Continuing his monthly series, our movie correspondent enjoys a German take on a familiar cinematic trope
Rock My Heart (2017)
directed by Hanno Olderdissen; starring Lena Klenke, Dieter Hallervorden, Milan Peschel
For no particular reason, this series has seemed to avoid one of the most common genres of the racing movie universe.
From National Velvet to Dreamer, few themes have played the heartstrings quite like The Girl, Her Horse, and The Big Race they fight long odds to enter and win. Such films have come and gone, one after another, each one less compelling than the last, until, quite by surprise, I found Rock My Heart.
Maybe it’s the setting, in Germany’s verdant, rolling Rhineland. Maybe it’s the subtle underplay of the supporting cast, always appreciated in the face of melodrama. Maybe it’s the lead, played by a young actor who does not shy from the physical aspects of the role.
But definitely it is the integrity with which director and co-writer Hanno Olderdissen (right) handles the key riding, training, and racing moments that give the movie just enough grit to leaven the fantasy.
Jana is a 17-year-old with a congenital heart defect and a death wish, or at least an abject disregard for her condition and no desire to continue experimental surgeries.
Obstinate and disrespectful
As played by the up-and-coming Lena Klenke, Jana is a young version of Franka Potente from Run Lola Run, obstinate and disrespectful, wary of friendships, a burnt-out, pouty teen for whom life holds no upside. Velvet Brown she is not.
Then again, the psychological toll on a young person walking around with numbered days is almost too grim to contemplate. For those of us blessed with annoyingly good health, how it is possible to carry on under such circumstances is one of life’s baffling mysteries.
Mercifully, once the medical undercoating is applied – led by an early, sardonic hospital scene – the filmmakers move on to less claustrophobic elements.
Jana is introduced stumbling through the woods at night and collapsing, at which point a gorgeous horse appears from the mists to nuzzle her back to consciousness, then runs off at the approach of a search party. Whether the moment was a hallucination or reality does not matter. As Johnny Carson once said, “If you buy the premise, you buy the bit,” which is why this viewer was neither surprised nor disappointed that Jana encounters the horse again in vivid daylight – real and rearing this time in a tumbledown stable yard owned by an old grouch of a racehorse trainer who can’t pay his bills.
The horse, of course, is named Rock My Heart, taking any subtle symbolism quickly off the table. He’s unapproachable, except by Jana, and untrainable, except for Jana, and with that the plot is off to the races.
She gets a job to distract from her low self-worth. The trainer, played by 80-ish German character actor Dieter Hallervordern, gets a shot at a big prize if the horse can be tamed and the girl can make the grade. And the viewer can sit back to watch how such familiar tropes can be made to work without insulting anyone’s intelligence.
The training sessions are fraught with Jana’s inescapable heart condition, capable of grounding her – or worse – at moments of high physical stress.
At the same time, Paul Brenner, the trainer, is obsessed with cramming as much into his raw recruit as possible, praising and cajoling Jana by turns, exhorting her with such homilies as, “If your horse says no, you didn’t ask the right question” and “If you whip a horse it will eventually obey, but it will always be scared of you.”
Olderdissen and his writing partner, Clemente Fernandez-Gil, embarked on the journey that led to Rock My Heart ten years before it hit German screens in 2017.
Intelligent and bold storytelling
“We talked with a producer who said it sounded interesting, something he’d never seen a movie in Germany on that topic,” said Olderdissen, fresh out of film school at the time. “We didn’t know what obstacles there would be, so we started out hoping to do something like Million Dollar Baby, with intelligent and bold storytelling, because in horse racing there’s a lot of passion. It’s always about money, and sometimes it’s all or nothing.”
Million Dollar Baby, directed by and starring Clint Eastwood, won the 2004 Best Picture Academy Award for its portrayal of a young female boxer and her crusty trainer.
“Then reality kicked in,” Olderdissen said. “It was obvious that kind of movie would be more expensive than the money we could normally raise for a first feature.
“At that time in Germany there was a very successful series, a classic family entertainment with a girl and a horse, about friendship. It became a gateway for our movie to make it a little more accessible to a mainstream audience. But I really fought to make it as authentic as possible within our very limited budget.”
That budget of about €3.5 million is all on the screen. Olderdissen found an equestrian facility to serve as Brenner’s training stable, complete with an ancient stone barn that, according to the director, was built by occupying French soldiers during the Napoleonic wars.
Racing footage was accumulated documentary style during regular programs at Cologne-Weidenpesch Racecourse just north of Cologne, then there was just enough staging added to create the drama of the climactic event.
Olderdissen derived his inspiration from the action sequences of the HBO racetrack series Luck (on which this reporter served as staff writer).
Key piece of action
Using stunt doubles for the star, a key piece of action finds Jana, now qualified as an amateur jockey, losing an iron at the start. They got the shot, then the horse ran off with the rider.
“The double was a well-trained trick rider, but she did not know the nature of a racehorse,” the director said. “You cannot underestimate their power. She should have let him run until he was tired, but she decided to jump off. So that was a minor accident.”
As for the equine actors, Olderdissen noted that the talent pool was not deep.
“Getting real racehorses was really a challenge,” he said. “I had to pull a lot of strings, and my father helped with some contacts. Most of the available horses were Spanish horses – they’re used for these medieval shows and so forth – but I wanted a real Thoroughbred.
“We found a retired Thoroughbred who had only raced a few times, and now he was a recreational horse and spent most of his time in a meadow. The first time we brought him to the racetrack, you could see some memories were coming back.”
Horst Olderdissen, the director’s father, was an accomplished show rider in multiple disciplines. When he retired from competition, he established a riding supply business and indulged in his lifelong ambition to own and train his own racehorses.
“Most of the time he’d buy a horse who was a little bit fuzzy in the head, or had an injury,” Olderdissen said. “He bought them cheap, made them well, and had quite a few successes. At the time I was small and light, and when I came home from school I would put on my chaps and ride them. Then on the weekends I would go with him to the races.
“I wanted to be a jockey, but I got too big,” he added. “Then I went into show jumping until I was 17, but I quit because we didn’t have the money it took to go on with that. So I went into filmmaking.”
Young love and hovering parents
There are a couple of subplots involving young love and hovering parents that wander in and out of Rock My Heart without too much distraction. As if his troubles are not enough, Brenner is beset by an estranged daughter who is shoved back into his life.
Of the supporting characters, the wheelchair-bound former jockey played by Milan Peschel is a hoot, doing a version of Jiminy Cricket always perched at the ear of the trainer, letting him know when he’s gone wrong.
Since Rock My Heart, Lena Klenke has been working non-stop, most notably as the co-lead in the dark comedy series How to Sell Drugs on Line (Fast), currently streaming on Netflix, although landing the job with Olderdissen was not a slam dunk.
“She made a pretty good first impression,” the director said. “But there were a lot of young actors auditioning, so we had a second and third round. But she was always highly considered.”
Dieter Hallervorden, on the other hand, entered the frame courtesy of producer Boris Schonfelder, who had been encouraging the veteran entertainer to transition from his popular image as a film and TV comedian and cabaret performer. Hallervorden was 79 when he won Best Actor in the 2014 German Film Awards for his role as an aging marathon runner in Back on Track.
Even though Rock My Heart was voted the Kids Festival People’s Choice Favorite in competition at the 2018 Toronto Film Festival, this should not discourage consenting adults from taking the ride. The movie can be found on Netflix.
• View all Jay Hovdey’s features in his Favorite Racehorses series
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