Director Angela Schanelec
I WAS AT HOME, BUT… (Ich war zuhause, aber) D
Germany Serbia (105 mi)
2019 d: Angela Schanelec
While this film won Best Director at the Berlin Film
Festival, it’s not at all a pleasant experience, grim and relentlessly bleak,
it refuses to offer audiences even a single moment of reprieve from the
blisteringly harsh reality it constructs, leaving many exasperated, with more
than the usual number of walkouts, as this is a rude awakening to experience. Unconventional to the core and uncompromising,
this is one of the Berlin School of filmmakers that most defiantly resists the
mainstream. However, that being said,
this is a particularly brutal watch, bordering on Ulrich Seidl’s DOG DAYS
(2001), which is itself a relentlessly disturbing look at graphic depictions of
human cruelty happening within the milieu of the Austrian middle class, becoming
a glimpse into the grotesque. Lead
actress Maren Eggert as Astrid seems pulled directly from that film, as
downbeat as any character can be viewed onscreen, with her outrageously
reprehensible behavior taking center stage, routinely saying things most of us
wouldn’t even dream of thinking, as if there’s a brain circuit loose or an
emotional connection altogether missing, but she’s as high maintenance as they
come, continually spewing obnoxious verbiage like it’s an ordinary matter of routine. There’s really no place in the film for
audiences to grab hold of, leaving viewers on a high-wire without a net,
automatically subject to a series of disastrous falls, where you’re living in a
constant state of elevated purgatory.
Not sure why it has to be this way, but these are the director’s ground
rules, creating a kind of free-form, expressionless void, removing all
life-jackets, subjecting the viewer to a neverending series of trauma, where
making people feel as uncomfortable as possible may be one goal, but another is
keeping them in that state for a prolonged period of time, twisted methods that
more closely resemble torture tactics. As
a piece of provocation, the film is not really successful, as it drives away at
least as many people as it may excite, though the boldness of the near
experimental form is impressive. The degree
of emotional detachment and intellectual disassociation in this film is
overwhelming, as there’s really very little one can actually relate to in a
single viewing, and that would probably be quite random, so the question is
will any of this endure, will it be remembered, or easily forgotten in a myriad
of movie watching. To that degree, the
film feels entirely temporary, short-term, very much in the moment, but easily
discarded. One will not be waiting with
bated breath for the DVD release.
It’s at least ten minutes into the film before a single word
is spoken, using a choreography of animals that mostly stand around in a state
of inertia, a theme that opens and closes the film, likely paying homage to but
lacking the poetic transcendence of Bresson who accomplished the impossible
with Au
Hasard Balthazar (1966). The human
element is emotionally disconnected and weirdly disaffected, showing little
connection to the characters, many of whom simply disappear without a trace,
where there’s no real storyline, yet some characters keep reappearing, members
of the same family, yet their relationship among themselves and with others is
a bizarre study of human behavior. Told
in a fragmented manner, what story there is (which is extremely difficult to
comprehend) comes down to this, the mother, Astrid, has two children, Phillip
(Jakob Lassalle) and Flo (Clara Möller), who live a life filled with trauma and
grief after the death of their father (her husband), which may have occurred
several years ago. Phillip, for instance disappeared for a week, returning
caked in mud, with an injured toe that requires amputation, sending his mother
into a state of hysteria from which she never recovers, yet throughout the film
the protective bandages come unraveled, or he picks it apart, leaving the wound
infected, having to re-wrap it with the bandages trailing behind as he
walks. Phillip is also preparing for the
part of Hamlet at his grade school, reciting passages endlessly without a hint
of expression, making it feel tedious and heavy, as the words drone on with no
meaning behind them, an example where language becomes dead and empty. Astrid also decides to purchase a second-hand
bicycle from a man who can’t speak without a voice-box, but becomes thoroughly
disenchanted with it afterwards, returning it, asking for her money back. He patiently agrees to fix whatever’s wrong
with it, as he’s spent the money, but she’s convinced it is junk and that she’s
been swindled. While that doesn’t appear
to be the case, he agrees to pay her back in a week’s time, which he apparently
does, yet she’s not convinced of his trustworthiness, suggesting his words have
no meaning. Astrid arrives at school to
complain about the mistreatment of her child, yet loses her train of thought,
only to thank them for their efforts at the end of a long and rambling
monologue that is filled with confusion and stifled emotions.
Easily the most devastating moment occurs when Flo tries to
make her mother pancakes, but leaves a mess in the kitchen, which simply sets
her off, growing deliriously angry at them both, screaming wildly, growing more
and more out of control, furiously scrubbing what she can from the mess, with
Flo trying to help, but that only enrages her more. Her violent response is a clear overreaction,
as first Phillip and then Flo attempt to put their arms around their mother,
but she refuses any solace and instead continues haranguing them for what were
really good intentions. Astrid is
certainly in the running for worst mother ever.
In another scene, when a boyfriend comes to visit, she angrily kicks her
children out of the house, screaming at them to leave (seen sitting at the
bottom of the steps, having no place to go), which doesn’t seem to faze this
man at all, who is seen sometime later as a tennis instructor, offering lessons
for one of the children. In another
sequence Astrid is seen swimming laps at an indoor public pool, with Flo standing
alone futzing with her bathing suit. But
as Astrid climbs out, feeling exhausted, she sits on a nearby bench, with Flo
sitting down next to her giving her mother a hug, which is curiously ignored. There’s a weird scene of Astrid throwing
herself at her dead husband’s grave, just lying there, as a bird appears to
offer her company. In what may be a
flashback, she and the two children perform an extremely cute dance for what
appears to be the ailing father at the hospital when he was alive, memorably
performed to M. Ward -
Let's Dance - YouTube (5:01), where the outright joy juxtaposed against a
particularly downbeat vibe is truly compelling.
In a parallel story that goes nowhere, but may more aptly reflect what’s
going through Astrid’s mind in hindsight, a couple argues over whether or not
to have children, where Lars (Franz Rogowski), one of the school teachers,
wants a child, afraid of disappearing while leaving no trace of his life, while
Claudia (Lilith Stangenberg) insists she can’t be anyone’s mother or wife, as her
mission (which makes little sense) is to remain alone and be lonely
forever. For a discussion about
children, this feels fairly drastic.
Even more exaggerated is the enraged one-way discussion that occurs when
Astrid confronts a filmmaker on the street (Serbian director Dane Komljen),
claiming she only watched the beginning of his movie before walking out, going
into detail about how she found it phony and artificial, describing it as
“unbearably bad cinema,” how it was a waste of everyone’s time, leaving the
director somewhat dumbfounded, yet he politely hears every word before they
amicably depart. This autobiographical
aspect of the film is quite amusing, poking fun at the inevitable walkouts of
her own film, offering her own stinging rebuke of criticism that this film
heartily deserves. Interesting that she
knows it, but does it anyway, suggesting one can criticize the form and
content, but one should never question the heart of an artist.
