprentice butcher when he kidnapped and murdered a young boy; he would kill three more boys in a similar fashion before he was captured by police in 1966. After he was found guilty, Bartsch carefully documented his childhood and his crimes in a series of letters and essays, and Ein Leben lang kurze Hosen tragen is drawn from his own words as it dramatizes his life and his crimes. ~ Mark Deming, Rovi
While the serial-killer sob story subgenre rarely yields a nuanced product, Kai S. Pieck's debut feature finds a plaintive, compelling route to the pathology of 1960s German child-killer Jürgen Bartsch.
By the film's end we feel neither sympathy nor, oddly, total disgust for this most loathsome of killers. We simply begin to understand, and perhaps that's achievement enough.
Pieck and his able cast ... have come up with a captivating treatment which adeptly alternates between grainy black and white post-incident recollections of Jürgen Bartsch ...
As far as serial killer movies go, this one was pleasantly restrained and thoughtful. It was, however, rather slight and could have benefited from exploring other characters psyches and subplots along with Jurgen's. The psychology was rather pat and I felt that they were trying too hard to understand what can never
be understood.
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