This is not a movie I would've ever gone to see on my own. Not only is my understanding of German politics rudimentary (I regularly get the two main parties, the CDU and the SPD, mixed up) but I would've been daunted by the german langauge skills needed to decipher the movie.

In the end, the movie turned out to be an eye opener. Its the story of a man (the facts are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joschka_Fischer) finding his way in the world, changing his views when he saw that the world was wholly different to the one he had imagined.

He drags the leftists into the political process. He drags the Green Party into supporting war in Kosovo, a position he eloquently defends at the Greens Party Congress in Bielefeld where the party is ready to make war on Joshka (and tthe Greens wished to make war on Joshka literally, not figuratively) Then there's the famous dressing down of Rumsfeld as Fisher refuses to drink the Kool Aid that he is being fed about the WMDs in Iraq. He in the end refuses to be dragged, looks at the world and sees that he cannot change his views on Iraq, that the world he imagines is the world as it really is.

The film shows a man who is learning right from wrong as he stumbles forward, a man full of humanity. There are lots of things I did not understand (not solely because of the content but because the content was in German) but I came out feeling fully fed with ideas, wanted to drink the night away and chat forever. That's the best I can expect from a movie.