Hut in the Woods (2011) User Reviews

Great Movie !

[sebastianwurm · 7 November 2011]

I Loved the new Weingartner Movie ! Makes you think how we treat the "mentally disturbed " or even what is mentally disturbed ??? You should definitely go and see it . If you liked " Das weisse Rauschen " and " die fetten Jahre sind vorbei " this is the Movie to see. Brilliant Actor Peter Schneider catches you with his performance . In the first part of the movie , we can see how his life is dramatically changing and the only solution society is giving him ,is drugs . As he decided to find his own way ,nobody can understand him. His only friend is a young ukranian Boy how is helping him and guiding him into nature where they are trying to find their way of living .

The sum of all my individual parts

[ismaelavneves · 10/10 · 18 March 2016]

Yes... I think this should be the title. A literal translation from the original German title. Embrace yourself to a journey into the wild and free mind of a man who's physically restrained to a mental institution. His only escape? His imagination... The beautifulness of the storyboard. Even all those bumps his mind provokes in the story line is poetry in motion. You'll be sad... then terrible... then horrified... then comes hope... joy and finally you see yourself free... You discover where the freedom really exists. I won't tell you where, just see the movie and find it yourself... Warning: this is not a great produced/high budget movie... simple but straight to the point, that's what matters... anything else is a distraction! PS: Nothing to do with the review... but as I'm from Portugal I was also delighted to find out that this is paradise to some people. And believe me... it's paradise, come and see for yourself ;)

Not too convincing for this runtime

[Horst_In_Translation · 4/10 · 19 January 2017]

"Die Summe meiner einzelnen Teile" or "Hut in the Woods" is a German movie from 2011, so this one had its 5th anniversary last year. The writer and director is Hans Weingartner and despite the age, it is actually still his most recent release. He is certainly not the most prolific filmmaker. It is also his least known full feature work, but this also may have to do with the fact that the lead actor is Peter Schneider and not a big name like Bleibtreu or Brühl. Or it may just have to do with the fact that it's not really a great film. The focus is on the character of Martin, a grown-up man who may (or may not lose his sanity) after losing his job first. He ends up in the wild where he meets wolves and a little boy. The rest of the film is about his interactions with the kid and eventually the question if the boy is real or just existed in the man's mind. This is an interesting part of the plot for sure, but honestly, I did not feel as if it is good enough to be the core of a film that is pretty long, really runs for almost 120 minutes. Or at least it's not good enough the way it was depicted in here. This is a bit of a shame as the acting from everybody is fairly solid, even if I would not say Schneider or any of the other actors were truly great. Julia Jentsch is probably the most known cast member, but first of all she does not have too much to work with and honestly I felt she was relatively bland on some occasions. So yeah, overall, I would not say I was too convinced by this one. It is a decent character study, but it also goes sometimes over the top in its attempts to be such and this is when the film is at its weakest. I have to give it a thumbs-down and this is pretty disappointing as I quite liked Weingartner's other stuff. My least favorite from him for sure. Watch something else instead.

After a good first half it falls apart

[nicroeg73 · 3/10 · 30 December 2020]

This is a very promising movie in the first half but the question is, which direction the script will go in the second half. And there comes a big surprise twist, but the twist is just the usual "he is there but in reality he is not there"-cliche - how disappointing. And it all goes downhill from there: the girl who simply leaves her job and life just because she met a homeless man who told her some nice things about living in the desert without electricity, now this has simply no credibility. Also the ending is just stupid, it's the old idiotic crime movie cliche of "I see you in the newspaper and I call the cops" - very-very weak for an ending, especially when the movie started with great realism of the ruined life of the main hero. Overall a great disappointment, because of the first half I would rate this 5/10 but it is way overrated here (great European movies have a rating of 6.6 - 6.8 and this one 7.0, which is laughable), so it is 3/10.

Beautiful and surprising.

[Dev1999 · 25 September 2020]

Hans Weingartner proves to be a constantly great writer-director. This film once again is full of heart, has something to say, and takes chances. It's about childhood trauma and trying to find something to make yourself whole. A sad film to be sure, but not without hope at all.