Indian film)

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Movie
Original title India
Country of production Austria
original language Austrian German
Publishing year 1993
length 90 minutes
Age rating FSK 6
Rod
Director Paul Harather
script Paul Harather,
Josef Hader ,
Alfred Dorfer
production Dor movie
music Ulrich Sinn
camera Hans Selikovsky
cut Andreas Kopriva
occupation

India (marketed as India - The Film ) is an Austrian tragicomedy directed by Paul Harather in 1993. The film is based on the play of the same name by Josef Hader and Alfred Dorfer , who co-wrote the screenplay with Harather.

The tragicomic road movie made Hader and Dorfer well known in Austria and Germany.

It is the only Austrian film that has been included in the Cinemathek collection of the Süddeutsche Zeitung .

action

The middle-class Heinz Bösel as well as the ambitious but honest yuppie Kurt Fellner, who talks incessantly and wants to impress with his knowledge, check inns on behalf of the tourist office in the Lower Austrian province for compliance with hygiene regulations and commercial law requirements.

The serious differences between the two characters are already apparent at the start of the business trip. Bösel drinks beer nonstop, only speaks the bare essentials and makes a calm, sedate impression, but occasionally his raw nature breaks out. He also overlooks one or the other misconduct of the innkeepers as long as he is bribed with wine and food. Fellner, on the other hand, reveals his intellectual side and tries to find more or less correct explanations for all circumstances. He also torments Bösel constantly with questions from the game Trivial Pursuit .

One evening an argument between the two escalates. At bedtime, Bösel appears in Fellner's room, heavily drunk, and pours his heart out over his failed marriage and his son, who is not his. When Fellner notices the next day that his girlfriend is cheating on him, he too begins to drink.

Suddenly the two very different characters find each other on the same level and come closer to each other. On the rather gloomy journeys through the province, they discover their own weaknesses and peculiarities. A close friendship slowly develops between the two inspectors. Together, the landlords are tormented and massive rewards are collected in the form of wine and other natural products for turning a blind eye. Fellner even manages to get Bösel excited about his Indian music and introduces him to the teachings of reincarnation .

Suddenly an incident occurs during a stopover in the middle of nowhere: Fellner gets severe pain in his abdomen. The business trip is canceled.

Fellner is admitted to the hospital, but since the primary goes on vacation after the examination, he remains unclear about his diagnosis - he interprets that it cannot be anything serious. Since Bösel has nothing to do with his family anymore and Fellner seems to be abandoned by his girlfriend and everyone else, Bösel is in the hospital almost every day to keep Fellner company. A ward nurse borrows Bösel a white doctor's coat so that his stays after visiting hours are not noticed. Bösel overhears two doctors who already know that Fellner suffers from testicular cancer while going to the toilet . Bösel is dismayed, but gives Fellner the impression that nothing is happening. Fellner soon learns of the devastating diagnosis. Once again, Bösel succeeds in smuggling Fellner out of the hospital to have dinner with him. There Fellner's emotional outburst again occurs, but he finally comes to terms with his fate. Bösel still fulfills Fellner's last wishes: He wants to play a simple melody on an organ, whereupon Bösel gets a keyboard . At the request to hear the birds in the forest again, Bösel pushes Fellner's bed (which is now in the hospital corridor due to lack of space) into the hospital park. Fellner dies there in the arms of Bösel.

After Bösel says goodbye to his friend, he makes his way home. In the park of the hospital he meets a newspaper seller of Indian origin on a park bench , who listens to the same music as Fellner on a cassette recorder . Bösel sits down with him. When the Indian also eats a banana and peeled it in the same way as Fellner at the time, he thinks he sees the reincarnation of his friend in him . He starts his way home happily.

background

Just like the original cabaret piece by Dorfer and Hader, the film is divided into two sections. The first, comical part is replaced by the tragic part. Of course there are also tragic scenes in the first part (the hotel room scene in which Mr Bösel tearfully talks about his failed marriage), but the comedy predominates here. If you look at the film in its entirety, there is a particularly sharp demarcation between comedy and tragedy.

The line between comedy and tragedy is crossed exactly at the point when Mr. Fellner tries to climb a high-voltage pylon, but suddenly feels a sharp pain in his abdomen. From now on only the so-called gallows humor is present.

Reviews

The Austrian press gave the film an ambivalent rating. The Viennese daily Kurier , for example, wrote in a diction that corresponds to the tenor of the film: “A snappy joke about two likeable people who are unsympathetic. And a huge hate speech about cancer. One of the two dies on it. But maybe it will be reborn as a vegetable. " The Standard was enthusiastic about the material, recognized Dialoge," in view of which Burg boss Peymann would have to put aside his admiration for the language artist Gabriel Barylli and instead commission Hader / Dorfer with a drama ". At the same time, however, the critic said that the film adds "little quality or some awkwardness to the actual play." The press saw the film as "an astonishingly sovereign comedy, which, however, suddenly turns into a much less convincing tragedy."

Successes at various film festivals and international film awards also drew the attention of the German and Swiss media to the film. The Süddeutsche Zeitung found India to be "the rare stroke of luck in which a stage play with only two locations becomes a wonderful, surprising, entertaining and convincing film". The Neue Zürcher Zeitung described India as “funny, coarse, touching, but also terrifyingly honest”, the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung praised the “rarely so happy metamorphosis” of theater, cabaret and film. The lexicon of international films recommended the film as a “ cinema tip from Catholic film critics” and defined it as a “comedy that is characterized by gorgeous comic dialogue attacks, but also the turnaround to serious melancholy melodrama with the joy of telling stories, biting wit, precise observation and above all a life-affirming serenity. "

Awards

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Kurier , October 7, 1993, p. 26
  2. ↑ Der Standard , October 7, 1993, p. 11
  3. ^ Die Presse , October 9, 1993
  4. ↑ Süddeutsche Zeitung , January 25, 1995, p. 16
  5. ↑ Neue Zürcher Zeitung , June 23, 1996, p. 54
  6. ^ FAZ , January 28, 1995, p. 29
  7. ↑ India. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed December 21, 2016 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used