Direction: Valeska Grisebach
Country: Germany
Blending work-related issues with personal quests, German writer/director Valeska Grisebach (Longing) has in Western, her best film. You can think of it as if the proletarian realism of Ken Loach had fused with the culture clashes depicted by Jacques Audiard. The film title is a suitable epigram, playing with the east-west differences and with the western genre through the semblance and the actions of its main character.
The quiet Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann) is a German construction worker who accepts joining a specialized crew, headed by the antagonistic Vincent (Reinhardt Wetrek), to build a hydroelectric plant in a small rural Bulgarian village, next to the border with Greek border. He soon clarifies his boss about his intentions: he’s there only for the money.
Taking advantage of the reduced working flow - there’s no water on the site to be mixed with the cement and a 40-ton shipment of gravel was stolen - he sets out to the village mounted on an old white horse he borrowed without permission. When the conflict was expected, Reinhard surprises us by gaining the trust of the suspicious villagers. His comfortable posture and friendly manners were able to beat the barrier of communication. Thus, he was more than welcome to be part of this small Bulgarian family.
The horse owner, Adrian (Syuleyman Alilov Letifov), becomes a close buddy, appointing him as his personal bodyguard. This happened after Meinhard had mentioned to some residents he fought in Afghanistan and Africa as a legionnaire. However, a number of unexpected incidents, involving both locals and his own crew, will mar his staying with glumness.
The story takes its time to develop and requires patience at every languid turn, but once you let yourself be enveloped by its mood, it’s all rewards. Neumann does an impressive work here, embracing his first role with natural ease and assuming great part of the responsibility in making of the tale a grounded and sincere experience. On the other hand, Grisebach is an intelligent storyteller, showing to have a meticulous eye for detail. The realistically filmed Western dissects its male characters, digging into their souls and revealing a human perspective that, even suggesting a vast array of emotions, never hand them on a plate. Actually, it feels great having to search for them.
