Austrian writer/director Götz Spielmann was already in his mid-40s when this meticulously made award-winning film broke thru. (Just one feature & one tv film since.) A remarkable work, neatly split in two halves, the first a sort of tragic romance when a simple bank robbery goes fatally, if predictably wrong; the second, with the texture of a religious parable, showing how various involved parties coped with events. But while both halves look realistic, the second part plays out thru crisscrossing coincidences you might expect in a 19th century novel by Hugo or Dickens. That’s because the robber, a volatile two-time loser working at a brothel in Vienna, was hoping to run away with a Ukrainian sex worker, but is now forced to hide out at his Grandfather’s small country farm where the closest neighbors are a childless couple whose husband just happens to be the tortured cop who shot at his car after the robbery and accidentally killed the prostitute. His wife a Church-going friend of the grandfather. What are the odds; a billion to one? Yet the film is so thoughtfully considered in execution, and so perfectly cast, Spielmann is able to maintain his naturalistic tone. And when the robber, at first set upon revenge against the guilt-ridden cop (who’s impotent, something also ‘fixed’ as events play out) has a non-religious epiphany, Spielmann, with his outstanding production team, brings off a magical effect of redemption entirely in visual terms using nothing but a lake and a sudden rippling breeze. An astonishing moment.*
SCREWY THOGHT OF THE DAY/LINK: *If you want to see what Paul Schrader is unable to pull off as a filmmaker, compare this 'privileged moment' to anything in his much-acclaimed FIRST REFORMED/’17. https://maksquibs.blogspot.com/2019/02/first-reformed-2017.html
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