FREE ON CINEGEEK.DE Thomas Arslan - Gold 

From our former colleague Thomas Groh: No Emphase: The Nugget, torn from the river, lies on one hand, admired by a group of pioneers. No and therefore not this word - gold. There lies, in the north of America of the late 19th century, also a promise: The prospect of escaping the most cramped and miserable conditions (an accommodation in New York is once described: four people, a room, dark, moisture and cold gnaw at health) - provided one masters the strains that lurk between the young urban centers and the gold deposits in inhospitable area. Thus, Thomas Arslan's Post-Berlin School Western is also home to a group of German migrants who follow the call of gold, more precisely: the advertisement of a windy travel guide, which offers the prospect of a less strenuous passage to new wealth at a low price. No emphasis: The nugget, torn from the stream, lies on one hand, admired by a group of pioneers. No and therefore not this word - gold. There lies, in the north of America of the late 19th century, also a promise: The prospect of escaping the most cramped and miserable conditions (an accommodation in New York is once described: four people, a room, dark, moisture and cold gnaw at health) - provided one masters the strains that lurk between the young urban centers and the gold deposits in inhospitable area. Thus, Thomas Arslan's Post-Berlin School Western is also home to a group of German migrants who follow the call of gold, more precisely: the advertisement of a windy travel guide, which offers the prospect of a less strenuous passage to new wealth at a low price. Basically: A history of migrants, a story of how people, despite all the risks to life and limb, set out for a foreign country, put themselves in the hands of an opaque smuggler who offers a security for his route for which he cannot guarantee. Only that this time the migrants are Germans - from Bremen and Hanover, snarling and snaringly snaring and old Prussian arrogant in the appearance of journalist Müller (Uwe Bohm), North German brittle - as always - Nina Hoss as a maid, who - under the sharp eyes of an old cook - sets out for the far north without a male companion. I remember Thomas Arslan's documentary "From afar", which was shown at the Berlinale Forum in 2006, especially the breathtakingly massive landscape shots from the interior of Turkey. In "Gold" an echo sounds from the same distance when Arslan lets his visibly decimated ensemble of figures ride through vast, sparse landscapes that are not at all pathetic in their threatening nature. In addition, border-psychedelic guitar playing - Neil Young's soundtrack is not completely dissimilar to "Dead Man". The magic of demarcation - 1500 kilometres of wilderness to cross. The aesthetically deficient, the meager, especially the gestelzte in dialogue usually associated with the "Berlin School" labelled films, enters into a dialogue with American film history: Arslan does not avoid the standard situations of the genre - even a bounty hunter with a black coat appears. The skeleton of the genre is exposed in front of a bombastic backdrop - filmed on location in Canada: The obligatory showdown on the main street of a settlement in the middle of nowhere literally takes place in a few shots. In its best moments, the film frees itself from the obligation to tell and approaches a brittle psychedelic: Marko Mandic (who has finally become the most exciting face among the young German film actors with this film) and Nina Hoss ride for minutes in complete exhaustion through a landscape as magical as people-rejecting. Once a black wanderer walks through the camp of the migrant group, looking after him with open mouths, and was no longer seen. Again and again, out of nowhere, Indians show the way for some money. In the German 19th century, what has not been invented by magical beings, moonlit magic landscapes, natural beauty and world spirits - on the threshold of the 20th century these German migrants travel through such landscapes and perish in them. (Source: https://www.perlentaucher.de/berlinale-blog/317_post-berliner-schule-we…)