Am Ende der Kette

In Estonian cinema there is definitely no shortage of gifted cinematographers, great actors and talented musicians to compose awesome film scores. There seems to be couple of competent enough young directors besides two-three already established great ones, but there is great void of good (screen)writers. 'The End of the Chain' is another good example - good acting, beautiful cinematography, awesome soundtrack, some scenes are well staged, and there are even some sort of message in the sloppy screenplay. There are too much air between those tight scenes and all the happenings and characters are not very well tied together leaving the film sketchy and incomplete. The ideas of loneliness, desperation and burnout are not used as tools to play with to build a story, but rather just spurted out with one sentence by some of the characters. They are not even used to create witty (pseudo)philosophical conversations. The criticism towards the current situation of society is so blatantly in your face that it isn't even funny. Most of these characters feel very sketchy and stereotypical.

The film had its moments, but overall it is nothing special to spend your hour and half on. I know Estonian filmmakers don't have big budgets to use, that's why the creative and well written screenplays should be the foundation of Estonian movies.