The Wall

A woman goes to a mountain house with friends. The couple walk down to the village in the evening and do not come back. In the morning she sets out to look for them and hits something: an invisible wall, hard and impassable. Beyond it the valley is visible but nothing moves there; the people have stopped where they stood. She goes back. She has a dog, a cow and a cat with her. She begins to survive: cutting wood, planting potatoes, milking the cow, hunting. And she writes down what happens. Julian Pölsler directs. Martina Gedeck takes the lead. The source is Marlen Haushofer's novel. The book was published in 1963 and stayed a little known text for a long time; then it was rediscovered and counted a classic. The narrative rests on narration; what the woman writes is read out and the events are told in retrospect. The matter it works at is not solitude but what daily labour means; the narrative gives survival through repetition and work. The reason for the wall is never explained and the film does not try to explain it. The images shot in the Austrian mountains are inside the narrative; the turn of the seasons is the only measure of time. The ending is sudden and hard; the narrative finishes without preparation. Who it is for: viewers who like survival narratives and literary adaptation. Who it is not for: it is almost a solo film, the pace is very slow, and the narration is dense.