Europeans Throw Down the Gauntlet in Narrative Competition
The prize for the juried Narrative Film Competition is $15,000 plus the invaluable prestige that accompanies winning. So there is a lot at stake for the 10 films in the competition. I believe that a debut release by young Viennese filmmaker Marie Kreutzer, who is not long out of film school, has set the mark for what it will take to win this competition. Her film elevates the medium to the level of art.
The Fatherless had its American premiere Friday night and can be seen again on Monday afternoon at 4:20 PM. The film recently premiered last month at Cannes and is being distributed in Vienna and Germany with other European countries being rolled out later. 
This is an ensemble film shot in what had been an abandoned farmhouse restaurant in the countryside of Vienna. The story evolves over a few days but is based on past behavior of a “free love” commune 17 years earlier. It is a story about family, what it means to be family and relationships among loosely these defined family members.
The director spent three years writing and perfecting the script. She partnered with a leading Viennese production company to make the film. The ensemble of actors is first rate, a few of them coming from the Viennese theatre community.
The film has the look of one of those Urban Outfitters catalogue shot on location in a remote farm in Eastern Europe mixed with ensemble acting found in Woody Allen’s Interiors. The director has honed the story and it’s unfolding so that it plays just right. She incorporates many layers of visual symbolism that highlight the “interior landscape” of the film’s characters.
This quality in a film is something Director Julie Taymor discussed in her talk at the Grammy Museum Sunday night. When a director craftily uses the visual tools of the medium to reveal what is going on in a character, then the film can rise to the level of art. Director Marie Kreutzer achieves this but in a much more subtle form than Ms. Taymor who does it to the extreme. I highly recommend you watch the video of Ms. Taymor speaking about bringing her vision to the screen.
In writing the film Marie Kreutzer did a good deal of research on the commune phenomena in Vienna. In addition she grew up in a farmhouse in the Viennese countryside that was renovated by her parents. So she knows her material very well. She wrote biographies on all of her characters and fleshed them out in the script. She let the actors bring some of themselves to the roles and was still being informed about her characters during the editing process.
The film is a collaborative effort that demonstrates the effective results that can be achieved by assembling a talented team of people to work with. Nonetheless in a film about relationships it all comes back to the script and the director’s ability to tell the story.Bravo!
–By Jim Lichacz for 2011 Los Angeles Film Festival
June 20th, 2011 • No Comments
