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As the laws of nature dictate, any film in German featuring an overweight
retired miner and his accordion is either very bad or very artistic.
Schultze Gets the Blues is very artistic. It's one of those films
where every edit is over ten seconds long and composed as if it were a
photograph, the actors just happening to walk into the frame as the
photographer adjusts his exposure time. It's the sort of thing that would get
rather dull after the first half hour if there weren't some intricate and
momentous plot, and the plot, in all it's intricacies and momentousness can
be recounted thus: Schultze retires, Schultze's taste in accordion music
changes, Schultze goes to Louisiana. Considering this apparently compelling
empirical evidence that I shouldn't enjoy the film, I initially found it
rather strange that I enjoyed it very much.
Just what it is about watching an awkward German man's misadventures that
appeals so profoundly to the human soul is a mystery, but you can rest
assured that if the documentation of awkward German men were an age old art,
Schultze Gets the Blues would be a revolutionary breakthrough, and
perhaps even necessitate some sort of modernizing prefix to be appended to
the phrase, like Documentation of Awkward German Men Nouveau, or
Neo-Documentation of Awkward German Men. Regardless of the specifics of the
nomenclature, the filmmakers were obviously masters in this obscure field,
and one only hopes that their trend will be continued in such a way as to
honor them as they deserve.
It is inevitable, unfortunately, that there are those to whom the
prospect of watching an hour and twenty minutes of excruciating artiness
isn't appealing. To those people I say: Shame on you. It's the likes of you
that brings about all evil in the world, and you would do well to submit
yourself to the appropriate indoctrination, which can be rented, for a small
fee, at your local video store. Make haste, however, for the revolution
has not the convenience of pity.
"There is not enough context here for me to guess what this
says."
---Some Greatmind
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