Der Mann aus dem Eis

Not a bad movie, "Der Mann aus dem Eis" gets weighed down by its "plot" which concentrates on Ötzi's violent death and the days before, creating a murder and revenge story with lots of violence but no levity at all.

The movie gets plus points for trying to get its history right; I liked how it highlights the fact that even then, in the late stone- / early bronze age, humankind was already far removed from the nature it still depended upon. A good idea in this respect were some rituals, plus of course the story's MacGuffin, an obsidian shard used for rituals which is kept in a pretty wooden box.

On the minus side, the amount of violence was maybe historically accurate but if you already go the length of portraying a stone age society halfway correctly (including made-up speech), you might as well include the nicer aspects of human life. A few tender looks and embraces during the first five minutes is all we get.

From the technical POV, the production is OK, out of their limited budget they got everything which could be expected and then some - the sets were fine, the costumes great, casting and acting good (nice lengthy cameo by Franco Nero) and of course the spectacular outdoor locations are an asset. Yet in many instances the camera-work stays rather pedestrian, so while the story shares some genes with "The Revenant", the photography is of lower quality (no big deal, Lubezki is a genius and no mistake). There's only two scenes where the pictures really take flight - one chase along a ridge filmed with a drone or cable-camera against spectacular backdrops, really vertigo-inducing that one - and one lengthy sequence where the hero is trapped in a crevasse below the glacier. Both scenes only emphasize that there was a better movie somewhere but it got buried under a too-simple and violent plot.

Recommended all the same, especially for the realistic portrayal of those early societies.

It's not that "Iceman" is a great film - not in the caliber of, say, 'Amadeus' or 'The Godfather' - but it does have its own story to tell, and in a way you won't see that much. At the beginning of the film, there's this disclaimer: "The characters in the following film speak an early version of the Rhaetic language. Translation is not required to comprehend the story." And it's true. 'Iceman' is basically a revenge film akin to almost every Chinese martial arts (Wuxia) movie or even Lone Wolf & Cub. Apart from the scarcity of language, the cinematography of the eastern Alps is breathtaking. You can almost call 'Iceman' neolithic Nordic noir for the blues on display as well as the general moodiness and bleak surroundings. Interesting in this day and age to release a near-silent film, but I think this one works.

There are several surprises in the story and they don't make sense. In the course of his travels through the Netherlands our hero he was seeking revenge against those who killed his wife/girlfriends/I don't know the relationship because nobody speaks English, this is a movie without dialogue, which has to carry itself just on the effect of the actors upon each other and what they receive from the surrounding cascade. One scene that doesn't understand my comprehension is the same before this. He's traveling along going up a creek bed and then all of a sudden he's gotta goat and I suppose that's to feed the baby that he rescued from the destruction of his village. Now the goat has short-lived necessity as he slaughters it and cooks it and then all of a sudden he has friends that want to eat the goat with him, at this time, the baby that he's been carrying around for about 2/3 of the movie, he palms off on the new friends and he goes looking for revenge against those who killed his family and his village and birth, etc. So he's on the trail of these bad people and for some reason they go over a vast mountain range where there's no shelter no food and no purpose to be there. But his journey goes on to find those bad people and that's all I can say without giving away the ending.

This film is important. It has a great perspective and shows you how far we have really come. I great story of evil and good and their coexistence. It actually lowered my anxiety in a weird way. The sound is just fantastic in this film. As well as cinematography and direction and performance. Nothing really bad to say about, its effective and is bare bones story telling. Not pretentiously overlong. I loved it.

A Neolithic revenge story seeks to explain the mysterious man found frozen in the Alps. Written and directed by Felix Randau, and originally release in Germany in 2017 as Der Mann aus dem Eis, Iceman purports to tell the story of a Copper Age man preserved in the frozen Alps for 5,000 years. Beautiful landscapes and harrowing authenticity help balance what might otherwise be a one-dimensional revenge plot.

Kelab (Jürgen Vogel), Kisis (Susanne Wuest), and their clan are living in the Ötztal Alps around 3000 BC, where Kelab protects a fetish called Tineka. The clan is blessed with the birth of a child, but grieved by the loss of its mother. When Kelab is off hunting in the woods, a trio of raiders attack his village, slaughter its inhabitants, and steal their idol. Filled with a desire for revenge, Kelab rescues the newborn and pursues the raiders.

Along the way, Kelab interacts with other Neolithic people, including an old man, Ditob (Franco Nero), and his daughter Mitar (Violetta Schurawlow), in their sparsely populated valley. Can Kelab survive the harsh elements to exact revenge and take back his sacred Tineka?

Iceman was inspired by Ötzi the Iceman. In 1991, Alpine hikers discovered a mummified body partially frozen in ice. Shockingly, scientists dated its age to somewhere between 3400 and 3100 BC. The adult male was so well preserved that scientists were able to determine precisely what he ate in the days before he died. Most intriguingly, they discovered his cause of death was an arrow impaled in his back, compounded by other injuries.

It's impossible to say for certain who this man was and the larger circumstances leading to his death, but evidence gathered from his corpse informs Iceman in a credible and convincing way. Scientists identified blood from at least four other people on his weapons and clothing, so we know he was involved in a violent struggle. The film is so authentic its characters even speak an early version of Rhaetic, a language related to Etruscan and spoken by pre-Indo Europeans living in that region.

Like Alpha (2018), Iceman has great cinematography, was shot in beautiful and sweeping landscapes, and tries to authentically re-create prehistoric culture. Unlike Alpha, however, Iceman has a realistic story. When one man falls from a sheer cliff, he breaks his back instead of being conveniently saved by ridiculously improbable circumstances.

But for all its good qualities, Iceman left something to be desired. The 1981 French film Quest for Fire, in which the the dialog is also spoken in a prehistoric language, benefited from rich interactions between the characters. In contrast, Iceman was oddly solipsistic. Interactions between characters were kept at a bare minimum. I expected much more, particularly when it came to Kelab and his encounters with other humans. I'm not an anthropologist, but I'm pretty sure we were able to communicate and express emotions other than anger back then.

Iceman was generally praised by critics, but left audiences shrugging their shoulders. It currently has an audience favorability rating of 54% on RottenTomatoes. I probably would've had the same reaction if I didn't love historically authentic films. For me, seeing this primitive man's world come to life more than made up for Iceman's deficiencies.