Heimatland

The more literal translation of the original title of WONDERLAND is "Homeland", and it would have given a better idea of what this movie is really about.

A mysterious and ominous cloud starts to grow inside the Swiss border, eventually covering the entire country and portending a deadly and devastating hurricane the likes of which has never been seen before. Against this backdrop, the film traces the stories of various individuals as a way of critiquing Swiss society.

First, the positives: the concept itself is not bad, and having evidently different directors handling intermingling story threads is innovative. Though natural disasters have been used before as a backdrop for at least some social commentary in cinema, the singular focus on that aspect makes this movie somewhat unique in that regard. The cinematography is at least in some parts quite good, as is the acting.

Unfortunately, the film does several things which are bound to turn off much of the audience. Foremost among these is the kind of bait-and-switch it pulls: we never see the disaster because the movie ends before it occurs, and the fact that not even an explanation is offered for why it happens betrays that the storm is but the flimsiest excuse to make a cinematic critique of Swiss society.

Another problem is that most of the individual stories are not all that compelling. In part, that may be because the film tries to cover too much: it touches upon themes of the elites trying to look out for themselves at the expense of ordinary citizens, xenophobia and rising fascism, the isolation and possible neglect of the elderly, the social disaffectation of the youth, the superficiality of personal relationships and the dangers of bottling up one's emotions in a society that has a reputation for running literally like clock-work.

In that running time, even without depicting the actual disaster, these themes can only be treated in so much depth, and it is quite possible that the human interest aspect of the stories suffered for it (The ones I found the most interesting were those of the cab driver and the police woman).

An air of collective guilt suffuses the atmosphere of the entire movie every bit as the impending storm does, and at one point it is even explicitly suggested that the storm may be long-overdue punishment for the Swiss. The self-flagellation becomes at times a bit much, overtaking any ostensible concern for the fate of the characters due to the coming catastrophe. It also makes me wonder how to reconcile this with various studies which claim that the Swiss are among the happiest folks in the world.

I thought the abrupt non-ending ending was a really poor way to finish the film. Even disregarding that the film fails to deliver on its promise of a natural disaster, it leaves several story threads unsatisfactorily dangling. More importantly, even devoting a small amount of time to the storm could have offered an opportunity for the redemption of at least some of the characters, so that we could have a little inspiration and not just self-righteous finger-pointing sans resolution.

Despite being slow sometimes (it may have been the reason for so many bad rating for this nice film), this is a very innovative and clever film from Switzerland. Indeed, it is a movie that criticizes the country's comfortable place and widespread cynical positions throughout history until nowadays. Besides the social political issues, it is also an interesting film in the way it has been conceived and organized: made by ten different directors, it does not show the bizarre upcoming storm that will devastate Switzerland (an no other place!) from a single perspective, but showing several interesting characters, such as a couple in crisis, a football ultra who supports Young Boys, a Croatian cab driver, his family and a rich passenger, a manager of a supermarket dealing with chaos due the fear of shortage, a mother and her daughter, followers of a fascist agitator, a policewoman with a taint in her recent past, a worker in an insurance company, an old woman who lives alone, and so forth. The flaw in the film, more serious than an initial sluggish pace, is that, among these various parallel stories (some o them quite violent), not all of them are well developed and some of them have confusing or non-existent ends.

Dark moody and no fun it makes me wonder if any Swiss are happy. I wish I could take my time back and suggest you avoid this one.

Ten people directed this snoozefest. No explenation of why the storm is there (CERN maybe?). Characters seem totally uninterested in the whole ordeal. We don't know what happens when the storm hits and by the time it does hit (which we don't see) the movie ended and I didn't care anymore. Maybe the storm is there to get rid of Switzerland for being such a boring country, who the hell knows at this point.

I thought the premise had promise at first. Switzerland is experiencing a natural disaster which threatens the entire country, all at once. How do different factions of society cope? The film has multiple plot threads which reflect various parts of Swiss society, but the involvement of multiple directors results in zero plot cohesion. This, combined with the abrupt ending prior to the storm actually hitting, means we don't really learn anything about Swiss society at all. Natural disasters as a framing device for social commentary can work well, but the director has to take an editorial view. This movie ultimately doesn't really say anything, other than possibly pointing out the drawbacks of not being an EU member.