Under the pear tree (2019)
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Under the pear tree |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 2019 |
| length | 89 minutes |
| Rod | |
| Director | Uli Edel |
| script | Léonie-Claire Breinersdorfer |
| production |
Michael Luda , Jan Richard Schuster |
| music | Sebastian Fillenberg |
| camera | Hannes Hubach |
| cut | Julia Oehring |
| occupation | |
| |
Unterm Birnbaum is a German television film by the director Uli Edel . It premiered on September 29, 2019 at the Hamburg Film Festival and was first broadcast on arte on December 27, 2019 .
The plot is based on the novella of the same name by Theodor Fontane and was translated into the early 21st century.
action
The restaurateurs couple Ursel and Abel Hradschek are threatened with losing their Landgasthof am Oderbruch because business is not going well, Abel gets into debt with illegal gambling and Ursel numbs the pain of a stillbirth with excessive purchases.
When Schulze, who organizes illegal gambling in the region , demands the commission, the " table money ", from Abel , Abel initially sees no way out. But then, while working in the garden under the pear tree, he comes across the skeleton of a soldier who died in World War II and he comes up with the idea of murdering Schulze and stealing the commissions he always carries with him on his debt collection tours. Ursel helps her husband cover up the murder.
Village policeman Geelhaar, who has had an eye on Ursel, is investigating. Mrs. Jeschke, the curious neighbor of the Hradscheks, tells him that she had seen Abel on the night of the murder burying something in the garden. Geelhaar arrests Abel, but instead of Schulze, only the body of the World War II soldier is found in the garden. The murder cannot be proven to Abel and so he is released again. But Ursel cannot live with the guilt, falls into a deep depression and finally commits suicide . Abel cannot take her death. He released his employee, went into the cellar where he had walled up Schulze's body, and began to pry open the wall.
When Line, the niece of the neighbor and the Hradscheks' temporary worker, later comes to the inn, does not meet anyone and notices the smell of decay coming from the cellar, she calls the police. Geelhaar discovers the body of Schulze behind the broken wall in the cellar and that of Abel, who has hanged himself, on the cellar ceiling.
production
The film was shot from May 7th to June 6th 2019 in Letschin , Küstrin , Meiningen ( Gut Amalienruh ) and Eisenach, among others . The film was produced by mecom fiction GmbH on behalf of ZDF. It was funded by the Mitteldeutsche Medienförderung with 400,000 euros.
publication
The premiere took place on July 29, 2019 at the Hamburg Film Festival ; from December 26, 2019, the film was available in the arte media library . The first broadcast was one day later on arte in German and French.
reception
criticism
Rainer Tittelbach praises the “psychological subtexts” in Breinersdorfer's script. The film language used has "a lot of the unstoppability of a classical (Greek) tragedy". Uli Edel's staging makes the production "a coherent cinematic total work of art".
According to the Catholic film service, the transfer to the present day “struggles” to exclude the changes in social behavior and remains “rather tame” as a thriller.
Thilo Wydra criticizes in the Tagesspiegel that "a lot of the Fontane modernization fell by the wayside [...], all the details, the finely chiseled". Some characters looked "like stenciled clichés".
In the FAZ , Heike Hupertz laments "the loss of all historical allusions", but says that the film was "psychologically dramatic". She particularly emphasizes the "old masterly lighting and the exquisite image design" by Hannes Hubach.
Audience ratings
The broadcast on ZDF on December 30, 2019, Fontane's 200th birthday, saw 4.87 million viewers, with a market share of 15.7 percent.
References
- Under the pear tree in the Internet Movie Database (English)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c Unterm Birnbaum In: Crew United , accessed on January 7, 2020.
- ↑ Unterm Birnbaum (2019 TV Movie) // Filming & Production . In: IMDb , accessed on January 3, 2020.
- ^ Rainer Tittelbach: TV film "Unterm Birnbaum". Tittelbach.tv , January 17, 2020, accessed on January 11, 2020 .
- ↑ Unterm Pirnbaum (2019). Film service , accessed January 11, 2020 .
- ↑ Thilo Wydra: Fontane with smartphone and coffee to go. In: Der Tagesspiegel . December 29, 2019, accessed January 11, 2020 .
- ↑ Heike Hupertz: It wasn't enough for this life. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung . December 27, 2019, accessed January 11, 2020 .
- ↑ dpa : Audience ratings // Fontane film "Unterm Birnbaum" in front . In: T-online, December 31, 2019, accessed January 3, 2020.