The Wall (2013)

Too much of everything

Purely Joyful Movie!

Plot so thin, it passes unnoticed.

Let's be realistic.

This is a beautiful rendition of the "Last Woman" themed novel of the same name by Marlen Haushofer. Most of the most profound moments of the narrator's reflection are used here verbatim as voice-overs. The parts omitted make sense for timing reasons (though definitely missed - especially Tiger). The cinematography and scenery are breathtaking, and Gedeck does a phenomenal job bringing this character and all the emotions to life. Highly recommend reading the novel first - it's a short, and powerful quick read - then watching the movie.

What happens when you are a denizen of the modern world and you are cast into the more primitive world? And alone? How do you cope? How do you survive? How do you tell the story, even though you have no idea whether others will hear the story? This is a walk through the human mind. An excellent story. Watch it.

This is the synopsis from Netflix: "Vacationing with a couple in their mountain retreat, a woman finds herself alone at the cabin one afternoon, inexplicably trapped by an invisible wall. Her isolation behind the barrier grows more surreal as hours, then days, then weeks pass." Sounds like a cool premise, right? I mean, how is she going to get out? I mean, she's going to spend most of the movie figuring out the nature of this wall and then trying to escape it, right? When she first encounters the wall, she's on a path. Next to the path is a river, where water is clearly flowing through the wall – wouldn't you, I don't know, try to swim in the water to see if you could get under the wall? Throw rocks at it to try to see how high it goes (it does seem like birds are able to cross in and out of the wall and rain, snow and wind still exist, so it's not like a dome). If you happen to see someone two years after this journey, wouldn't you maybe try to talk to him to see where he came from (even if he just killed your dog) instead of just murdering him? You and I probably would because we are not vehicles for philosophy. "The woman," however, exists solely as a vehicle for philosophy, so nothing she does makes any sense. She's too busy contemplating her aloneness than to try to do anything about it. So we, the viewers of this beautifully shot movie (it really is gorgeous!), must suffer through her loneliness with her rather than see her try to do ANYTHING about it. She never digs a hole on the border of the wall to see how deep it goes. Instead she spends 10 days waiting to be rescued and then just accepts her fate. And that happens about 10-15 minutes into the movie, so get ready to philosophize!

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.