THE INHERITORS
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Stratosphere Entertainment Director: Stefan Ruzowitzky Writer: Stefan Ruzowitzky Cast: Julia Gschnitzer, Elisabeth Orth, Tilo Pruckner, Sophie Rois, Lars Rudolph, Simon Schwarz, Ulrich Wildgruber
A spirited, Karl Marx-inspired ode to bauer-power, "The Inheritors" answers the question, just what happens to land once it's divided up among the poor peasants who farmed it? While the answer is as varied as the reformers who order the partitions--different for Guatemalans under Arbenz and for Cubans under Castro--the apportionment in writer-director Stefan Ruzowitzsky's vision is at once hilarious, zestful, and melodramatic. "The Inheritors" succeeds wonderfully because it takes a topic that could have been as dry as a graduate lecture in political science, informing it with lustful humor, vivid characterizations, and lovely shots of the Austrian countryside. Ruzowitzky filmed the movie with a determination to avoid the "trash sentimentality" in works like "The Sound of Music" and the "kitsch tales of a farmer's endeavors to preserve the land so that he might feed his family or with sentimental tales of royalty."
The story opens on a large farm in Austria during the 1930s owned by a meanspirited grower. His will is enforced by a leathery overseer who uses brute force to keep the landless peasants in line. When the farmer is found murdered, the town expects the land to be handed over to the church, the usual procedure when such a man is childless. Instead, the farmer's scathing and rollicking will--which bequeaths to at least one of the townspeople "a bucket of manure"--hands the land over to the seven peasants who have had nothing at all their lives. Not that the farmer had grown soft. His intention, clearly stated in the endowment, is to have the new owners fight among themselves, even kill one another, in their greed to own the entire plot. What does occur, shocks not only the local farmers (who fear uprisings among their own peasants should the experiment succeed) and the church (which backs the propertied class and considers it a sin for the landless to become their own masters), but the newly enfranchised themselves. They take up their new responsibilities with vigor and a renewed sense of cooperation, standing firm against the old-line farmers determined to crush the Marxist-like experiment. Here is a classic case of class struggle, the clergy and landed against the shirtless ones. The film is aptly entitled "Die Siebtelbauern," meaning the one-seventh farmers.
Two characters give the story its energy and audience interest. One is Lukas (Simon Schwarz), an orphan who, like Oedipus, is shocked and moved when he unearths the secret of his birth. The other is Emmy (Sophie Rois), a hot- tempered, liberated woman who submits happily to the seductions of the handsome Lukas while emerging as the fiery leader of the siebtelbauern. She becomes noted for such contemporary ideas as "make your own coffee" and the notion that life holds more promise than what has been offered to her gender by those in power. "You work for someone, you get all men to hump you, and then you die," sounds a note about the nature of the feminine condition at the time. She fearlessly puts down her vociferous opponents in the town with comments like "those who have big mouths have small cocks." Director Ruzowitzky takes us on a journey of discovery that lifts her and her six comrades into a new orb.
Like any radical change, the transformation is not without perils. Photographer Peter Von Haller captures the intensity of the hazards--the fiery destruction of some of the group's quarters, the liquidation of a cow, the chase after one of the heroes who has a reward posted on his head. Backed by an appropriate strain of Erik Satie's music, "The Inheritors" is swiftly-paced and unsentimental, a work of genuine integrity. The film received the award for best picture at this year's Rotterdam Film Festival and played at the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center.
Not Rated. Running Time: 90 minutes.(C) 1998 Harvey Karten
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