I love this movie so much

Please don't spend money on this.

Highly Overrated But Still Good

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

When I read the abstract I was intrigued and when I watched it I was astonished by the beautiful scenery and the story and the fact that at some points it felt hallucinating. It also has a very grim aspect, especially at one point in the movie, and that's why I gave it a nine. I don't mind grim, but during the scenes I mean, it didn't feel right. On the other hand it did. As a matter of fact it's similar to the experience of the main character. It's not all that clear and at the same time it's extremely clear. I love that about this movie. This movie might be depressing to others but to me it was uplifting to see that the story goes on, regardless of time, place & presence.

The best word to describe this film is "pretentious". That means that it is giving itself airs, claiming to say something important that we lesser mortals have not yet appreciated, and, in so doing, boring us to bits. (POSSIBILITY OF SPOILERS) I understood the film in the following way: the invisible wall is just a way of telling us that the woman had made the decision to cut herself off from the rest of humankind so that whenever she seemed to be wanting to approach someone her inner fear sprang up to restrain her. She has chosen to live alone, having marked out a large swathe of beautiful barely inhabited highland country wherein to live and have her being. She doesn't want to die. Even though she is intensely depressive, and very boring to watch and listen to her low-pitched whine, she gets to know the local animals and is pretty good at keeping herself alive. She bonds with a dog. She apparently has some isolationist experiences which may be valuable for her mental state, though they sound weird or trite to the ordinary viewer. But everything she offers is manna from heaven for art-house patrons and the superior sort of film critic, who would probably quite enjoy watching paint dry. This is similar to that, but it is better in that the countryside and the photography are lovely and worse than that in that there is the additional element of the miserably depressed woman. The couple who bring her to her cottage play ghastly pop music very loudly in their car, presumably a ham-fisted way of telling us, perhaps through her perception, how boorish they (or all other humans) are. Whether we see it as catharsis or denouement or, as I do, merely as confirmation of her hatred of mankind, we see in the final moments of the film that the one human who somehow manages to penetrate the wall is cruel and vicious and the woman, whose hatred of mankind may be seen as being responsible for creating this figure in her world, expresses that hatred and takes her revenge by being extremely nasty to him. End of story. Yawn yawn.

My first instinct after Die Wand had finished was to dismiss it as self-indulgent rubbish and give it a 3/10, whereas halfway through I was nicely into it where it probably deserved a 7. So halfway-house it is then.What went wrong? After the mysterious setup of the invisible wall, and two excellent early scenes involving frozen neighbours and a car, the story winds down into solipsistic musing about the oneness of nature, which can be quite interesting. A monologue describing how the forest's thoughts are becoming one with her own was profound, putting into words something some of us may have felt from time to time.Near the end there is a disappointing dramatic incident which feels contrived, and even then the story syncs back into its stoic pace: ultimately leaving us entirely underwhelmed. It must also be said that we (watching together with my partner) needed 3 evenings to get through the whole film, having had to break it up into three shorter parts as we always fell sleepy. Regarding characterisation, it's typical of modern melancholic German drama: stark, sparse, stoic and frankly too monotone for the viewer to achieve much sentimental connection. Recommended if:you appreciate landscape cinematography filmed in the still-picture style. Almost every picture is a keeper.you are interested in an oblique story about a woman's necessary connection with animals and nature, away from everything else. you enjoy a really slow pace, with many long scenes where literally nothing happens other than inviting the viewer to soak up the atmosphere.you prefer to objectively identify a film's strengths rather than subjectively enjoy the ride.you have trouble getting to sleep.Not recommended if:you're tired of bland characterisation and dull pacing in German film.you're expecting a sci-fi/supernatural mystery.you like some kind of real-world explanation.you prefer the camera work to offer more variety than the still-picture style.you don't enjoy encrypting metaphor.

I haven't seen a foreign-(I'd say)low budget movie in a long time. This one was, in short words, interesting (or, maybe, I just missed a fantasy movie).The scenery was beautiful indeed and there's no point in writing more about it since other reviewers already did.The acting was OK in my opinion. But there's not much to say here either since there was only one actor who appeared through the entire movie.The story began in a modern manner, with a scene from the present followed by a scene from the past (how it all began). I didn't particularly appreciate the beginning, but moving on. I liked some details, like that moment when the main character attempted to pet the dog, but quickly drew her hand back because of the reaction of the animal. But after she found herself trapped in that bubble, she quickly became best friends with the dog named Luchs.I didn't like the length of some scenes. I understood that they're there to allow the viewer to reflect on the acts and thoughts of the woman, but I would've just cut off at least a few seconds.The movie also contained some violent scenes like the one when the dog is killed. They were so contrastable with the peace and beauty of the place.What I really liked in this movie was the balanced, rational, peaceful way that woman chose to deal with her situation. I thought that she is an introvert and I appreciated that she admitted her fears and emotions in her improvised diary. (But as a cat fan I really hated her for letting her white cat out on a dangerous night that killed her) The ending left me confused as I didn't expect it. I thought that they'd reveal something about that "wall". I understood that it was about meaning, possibilities, unknown, but I would've given them more points for creativity if the ending was different (but here's probably not so much their "fault" as much as the author's "fault").The entire movie was peaceful, deliberate, only at times the silence was disturbed by some events like the car crush, the mysterious man, the hunting. I could think of many meanings, even some that probably had nothing to do with the author's intentions, like the whole wall is a symbol for extreme introversion, or for autism.To sum up, it was an interesting movie to watch, but many of us might find it boring. I guess you just need the right mood for it. I do believe that there are many other better movies with such a subject to watch. Call me superficial but this one did not make me raise as many discussions and thoughts about life and human nature as other movies (and I'll give as an example another recent foreign movie: The Broken Circle Breakdown (but that movie has a completely different subject though).