Perspective German Cinema
What was that, this strange but crazy
and beautiful creature of a film?
One day after the screening I try to
remember this film like I often try to recall a dream of last night
which occupies my mind but I remain unable to tell it in words.
There is a forest (I often dream of
forests), an aging couple who live reclusively in a house and a young
man walking through the forest on the search for shelter. There is a
young man singing on his electric guitar strange songs accompanied by a red
haired woman on the drums. Elements like
notes, sketches for a story. They are waiting to be edited together. When these traces of a narration
disappear for moments and the camera stops or makes and endless long
travelling, an over voice narrator tells fragment of a story with
hints to a family drama and a post-apocalyptic science fiction novel. TV
news pronounce the ban of certain kinds of vegetables and gives also
a hint to a nuclear disaster.
The audience is at first an editor and
finally also the story teller.
As Andreas Bolm said, the film has to
do with the place in Northern Germany where he comes from it is another hint, another offering to read the film, to edit it for yourself.
The forest is a very complex and
sensitive ecological system. So is Cinema. I have a soft spot for the
endangered species like Malick, Straub (yes, yes the must be
mentioned in one breath) and a lot more from countries which have
seldom access to this neoliberal dominated Filmfestival, unless they
accept the new neo-colonialism of Dieter Kosslick´s World Cinema
Fund. In Cinema these endangered species are something like the extremely endangered
Royal Bengali Tiger in India. And the neoliberalism like manifested
in the ideology of this festival with their talent campus (imposing an
industrial production of talents) is the equivalent of the hint
radioactivity as a danger for men and nature in this film.
The young man on the guitar, played by
Andreas Bolm himself sings defiant songs. And the film has something
defiant as well.
But the young man who strays through
the forest desperately looking for a place where he can live or
survive is even a more beautiful image for the spirit of the film.
Those were the days when such films
were shown at the International Forum as rare and unconsumed
narrative or non-narrative cinematic forms, films which might not ne perfect, but films which does n´t fit in any categories. But they bring fresh wind.
The young man can not move into a house
ready for occupancy, he has to build something, has to work which is again an
image for what you have to do to find a place in this film where you
can "live".
And another beautiful aspect of Die
Wiedergänger is, he does n´t answer the dogma of a neoliberal
ideology - which built already metastases in nearly all parts of our
culture - with another dogma.
It is not one of this boring "smart" films from my country (I have seen one at the Forum) but a very lovable one.
The film does not want more than getting a place for itself and that's probably the only thing Andreas Bolm is insisting on.
The question of the future of Cinema is
more or less concentrated in the defense of its diversity. Die
Wiedergänger reminds us in this diversity.
The forest in Andreas Bolm´s film
allow both, people who are living in a house. They have found a
place. But it allows also people who are looking for a place. Another
beautiful image for the richness of Cinema.
Rüdiger Tomczak
No comments:
Post a Comment