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.

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.

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.

Salmonberries is a beautiful film that is set in one of the harshest environments on Earth, in Kotzebue, Alaska. The story reveals many deep layers that overlap and entwine, and discovering those layers is powerfully insightful. I know I will never forget the characters of this film: Butch, Roswitha and Kotz. Getting by in such an environment would be incredibly difficult – the wind and the cold being the main factors. People are forced to live closely side-by-side simply for survival. Bingo Chuck represents all that could be wrong or unpleasant in such an environment. Butch represents that all obstacles and unpleasantness can be risen above to find one's own Nirvana, and he does so stunningly. One of the most beautiful films I have ever seen and I am so thankful to the Adlon family for their touching and honest perceptions, their tender ability to see the beautiful and the destructive and to offer it as Salmonberries. And many thanks to Conrad Gonzales.