Donau, Duna, Dunaj, Dunav, Dunarea

I saw that film here in Germany at a film festival. It's a pointless mishmash of would-be characterisations, hinted-at back stories, and childish play with symbolisms and metaphors. It succeeds at creating a sort of heavy summer-dream atmosphere - but what use is that without an actual story. Fittingly, the actors act their characters like they are figments of a dream, lifeless and without motivation - doing that they are probably just acting in self-defence, because they, too, apparently couldn't find any point in the script.

As a "dream", the film with its proto-characters and its atmosphere might have been a decent short film, but it's at least 60 minutes too long for that - 60 minutes you could easily have cut from the film without hurting either the atmosphere or the would-be story.

"Donau, Duna, Dunaj, Dunav, Dunarea" - like most German art house films, unfortunately - is pretentious to the n-th degree. It tries to convince the audience that it is high art, but it isn't. It's not even a film.

A beautiful movie about Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung, Donau flows gently yet inexorably towards its ending. As the characters move on and off a ship on the river, they explore the losses of their own pasts and learn to reconnect with them. The narrator explores the nature of time and the nature of the river, asking us to reexamine what we ourselves have left behind.

This is not a dark movie, nor a silly one. It is a movie that allows you to travel with it for a time, that will stick in your memory for weeks afterward. Rebic is kind enough to let you take what you want from the movie.

Also interesting is the variety of placement included. Although all the characters speak in German, one is Serbian, one Hungarian, one Romanian, and so on - and they have lovely accents. There are breathtaking shots of the shores and mountains in each country along the river, in particular some heartbreaking shots in the Balkan states. I find this especially relevant for people here who know so little about this region.