Schultze Gets the Blues

I loved this movie. First of all there's the surface. Schultze is just so goddammed lovable. He pulls you in. Then there are the layers. And there are so many.

The juxtapositions. Schultze riding his bicycle on one side of the screen and the dirt bikers buzzing over the top of slag heaps on the other. His small garden house, a little Eden, overshadowed, of course, by a very large and nearly ancient slag heap.

Then the odd wanderlust. The woman at his mother's nursing home who insists she's French despite the fact that she's in a nursing home in East Germany. Followed by his sojourn to Louisiana, which insists on being French despite the fact that it's in America. Did he go there looking for her?

Then the premonitions. Early on a brief sound bite on the radio about lung cancer. Then near the end, he's offered a meal of crabs in the bayou. "Ja, Krebs," he says. Krebs means cancer in German. And he was a miner, so worked every day breathing radon. Did he have cancer?

And of course the music. An accordionist who plays the local polka, he picks up zydeco by ear and loves it. But his fellow Germans don't like it, and they're even less interested in the US. In fact he stops playing after he gets to America. They want polka even more than the Germans do, albeit a strange American kind that includes yodeling.

Then the unspoken. So much of this story is told by pictures, not dialog. It's a subtlety that Hollywood has completely lost touch with. It's so refreshing to see it again.

This movie is a delight. I defy anyone to dislike it. There's something of An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge in it, but it's not quite that facile.

It's a quiet tour de force. I want more.

This movie takes its time to develop. In more than one respect it reminded me of a Kaurismäki film. The landscape is depressing, the colors are not very bright, the shots are long and there is not much dialogue. And people seem only to come alive (whether it's in Germany or the US) when they're making music. There are moments of comedy but not many. Instead, you get to watch "everyday life" for a long time before something happens. And when it happens, it's not a dramatic turn or twist . . . It does not incite the characters to change completely . . . There is just a small change.

When you put all of this together, you get a very touching tale of humanity. A tale of friendship and loneliness. I think the characters are portrayed in a very life-like fashion (for example, when the loner Schultze travels to the US he is no more capable of socially connecting with people than he was in his hometown). You have to be patient with the story because there is no classic structure (exposition, story development, climax) . . . but I got really attached to the characters. There is a lot of loneliness in this film. But this is what makes it so attractive.

First things first: You will need a lot of patience while watching "Schultze gets the blues". There are no dramatic scenes, no sensational turns or something that blows you out of your seat. Instead, the film develops slowly, working merely with pictures than with dialogues. And this is what it's all about: the boredom of retirement, the concealed longing for something new and the desperate hope of getting the "blues". Schultze, the main actor,tries to seek it by playing a tune he heard on the radio on his accordion, which leads him from Sachsen-Anhalt (in the former East Germany, DDR) to a music festival in Texas. This film is definitely worth watching, although it won't satisfy your desire for action or a surprising plot.

Sehr gut! This wonderful slice of life and comment on Thoreau's observation of people "living lives of quiet desperation," is so well done, it leaves me reflecting on it long after having seen it. Schultzie, a retired miner, who plays the accordion and hangs out with his at-loose-ends friends, hears some zydeco one night on the radio and starts to play it. He doesn't even know the name of the tune and certainly has no cultural connections with the music but he plays after hearing it once and extends his experience playing polkas to incorporate this new rhythm and beat into his playing. He does it with such a nonchalance and earnest commitment that he even takes him by surprise. The scene where he plays his new found music with his fellow burghers is amazing. His friends rally to his support while the more traditionalists object to this "nigger music." The whole film is a series of embroidered vignettes of still shots which are pasted on the wall with the characters moving slowly across them. The pace is slow and there are lots of gaps but that only adds to the charm of this delightful little film. It is full of sentiment without becoming sentimental, poignant but never maudlin and lingers long in the memory.

I saw this movie last night, and I was blown away. It is a very simple film, with stunning visuals, and ironic, understated, and appropriate dialog. Schultze, the main character, is a quiet, lonely, aging German man. Horst Krause played the part amazingly honestly. I never once felt like any of the characters were acting, especially Schultze. The writer and director, Michael Schorr, enables the viewer to feel Schultze's emotions and to care for him without ever really trying. It was almost as if I was seeing the world through Schultze's eyes, and feeling emotions through him, rather than being told what he was feeling, or being shown what he was seeing. This film is also a great comparison of American and German culture. It was interesting as an American to see my home portrayed from a German point of view, and I believe this film gives a uniquely appropriate portrayal of German life as well. This film is one of the best I have ever seen. It made me feel a range of emotions, it dazzled my ears with Zydeco music, and most of all, it made me truly care. I left the theater with an amazing feeling, like I had just had a experienced something truly special. I cannot believe this is Michael Schorr's first feature film. It was truly perfect.