Hinterland

It has taken some time, but Peter Perg leads a group of soldiers back home to Vienna after the end of Great War. They had been brutalized while imprisoned in Russia. Perg finds the old social order in chaos. The Austro-Hungarian Empire had collapsed. He left his beloved wife and daughter behind to fight for the Emperor, but they are now gone. His aristocratic home is empty. He is forced to return to his police work when one of his soldiers gets ritualistically murdered. To many, he is the prime suspect.

I really like the style. It's half German silent film, half Se7en, half comic book. I would add some more rain, but it's got a cool look. I like diving into this time and place. I like the general premise and the lead character's suffering. I would probably just kill off the family. He would move heaven and earth to find them. He wouldn't care about anything else including the murder of his men. Finally, I have an issue with the ending. It has a big coincidence that really bugs me. Aside from those two issues, I really like this movie.

A POW and his comrades return home to defeated and depraved Vienna immediately at the end of World War I. Everything has changed, and for the worse, in his eyes.

Since Expressionism was still big by 1918, the movie's skylines and buildings are deliberately distorted to reflect the feelings of the protagonist. It's ugly and a bit distracting, but for me, it worked. It was one of the more original and interesting things about the movie.

The main plot line revolves around the hunt for a sadistic serial killer, but this was neither particularly interesting nor credible. It was no worse than in many movies, but no better.

The main actor is big and very charismatic, dominating every scene. I hope we see more of him.

Questions remain. If they were POWs on the Russian front, wouldn't they have been home sooner, after the Bolsheviks made a separate peace with Germany? And why is a movie set entirely in Vienna called 'Hinterland'?

Hinterland is a typical European-made drama. I didn't see much Aavstrian film at all, but Hinterland left a positive emotion. An interesting era of the "lost generation," about which so few films are made and so many beautiful literary works. The film has an interesting artistic style of espressionism, which conveys the entire curvature of the state of society and the main character of those years. In Hinterland, human psychology and human relationships are brought to the first place, there is no Hollywood gloss. The film will appeal to all lovers of detective stories and European cinema.

Yes the background can be annoying - I have to point that out. Although I think I am pointing out the obvious. Something everyone can see - no pun intended. But something that hopefully won't bug you too much. Not sure if there was another (cheaper solution) to this, but the movie does concentrate on the ... story and the characters it has. Which is a good thing and should be the thing you should look forward to the most.

That said, the actors really deliver here. Even someone like Matthias Schweighöfer or anyone else who has a small (insignificant or not) role or a bigger one. This is a murder mystery ... one where our hero seems to have something hidden himself. Or something that haunts him from the past ... and not just the fact that he was in a war. The ghosts that haunt him from that are big too of course.

There is enough to sink your teeth in and relish in where the story takes us. You can't be squeamish though, because there are some scenes that can be called borderline and quite violent. But it is the nature of the movie and our main bad guy ... tough case to crack. A Sherlock Holmes would be a nice thing to have - but maybe the former police man is able to find the culprit too ... you have to watch to see! And also if his journey is ... well let's call it complete.

First off the visuals are remarkable. Yellowish colour tone used for daytime scenes adds a comic book like character and has a gloomy nature at the same time. This goldy skies and the gloomy buzzing streets of the post-war Vienna is shown as a beast waiting to swallow the defeated soul of Perg. More than just a murder mystery Hinterland succeed in becoming a commentary on the society that any soldier is forced to encounter and the unjust treatments in society. Chilling and graphic imagery adding some edge to the movie. Great performances by the cast with a lot of solid personalities. A movie with a freshness to it that's easily make it worth watching.