A western for our time

With the feature film Sehnsucht (Longing), which was shown at the Berlin in 2006 and Tromsø Film Festival the following year, screenwriter and director Valeska Grisebach marked himself as a new and exciting voice in German film. The low-key drama portrayed a young metal worker who works as a volunteer in the local fire brigade in a small German town, and the existential crisis he undergoes after beginning an extramarital relationship with a waiter in a neighboring town. With its empathetic class consciousness and authentic environmental portrayal, the film was firmly planted in the European tradition of social realist film, but felt just as refreshing and different. Not least because of the weird ending sequence, where a group of kids discuss the action we just witnessed. In other words, a kind of "Greek children's choir", which gives the impression that history at this time has almost become a local legend.

It would take more than ten years before Grisebach was finally ready with a new feature film. Western had an international premiere in the side program "Un Certain Regard" during last year's Cannes festival.

Strange and genre films. This film is about a group of German laborers who are going to build a hydroelectric plant in the Bulgarian wilderness on the border with Greece, and the conflicts that arise in meeting the local inhabitants of a nearby village.

I Western the director continues his social-realist approach, including the use of non-professional actors in the roles.

I Western the director continues the social-realist approach she used Sehnsucht, including the use of non-professional actors in the roles. But of course it is no coincidence that the film bears the same name as one of the classic Hollywood genres. When she visited this year's film festival in Tromsø, Grisebach told her that this time she had been inspired by old western films, in addition to wanting to thematize the fear of strangers.

The film's main character Meinhard (played by Meinhard Neumann) is a word-and-forty-year-old with a soldier background from, among others, Afghanistan, who plays a resigned role to his colleagues. After he comes across a horse in the woods, Meinhard in a concrete sense becomes the stranger who rides into the Bulgarian village – in his case to buy cigarettes. With this he achieves some contact with the locals, later also of a romantic nature. This is despite the fact that very few of the Bulgarians speak German – and none of the Germans speak Bulgarian. Moreover, the skepticism of the villagers towards the foreign workers is strong, partly because of a failed attempt at flirting with a local girl on the part of the supervisor.

Classic items. One should not have seen many western films to draw attention to several of the components mentioned in the story. Meinhardt has many similarities to the classic western hero, as we have seen, for example, in John Wayne's form: a man of few words and great acting, with more understanding of nature and the natives – that is, the Indians, as they were called – than other whites. Americans. And who consequently had one leg in each of these camps, without even belonging to any of them.

In addition, Valeska Grisebach allows the Bulgarian nature to play a significant role in the film, not unlike how the American landscape characterized the old genre films. The earliest western films (like The Great Train Robbery from 1903) played out more or less in its time, but eventually the genre recreated a mythical America, where the mighty nature was an essential element. Deeply, these films discuss a number of contradictions in society that grew up with the acquisition of the supposedly wild west – with nature versus civilization and individualism versus collectivism as the most prominent.

The film one is an interesting study of traditional masculinity and male group dynamics partly because it is made by a woman.

Story of Europe. Western , for its part, appears more like a tale of modern Europe, with workers exercising their cross-border duties, and the skepticism this may arouse among locals, as well as the threat of armed guards and desperate refugees behind the border with Greece. At the same time, the film is a study of traditional masculinity and male group dynamics, which is not least interesting considering that the film is made by a woman.

As the classic western films discussed issues without necessarily formulating clear answers, Grisebach's narrative does not offer so many solutions. There the climax in Sehnsucht featured a memorable scene where the drunken main character lends himself to Robbie Williams' Feel on a dance floor, it should be both drunk and danced in the final minutes of Western – before it also ends in an ambivalent and partly open end. Something else had then also felt banal.

Grisebach belongs to the same environment as Maren Ade, who is listed among the film's producers – while Grisebach was screenwriter at Ades My father Toni Erdmann. both Western og Sehnsucht is also photographed by Bernhard Keller, who filmed Ades previous film All other. You can see similarities in the two directors' penchant for nuanced personages, subdued humor and subtle turning points. In addition, both trades Western og Toni Erdmann about Germans carrying out their work in Eastern Europe – albeit at different ends of the economic hierarchy.

Playful and original. The classic genre elements of Western would hardly have been as obvious if the title didn't make us look for them. But by brushing the dust off of a partially dismissed movie genre, Grisebach has again provided a playful and original addition to the social-realistic film tradition – which has also struggled to innovate. And where the old western films had their resonance in paradoxes and themes deeply rooted in American society, experienced Western as a relevant and up-to-date story about the Europe of our time. Without the issues they address, they are necessarily so different.

Western will appear as Film of the Month in April at the country's cinemas,
as well as at Kunstnernes Hus Kino in Oslo and at Bølgen in Larvik.