Rijndri Load of rubbish!!

Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Aneesa Wardle The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.

Marva-nova Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

Horst in Translation (filmreviews@web.de) "Die Wand" or "The Wall" was Austria's foreign language submission to the Academy Awards the year after "Amour" took home the big prize. This one failed in making the list, but it is nonetheless an excellent movie. I guess it did not really do well with awards bodies as even with the Austrain film Awards it did not score a single win when Ulrich Seidl's newest work dominated the categories. The movie is written and directed by Julian Pölsler based on Marlen Haushofer 1963 novel. The film runs for roughly 100 minutes and basically we only hear Gedeck narrate and see what she is narrating in these scenes. There are a handful more actors in this film, but all only very briefly while Gedeck (still very stunning at 50) is in it from start to finish. Her narration is actually based on diary entries. She is already further in the future than what she tells us about. She knows things we do not know. The plot is as simple as it is effective. A woman wants to spend some quiet time in the mountains, but she quickly realizes that there is an invisible wall there holding her prisoner. She can see other people through it, but they are not moving. Are they dead? Is she dead? Is she hallucinating or suffering from a psychological illness? What happened? One of the film's biggest strengths is that there is no solution in the end, so feel free to speculate and discuss all the way. It reminded me a bit of Jürgen Domian's book "The day the sun disappeared".12 minutes into the movie, the first crucial thing happens when her dog runs into the invisible wall. Yes, she has a dog, also a cow and a cat and also some young animals freshly born into this devastating scenario. They keep her company and possibly also keep her from going insane. Dog in a drama movie usually not a good prospect for the dog. Same here. The scene when she meets the man near the end is a very pivotal one. Pay attention to how she completely neglects approaching him in order to find a solution to her/their imprisonment. She did not think about it one second. All she thinks about is revenge for what he did to her companions. Listen closely to what she says about she got rid of his corpse compared to how she got rid of her dog. The tragedy is also referred to earlier in the film when she mentions her the death of her cat the first time that she was facing loss. Or how she talked about the death of her dog long before it happened in the film. Apart from that, what makes her interesting is also that we do not find out about who she was before coming to the mountainside. Also the audio is excellently done. There's is silence for most of the film and I really liked the contrast between the forced happy music Gedeck's character forces herself to listen to in the car and the general atmosphere.This is the kind of film which is always worth a watch, but much more effective on the big screen, so be grateful if you have a home cinema or managed to watch this at your local theater. All in all, it is a dramatic tale on isolation, but there are some horror elements too, like her nightmare. It's one of the most atmospheric and metaphorical (white crow) films I have seen lately and is highlighted by Gedeck's outstanding lead performance. And last but not least, it has an excellent ending as the movie ends when she has no sheets of paper anymore and so is forced to stop with her diary entries. Highly recommended.

Alexandra Cc I haven't seen a foreign-(I'd say)low budget movie in a long time. This one was, in short words, interesting (or, maybe, I just missed a fantasy movie).The scenery was beautiful indeed and there's no point in writing more about it since other reviewers already did.The acting was OK in my opinion. But there's not much to say here either since there was only one actor who appeared through the entire movie.The story began in a modern manner, with a scene from the present followed by a scene from the past (how it all began). I didn't particularly appreciate the beginning, but moving on. I liked some details, like that moment when the main character attempted to pet the dog, but quickly drew her hand back because of the reaction of the animal. But after she found herself trapped in that bubble, she quickly became best friends with the dog named Luchs.I didn't like the length of some scenes. I understood that they're there to allow the viewer to reflect on the acts and thoughts of the woman, but I would've just cut off at least a few seconds.The movie also contained some violent scenes like the one when the dog is killed. They were so contrastable with the peace and beauty of the place.What I really liked in this movie was the balanced, rational, peaceful way that woman chose to deal with her situation. I thought that she is an introvert and I appreciated that she admitted her fears and emotions in her improvised diary. (But as a cat fan I really hated her for letting her white cat out on a dangerous night that killed her) The ending left me confused as I didn't expect it. I thought that they'd reveal something about that "wall". I understood that it was about meaning, possibilities, unknown, but I would've given them more points for creativity if the ending was different (but here's probably not so much their "fault" as much as the author's "fault").The entire movie was peaceful, deliberate, only at times the silence was disturbed by some events like the car crush, the mysterious man, the hunting. I could think of many meanings, even some that probably had nothing to do with the author's intentions, like the whole wall is a symbol for extreme introversion, or for autism.To sum up, it was an interesting movie to watch, but many of us might find it boring. I guess you just need the right mood for it. I do believe that there are many other better movies with such a subject to watch. Call me superficial but this one did not make me raise as many discussions and thoughts about life and human nature as other movies (and I'll give as an example another recent foreign movie: The Broken Circle Breakdown (but that movie has a completely different subject though).

Gambitt This contains a *spoiler* but I think you should read it anyway.In The Wall, a woman finds herself stuck and isolated in a remote part of the Austrian mountainside while vacationing with friends. Her captor is the wall-- literally an invisible wall that surrounds her. Now here's the spoiler: the movie never explains what the wall is exactly.I feel like it's important to get that out of the way, because the title and the description on Netflix may lead many to believe that this is a sci-fi exploration of how this fantastical wall interacts with the world. You'll be sorely disappointed and distracted if that is that is the ride you were hoping for. The Wall, rather, focuses on the evolution of the woman as she struggles to cope with her situation.I overall enjoyed the movie, but the stream of consciousness narrative can be hard to follow at times. The movie has rich visuals, and it's great for animal lovers, though the queasy should be warned that suffering and death are depicted as well.

phansen70 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.