Reflective Encounters

“If you’re going to tell me that puppets can’t do music, then I’ll ask you to go watch Kermit The Frog singing ‘Rainbow Connection’ and tell me that again with a straight face. Now one Ingbert Socke can be added to the list of maestro marionettes as The Best Orchestra In The World shows us how one of the largest stringed instruments can be wielded with perfection by one tiny sock puppet.

Director Henning Backhaus wrings much of the humour from sheer incongruity. As a double bass is pulled across the floor by our protagonist, the pomp and circumstance of the grandiose music hall is soon undercut by the presence of our woolly hero, a grey and googly-eyed presence seemingly at odds with the arrogance that can sometimes surround so called ‘high culture’

As the film delights in piling on the absurdity in the closing moments – rest assured this is not a world populated solely by sock puppets – it also becomes a genuinely moving treatise on prejudice and acceptance whose bittersweet ending reminds us that the world is never entirely fair.”

— Laurence Boyce