With the tragic comedy “Iceland” (February 16, 8:15 p.m., the first), actor Axel Prahl (61) shows once again that he has a lucky hand in choosing his film projects apart from the cult film series “Tatort”. Because the story of a badly paid deep-frozen food supplier whose life takes an absurd turn is just as worth seeing as “Vadder, Kutter, Sohn” (2017), “Extraklasse” (2018) or “Gloria, die schönste Cow meine Schwestern” (2019) – and not least because a lot of depth is mixed into the comedy.
Why does the touching film still seem so light? “There is no easy answer to that. Woody Allen once said the wise phrase: ‘Comedy is tragedy plus time’. Everyone probably knows that, you go on vacation and everything goes wrong. The hotel was in ruins, jackhammers from 7 a.m., no water in the pool. Such catastrophes are horrible at the moment. But if you tell the same experience from a distance at a party, everyone laughs and hoots. There is always a certain comedy inherent in every tragedy,” Axel Prahl dares to attempt an explanation.
That’s what “Iceland” is about
For Marko Wendrichs (Axel Prahl), life mainly consists of frozen pizzas and back pain. For almost 30 years, the widower has been lugging frozen goods for the company “Eisland” to the front doors of his mostly older customers. When Marko has to take early retirement due to illness, his life gets into trouble. But he only has one goal: his student son, Steffen Wendrichs (Merlin Rose, 29), should have it better one day. Lawyer or judge, that would be something. “The main thing is nothing where you have to wear a name tag.”
The death of a customer unexpectedly opens up a whole new business model for Marko. Unfortunately, he didn’t reckon with his nosy neighbor Rudolf Staar (Jan Henrik Stahlberg, 51). When his own son finds out, Marko’s house of cards threatens to collapse. Then he meets his idol Roland Kaiser (Roland Kaiser, 69) at the bar…
Director Ute Wieland (64, “Tatort: Blind Date”) explains why Roland Kaiser appears to him: “When Marko Wendrichs is sick, lonely and at the end, without hope for a future worth living, we have looked for a source of strength for him – one Metaphor, an experience, an encounter that would make his life appear in a new light. That’s when the idea for the Roland Kaiser scene came up,” she says. In Marko’s world, Roland Kaiser’s lyrics and songs stand for beautiful memories of past happiness with his family, Wieland continues. And she adds: “Who else could meet Marko in his darkest hour besides Roland Kaiser, who has gone through the most violent storms of life himself?”
Not the first film together
“Eisland” is not the first joint film by Axel Prahl and Roland Kaiser. Sunday crime fans know that, of course. Everyone else should be told that the Berlin musicians inspected the Münster commissioners Frank Thiel (Prahl) and Prof. Dr. dr Karl-Friedrich Boerne (Jan Josef Liefers, 57) in “Tatort: Summ, Summ, Summ” (2013). Roland Kaiser played the hit star and heartthrob Roman König, who was first made helpless by his stalker Christiane Stagge (Fritzi Haberland, 46) in the hotel room with a bee sting and later suffocated by his manager Ina Armbaum (Ulrike Krumbiegel, 60) with a pillow would…
The renewed collaboration was a coincidence: “Roland and I are good friends, which our screenwriter Maximilian Kaufmann didn’t know at all. I was very happy to be able to shoot with Roland again. He’s a wonderful person,” enthused Axel Prahl in an interview with the broadcaster. In addition to his job as an actor, Prahl is also a rock musician. About the pop singer Roland Kaiser, whom his character Marko Wendrichs meets in a small but fine scene in “Eisland”, he says: “And as far as music is concerned, of all the arts music touches the most deeply. But above all: it connects.”