Salmonberries

I'll watch anything with k.d. lang in it, but this movie is remarkable for much more than its star. Every part of the movie is exquisite -- the cinematography is incredible, the acting is intense, the music is powerful, and so on. Each character is beautifully developed as far as necessary for the story. I can't even find further words for this movie. I have seen a lot of movies, and to date there are only two I really believe in. This is one of them.

A sort of mix of 'Bagdad Café' and 'Three Women' set in Alaska. k.d. lang plays an androgynous miner who falls in love with a straight, private, local German librarian. They both have muddy, tragic pasts that slowly emerge.

There are some deeply moving moments, and some wonderful slightly magical realist touches. The cinematography is very good. But while lang does a decent job, I can't help thinking a stronger, more experienced actress could have brought out even more in this amazing role.

That said, I did enjoy this much more on a second viewing. While it bothered me that it felt at times like Adlon was trying to re-create the magic of 'Bagdad Café' (odd, surreal setting, quirky out of place characters, cinematography that uses color in exaggerated ways for effect, etc.) overall I found myself more able to just let go and accept this tale on its own merits. And doing that, it made me smile.

There is a dream sequence in the movie, a concert given by Chuck Connors, where he runs through a transparent foil on which is written "Germany". Kotzebue is named, as we hear from the lesson hold by Rosel Zech in her library, after the German August Von Kotzebue. And then there is Roswitha herself, living since 21 years in this icy asylum, escaped from the German Democratic Republic, cheated by her brother, her husband killed. The West would not have been an alternative, it had to be the land of the Eskimos that had been settled since the early 18th century mostly be the missionaries of Herrnhut, Germany. "Alaska is my home", Roswitha says later.

There is an outer and an inner story in this movie. The outer story is the extraordinary and partly one-sided friendship by an androgynous native and the German librarian. This story is, frankly, mediocre. But much more important, it seems at least to me, is the inner story: Imagine you are 21 years exiled in Alaska and now you have suddenly the chance to fly to Berlin, your home-town, and exactly at the time when the East German Wall falls which kept you exiled for such a long time. When outer things collapse, then there is always the problem how your inner reacts, how you hold it back from also collapsing. I think this is what this movie is really about, and I also think that this is the reason, why the climax, the landing of the machine of Alaskan Airlines in Tempelhof, is prepared by the stunning beauty of the remote landscape of the former Air Force Station at the Arctic Sea. As long you are in asylum, you represent this asylum and if it be only for you alone. This is why Alaska is Germany, and, as we heard, not only for Roswitha. If you are not convinced that I am right, ask yourself about this short scene with the tightrope walker, or have you missed it? Shortly after the landing of "Kotz" and Roswitha in Berlin. - Nietzsche, Zarathustra, chapter 6, correct.

After clearing away all the acting and plot lines and cinematography and scripts, what I want to see in a movie is something that makes me sit up an take notice. Something that opens my eyes and my mind to some new previously-unperceived reality. Salmonberries does this in a powerful way. Salmonberries transports you to a place where you have never been, to a culture you have never known, and opens the hearts and souls of people you have never known, and lays it bare. See this film.

The story of the film is not something to write home about; but its direction and editing makes you take note of the mastery of techniques in both the fields.

Take the example of the character of Roswitha's German brother: we are told he is deaf. Yet he speaks; literally and more with his nervous hands, his mournful attentive stance, they all speak volumes. It is not acting you spot but the deft, confident direction.

k d lang's theme song "Barefoot" is haunting and the more you hear it, it grows on you. But her performance did not evoke much response in me. I do not consider her performance to be great by any standards.

However Rosel Zech as Roswitha is pleasure to watch as she blooms from a cold person to a warm personality in the course of the film. Zech and Adlon have contributed much to the film as did Conrad Gonzales' editing. Gonzales and Adlon together have made electricity come alive on celluloid--electricity goes off during crucial scenes, electric neon lights buzz, electric surges in voltages create capture enigmatic scenes as still life...

Adlon's exteriors are predictably white; his interiors are dark, both in Alaska and in Germany. But there are brief moments when the dark interiors become white like a ritual, in a baptism of sorts.

Adlon's choice of actors intrigued me including the casting of Chuck Connors and k d lang. Why did he choose to make this film? What was the basis of the "salmonberries" storyline? Was it a book? It reminded me of Kurosawa making "Derzu Uzala" in old USSR. Both movies asked questions about roots of characters. Only Kurosawa was much better of the two. This is my first Adlon film but he has made me take note of a very distinct style of direction that cannot be ignored. Hollywood could learn a thing or two from this film which is so close to pristine European cinema.