The Forest for the Trees

An abomination aesthetically. Too rushed and maybe too bleak for its own good. But poignantly well observed and brilliantly acted. In the end I just wanted to run away.

perhaps the most painful movie i've ever watched. nearly had to stop it.

A painful character study of a failed teacher and sad creeper. There's a lot to like about the film's acting and direction, though the film seems distinctly amateur, not only in the cinematography but in smaller details, such as when at 56 minutes in we see a girl down a hallway towards the camera, only to be implausibly walking down another hallway thirty seconds later.

Not very pretty and something makes the same point a bit too often, but Maren Ade is the best director of actors out there. Incredible how observant she is - every little gesture, every little turn of phrase, has meaning.

Ade engagiert sich immer mit einer Frage über die Beziehungen der Menschen bis zum tiefsten Punkt. Hier untersucht sie den Begriff der "Einsamkeit" und verlängert ihre Dauer bis zum Ende um ihre Essenz darstellen zu können. Obwohl der Charakter der Lehrerin manchmal sehr peinlich und störend scheint, ist dieser Film sehr erfolgreich da die Regisseurin die Mittel des Films sehr sparsam und konzentriert benutzt um eine menschliche Essenz zu destillieren.

Sometimes painful to watch.

Yes, it's visually awful in that early digital post-Dogme95 type of way (although not necessarily worse than early Swanberg for example), but it might be even more well-observed that Everyone Else in it's own way. Ade manages to make Melanie both cringe-inducingly awkward but sympathetic at the same time. Despite the aesthetic limitations, the film is otherwise actually structurally well put together (aside from maybe the ending that strains for a poeticism that it can't quite pull off).