Sleep Brother (film)

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Movie
Original title Sleep brother
Country of production Germany
original language German
Publishing year 1995
length 127 minutes
Age rating FSK 12
Rod
Director Joseph Vilsmaier
script Robert Schneider
production Danny Krausz, Peter Sterr, Joseph Vilsmaier
music Norbert Jürgen Schneider Hubert von Goisern
Harald Feller
Johann Sebastian Bach
camera Joseph Vilsmaier
cut Alexander Berner
occupation

Schlafes Bruder is the film adaptation of the novel of the same name by the Austrian writer Robert Schneider from 1992, who also has a small role as a coachman in the film.

action

Elias was born in the lonely farming village of Eschberg at the beginning of the 19th century. Even his birth is difficult, because the midwife first has to be fetched from the village in the valley despite the heavy rain. And heartbeats can only be heard in the new human being after the midwife has sung a piece from the Te Deum . So he was born with music in the truest sense of the word. Elias seems to have perfect pitch. In the school choir, he sings accompaniment lines that are not in the score with an elf voice - his teacher initially shows little understanding for this. Elias is an outsider everywhere, like the incredulous charcoal burner Michel, who gives blasphemous speeches in the church. Only his mother knows who his real father is, and she thinks the child is Satan's punishment for her misstep.

Elias grows up and hears voices like visions everywhere. The only one who finds access to him is the young Elsbeth, who falls in love with him. Much to the displeasure of Elsbeth's brother Peter. It is not so much the worry about his sister that drives him to jealousy, but also Peter feels drawn to Elias. But he only has eyes for Elsbeth, although she was actually promised to Lukas. They get closer on a trip with the donkey cart. Elsbeth complains about Elias' silence, but he thinks that inside him it keeps talking. He takes them to a large flat river stone, which he takes to be the footprint of God and to which he ascribes mystical powers. He says you might get straight to heaven from this place.

Thanks to his musical talent, Elias succeeds in repairing and re-tuning the organ in the village church. The organist and school teacher is only partially happy about it. He's been worried about his position for a long time and fears a competitor in Elias. In the end, fear of this drives him to suicide. From now on Elias is supposed to play the organ for the church services. He now also gives music lessons to the children of the village. Elsbeth feels that Elias' true love only belongs to music. Full of disappointment, she flees into Lukas' arms. When Elias notices this, he quarrels with God and accuses him of feasting on his grief. In desperation, he turns to the atheist Michel and begs him to bring his lover back for him. Michel replies: “What are you talking about, you can't love at all, Elias, you are the loneliest person in the world. ... He who loves does not sleep. ”Elias withdraws completely and neither plays the organ nor does he socialize.

Elsbeth then feels guilty and wants to go back to Elias, but her brother prevents her. He locks her in the house and sets it on fire. Elias, who can hear the fire before all the other villagers, rushes to help Elsbeth. While he is rescuing them from the flames, the fire spreads to the other houses and the entire village burns down. The villagers blame the charcoal burner Michel and burn him alive. While everyone who has become homeless, including Elsbeth, who is pregnant by Lukas, is leaving the village, Elias is left alone with his family and a few whose houses are halfway intact.

Half a year later the cantor Fürchtegott Goller travels to Eschberg, as he has been commissioned by his imperial-royal governor to visit all the churches in the country to inspect the organs. When he starts playing the organ that Elias had converted, he is amazed. But it amazes him even more when Elias sits down at the instrument and lets his wonderful music play. He really wants to take Elias with him to Feldberg. There Elias takes part in one of the annual organ competitions. When Elsbeth hears about it, she rushes to the church, where Elias is just presenting his extemporal of chant: Come, O death, you sleepy brother to the cheering audience. Elias is chosen as the winner of the competition and escorted out of the church. He couldn't see Elsbeth under the noisy crowd, but he can feel her closeness and love for him. In the presence of Peter, he retreats to his stone - God's footprint. Elias remembers the words of the charcoal burner Michel: “If you love, you don't sleep” and shoots never wanting to sleep again, in the hope that Elsbeth will find him here. But she doesn't come and he dies after a few days of sleep deprivation. Peter, with tears, buries him near the stone. Years later, Elsbeth passes by with her daughter and sees that the stone has disappeared.

Production history

Location of the final scene with Elsbeth at the Langsee. View from the Patteriol massif to the west into the Silbertal with the Langsee.

The film was made in 1994 at the locations Gaschurn im Montafon , Vorarlberg and St. Anton am Arlberg in Austria and in Kutná Hora (Czech Republic). The film village stood at Ganeumaisaß at a good 1400 m altitude in the Garneratal south of Gaschurn. The final scene with Elsbeth running away on a lake was made at Langsee in the rearmost Silbertal in Verwall .

When André Eisermann (at that time already known for his role in a Kaspar Hauser film ) heard that Joseph Vilsmaier wanted to film the novel, he pressed the director so long that he was the right cast for Elias until Vilsmaier finally gave in . According to Vilsmaier, Eisermann had difficulties because he sometimes fell back into the role of Kaspar Hauser while shooting .

Reviews

“Schlafes brother cost 15 million, looks twice as expensive and is speculating on a cross-over - namely to lure literature lovers, late friends of the Heimatfilm and - despite the dull violence - people longing for nature and village nostalgics to the cinema. Eschberg is a bastard, the pub a sinister dab - nevertheless, this is where Walter Benjamin's remark applies that there is a way of photographing poverty that enhances the misery in a picturesque way. "

- epd film ( Stefan Reinecke )

“The very first scene of Joseph Vilsmaier's film“ Schlafes Bruder ”, which magically draws the viewer into the archaic microcosm of this evidence from a strange time, is a synonym for the extraordinary efforts, which have become rare in German cinema, with which the bestseller novel Robert Schneider's visual equivalents should be created. "

- Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (Hans-Dieter Seidel)

“A film adaptation of the successful novel by Robert Schneider, which never finds a cinematic equivalent for the subtle and complex narrative structure of the original. With extraordinary external effort, a showy large-scale production was created, which inappropriately simplifies the fable and reduces it to a double-failed love story. "

- Lexicon of international film

Awards

Trivia

Village organ in Eschberg

The predecessor of the Rieger organ in St. Laurentius in Ziethen was built in 1881 by the Stralsund organ builder Friedrich Albert Mehmel . The Mehmel organ, which was used as a loan organ, happened to be in the company of Rieger for overhaul. It was therefore awarded to the film's production company in 1994 as an unplayable prop . Thus the console of this North German instrument is immortalized in this film as the “Vorarlberg village organ”, the “sounds” of which came from the organ of the St. Johann church in Erding .

Cathedral organ in Feldberg

The organ front in the cathedral of St. Barbara in Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) was used for this virtual location , while the console was only a mock-up . Here the sounds of the historic organ of the Old Cathedral in Linz were acoustically accompanied.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Certificate of release for Schlafes brother . Voluntary self-regulation of the film industry , April 2004 (PDF; test number: 73 367 V / DVD).
  2. ↑ Sleeping brother of Robert Schneider (1992). ( Memento of the original from January 25, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: epd Film , 10/95 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.workpage.de
  3. ↑ Hans-Dieter Seidel: Come, oh death, and just take me away. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung via buecher.de , October 5, 1995.
  4. ↑ Sleep brother. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed March 2, 2017 .Template: LdiF / Maintenance / Access used 
  5. ^ Karl-Heinz Göttert, Eckhard Isenberg: Organs! Organs !: Concepts, curiosities, continents. Bärenreiter 2002 ISBN 978-3-7618-1566-3 , p. 140
  6. ^ Karl-Heinz Göttert, Eckhard Isenberg: Organs! Organs !: Concepts, curiosities, continents. Bärenreiter 2002 ISBN 978-3-7618-1566-3 , p. 141