Movies: The Forest For The Trees

Our local library has a big selection of foreign movies, most of them coming from the Film Movement collection of artsy indie flicks. To be honest, the bulk of the FMC's catalog is ponderous and dull; sometimes I feel like directors use a low budget to excuse torpid pacing. When a movie does succeed in spite of its unadorned production values, it is something of a minor miracle.



That's why I'm impressed with "Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen," or "The Forest For The Trees." It's a student-film by Maren Ade that follows an idealistic young schoolteacher named Melanie who leaves home to live on her own. Everything seems to start out okay (Melanie befriends her pretty shopgirl neighbor and makes an initial splash at work), but soon personal and professional difficulties ensue.

If you find moments of social awkwardness painful to watch, then this movie will make you grit your teeth. Melanie's slow slide into loneliness and despair is brought to life with an incredible performance by Eva Löbau. The movie doesn't have enough of a plot to sustain its 80-odd minute runtime, but it remains absorbing due to the acting.

The ambiguous ending doesn't overstay its welcome and leave much open to interpretation. Director Maren Ade also gets major props for good use of Granddaddy's 2000 single "He's Simple, He's Dumb, He's the Pilot":



Rating: 7/10