THE WALL (Die Wand) C+
Germany Austria (108 mi)
2012 ‘Scope d: Julian Roman Pölsler
Films often turn to literary sources, and to the extreme,
like Chilean director Raúl Ruiz’s final film Night
Across the Street (La noche de enfrente) (2012), the entire film becomes
read passages from selected literary works, where the result is so literary
that the experience is consumed with reading subtitles, where there’s so much narrated
material that you’re literally reading a movie instead of watching it. While THE WALL (DIE WAND) was originally
filmed in German, Music Box Films, in their infinite wisdom, decided
to convert the film entirely into English language, which alters the distinct
mood and tone of the film, though the film is so literary the intent is likely
to prevent viewers from otherwise reading a movie with subtitles. Instead, the entire film consists of spoken
narration, words from a diary entry, where the monotonous drone of the narrator
drifts through the entirety of the film, where occasionally one simply tunes
out and stops listening. The excessive
verbiage has a detached, experimental feel, as it’s obviously not for everyone,
but it’s beautifully read and otherwise wordlessly acted by German actress Martina
Gedeck, from THE LIVES OF OTHERS (2006), in what turns into a one-woman show on
screen. Adapted from Austrian author
Marlen Haushofer’s 1962 novel, the film is set in the Alpine forest region of the
author’s birth 6 months after World War II ended, actually filmed in the Salzkammergut Mountains and the adjacent Dachstein Mountains of Austria, both part of
the Northern Limestone Alps. The mountainous setting is enormously
significant, balancing the surrounding natural beauty with the dark and dreary
tone of the narration which has an end of the world, apocalyptic feel about
it. Without explanation, unnamed
protagonist Martina Gedek wakes up one morning only to discover the entire
surrounding mountainside is encircled by an invisible wall, where she is left
to figure out her fate alone in a rustic cabin setting which at least initially
has plenty of stored provisions. Told in
flashback, the ominous opening finds her essentially a castoff from the world
after an extended period of seclusion and isolation, paying particular
importance to sitting in her darkened cabin and writing her “report,” hoping
others would somehow discover her literary and philosophical revelations as
perhaps the last human thoughts on earth.
Initially, because of the date so close after the war, one
might assume she’s been somehow stranded in a remote region with no way out, perhaps
even a former prisoner, as her hair is cropped so short, distinctly different
from the flowing hair we see in the flashbacks.
Her tone and demeanor immediately suggest a sense of desperation, where
writing in her report is the only way left to communicate the essence of what
is human. There may even be the sense
that she is the last human left in the world, but this is left unexplained and
ambiguous. Once she realizes her
prisoner status, it’s an interesting contrast to the natural abundance that
surrounds her. But she leads an orderly
existence, planting potatoes and wheat, working hard while keeping active and
busy, where her character wanders through the mountainside in all seasons of
the year with her dog Luchs, who becomes her only friend left in the
world. Over time, she also collects a
cow that wanders out of the forest and a cat, where the cow at least requires
considerable care and effort to milk and feed, where just keeping it alive
matches her own unique fate. Later she
favors a white crow that frequently visits nearby, especially as this crow is
also isolated in its existence, continually harassed and picked on by the other
black crows, becoming shunned in much the same way as she feels herself. A rhythmic cycle of writing in her report is
established throughout the film, which becomes the most essential part of her
existence, in her view, so a great deal of importance is placed on the
content. Reading so many lengthy
passages, the film has the air of an introspective and contemplative work, but the
pervading sense of doom and quiet resignation has an endlessly monotonous tone
of futility about it, literally drenched in abject hopelessness and despair,
where between read passages, the viewer sees a natural cycle of life blooming
through the various seasons as she continuously roams the mountainsides.
Once the pattern of reading is established, it only repeats
itself throughout the film, becoming ever more predictable and routine, lessening
the suspense or dramatic impact, where after awhile the viewer may actually
stop listening, as despite the explorative intellectual quality, it becomes
endlessly tiresome, like waves lapping upon the shore, which initially hold a
hypnotic rapture, but eventually you need to move on. Just as she feels herself a prisoner, the
viewer is similarly held hostage by this continuously repeating cycle of
hearing the sound of her voice, which haunts the viewer throughout, often with
beffuddled amazement at her predicament.
Since her voice is elevated to such prominence, perhaps the last
remaining human voice on earth, hearing her speak in English feels off-putting
and downright peculiar, an artificially imposed lie, as she speaks German,
where it would be infinitely preferable to read the subtitled passages and hear
the sounds of her own voice, not some substitute. This same argument has been raised with
Miyazaki animated films, among the most beautiful ever created, where the
dumbed down American preference is to have everything translated into English,
rationalizing that this allows more time to watch the luscious
visualizations. But this essentially
eliminates the efforts made by the original actors who were the choice of the
director to convey what amounts to his closest vision of perfection. The Americanization of this original form is an
alteration from the director’s vision, a substitute version which changes the
tone and the director’s original intentions.
A beautiful Japanese song, for instance, which concludes SPIRITED AWAY (2001),
remains untranslated in the English version, so the inherent poetry is simply lost. This artificial imposition is reminiscent of Ted
Turner’s 1980’s attempts to colorize Black and White films, a project that was
eventually scuttled due to an outcry from the film community. The Criterion Laserdisc of CASABLANCA (1942),
one of the most beloved movies of all time, contains a couple minutes of the
colorized version as a supplement, easily recognizable as a mistake bordering
on blasphemy. In one of Orson Welles’s
final interviews, he was known to have said “Tell Ted Turner to keep his crayons
away from my movies.” That being said, in
either version, the rhythm of dreary monotony is the established tone, a slow
moving and minimalist story about leading a world-weary and solitary existence,
told with meticulous visual detail.
Despite her insistence for a regimented listing of her daily activities,
as if living in a POW camp, there is an overly somber, death-like weight
attributed to the philosophical introspection which for many may feel overly
gloomy and self-absorbed (we never see her read a book for instance), predisposed
to her own existential No Exit mortality,
and out of balance with the Edenesque natural world surrounding her that thrives
with an unsurpassed beauty and vitality.
