Schultze Gets the Blues

Schultze worked in a salt mine in eastern Germany and has now been retired early. There is not much to do in the town: he fishes, tends his garden, goes to the tavern in the evenings. He has an accordion inherited from his father and has played the same polka on it for years. One night he hears something else on the radio: zydeco music from Louisiana. From that moment he cannot play anything else. The townspeople find the new music strange; when he plays it at the music club's anniversary the hall freezes. In the end Schultze takes his accordion and goes to Louisiana. Michael Schorr's film barely speaks; Schultze says little and the story lines up silences rather than events. Horst Krause carries the part with his body. A hundred and fourteen minutes. Its subject is not music but a man at the end of his life feeling curiosity for the first time.