About 200 years ago in the German lands: Bavaria is a vassal to Napoléon Bonaparte and has occupied Tyrolia, and with it the passage over the alps. A young Tyrolian carpenter and his young wife (an upper- class doctor's daughter) are forced to flee from urban Augsburg back to the husband's homeland after an altercation with a French officer. But their future is even more troubled: the wife, Katharina, struggles with her vicious mother-in-law and the backwardness of her new home. And soon the Tyrolians under Andreas Hofer rebel against the Bavarians and the French, with disastrous results.
Director Philipp Pamer, a native South Tyrolian, started this ambitious project at the remarkably young age of 21, and realised it while studying in Munich, the capital of Bavaria. He manages to catch a truthful and insightful slice of life two hundred years ago, without embellishing the truth. His approach is remarkably subtle, his story complex, his truths lie in between. It would have been dangerously easy to depict the Tyroleans as rustic but freedom- loving mountainfolk, the French as evil 19.th-century Nazis and Katherina as a harbinger of emancipation ("sassy urbanite wins hillbillies' hearts and becomes a doctor"). And yet the movie is deft enough to captivate the viewer.
This might be an early triumph for an upcoming cinematic grandmaster.
Director Philipp Pamer, a native South Tyrolian, started this ambitious project at the remarkably young age of 21, and realised it while studying in Munich, the capital of Bavaria. He manages to catch a truthful and insightful slice of life two hundred years ago, without embellishing the truth. His approach is remarkably subtle, his story complex, his truths lie in between. It would have been dangerously easy to depict the Tyroleans as rustic but freedom- loving mountainfolk, the French as evil 19.th-century Nazis and Katherina as a harbinger of emancipation ("sassy urbanite wins hillbillies' hearts and becomes a doctor"). And yet the movie is deft enough to captivate the viewer.
This might be an early triumph for an upcoming cinematic grandmaster.