Freigesprochen (in English: Free to Leave) is an Austrian movie I watched yesterday. It had very good chances to be a good one, as it’s based on a play by Ödön von Horvath and I knew and liked most of the main cast. Well, it’s crap anyway.

It looks and feels like a movie from someone who decided that they are going to make art and why not a movie? A film can be art, should be art but still art that entertains (as should be a book, a painting or Christo‘s wrappings). Usually, something goes wrong when people decide that they will make art. Not “I want to make a movie because I love them, I find them interesting and I think that I can add something to the world which may or may not be art-y”, no, they decide “I want to make art, I don’t care how”. And the result is a movie with a really good cast (I especially loved Alfred Dorfer [he’s one of the most famous comedians in Austria]) which spends most of its time in silence, looking out a window, over a lake, at each other and then out the window again.
I don’t need to have things happen all of the time or people talking all of the time to enjoy a movie. But when nothing happens, nobody talks and the magic spark that keeps a movie alive otherwise is missing, I’m just plain bored.

I haven’t read the play but I can imagine that it’s very good. So, I’d recommend everyone to have a look at the play (Judgment Day) and pretend that this movie never existed.