The Wall

I came here after viewing this very odd film and I expected to read an equal amount of bad and good reviews and I wasn't incorrect. I'm sort of in the middle. This is most assuredly not a film for everyone. It has to be classified as science fiction, but it rarely feels like one. A woman goes to spend a weekend in a isolated cabin and is kept captive by some sort of invisible wall or force field of some sort. Rather than sci-fi, this plays like some sort of cerebral meditation on the joys and pain of loneliness, mostly the latter. This film also involves numerous animals and the trapped character's connection with them. Some of this aspect is touching, but some of it is difficult to watch, especially one scene. This is no doubt slow as some have been critical of, but I found quite a bit of it sort of intriguing. It is a one woman show starring the acclaimed German actress, Martina Gedeck. There were a few things that annoyed me, primarily a couple of things not explored, but overall this is an interesting film for the serious minded viewer.

It's complete art-house fare but since the source material is one of Austria's great novels of the 20th century (it was written in the early 1960s) they gave this film a semi-wide release here in Austria. It's a last-woman-on-Earth-story - think about Robinson Crusoe, The Road, I am Legend, but very naturalistic except for the wall which traps the protagonist in a secluded alpine area. It was a bit toned down from the book - some of the more violent or disgusting passages were missing, I guess not to alienate the audience too much since the story is intense enough already. This seemed to work as WOM is quite good, everybody was discussing it on our way out. My son (who didn't know the book) was impressed too. Also left out were any references to the cold war which were not that important in the book to begin with; here the wall is more like a natural catastrophe and the story is much more timeless this way. From a technical POV this was excellent, filmed with a RED-to-35mm and much natural light I think. Most of the crew hail from TV productions but it's clearly visible how much fun they had with the wide format. Sound design was good too. Music was sparse, a few Bach sonatas. And I liked how they didn't color-grade the thing to death as happens sometimes (The Road, Children of Men ...) - the story is bleak enough without much fiddling - we get the message. The landscape, wood and winter sequences are just beautiful. Highly recommended if you're able to see this. Maybe it gets a foreign run; there's nearly no dialogue, most spoken text is just off-screen-quoting from her diary so subtitles or dubbing won't really take away much.

Hard to write this without spoilers, but here goes...

The Wall is not sci-fi, and it's not what a lot of other reviewers seem to think either. It's not a bad film at all.

Deliberately set in a beautiful but challenging place - the place the central character inhabits, The Wall could be about any boundary between ourselves and the outside world. It's very solitary, very existential, very personal. I rather liked this: an inner journey.

Superbly photographed, The Wall is worth watching just for this.

Speaking personally, to me it's obvious what the sub-text is. I won't name it, but the symbolism is clear: a white crow, two animals giving birth, a single mature woman alone, a companion who can be no more than that. There are other more subtle symbols too.

At root, The Wall is an exploration of extreme isolation, and a realisation of what that really means.

Confusing, narrated, strange, and difficult to follow. Too many questions regarding the actions of the main character. I don't know about you, but I'd have done so many other, different, and direct things than this main character in order to extract myself from my current situation. The wall: did the river run through it? Was it like a dome? Was it bulletproof? Would it be possible to dig beneath it? Were animals affected by it? Maybe I should just write a story about it... no, that would be boring. In order to change or alter my situation, I would have to do something different each day. The lead and only character was satisfied with her predicament. I do wonder, however, about the end result.

This is a film that has left such an impression on me that I was very curious what other viewers interpretations of it were. I felt the beauty and despair of loneliness. The connection humans can have with nature and above all... animals, our need for them not only to fill our void socially and emotionally, but as creatures to sustain our life in all ways. Even if to give us a purpose.

The irony that she was there on a hunting trip with friend that she obviously was not partaking in, but had probably not thought much about . I appreciated that she really understood that hunting should only be for food and could not understand how any being could take pleasure out of death of an animal.

The vivid beauty of Austria was captivating. This is a beautiful film that I will never quite forget. It has reminded me of how strong humans can be when they have to be to survive, how fragile we are, and how our brains have the capability to adapt to situations that are unexplainable when all feels hopeless.