Autumn Blood (Austria)

Log onto www.imdb.com and search for Autumn Blood – well, lemme save you the trouble - http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085752/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1.  Notice the roles against each member of the cast.  It gets as simple as that to make a movie right? The Girl, The Boy, The Butcher, The Mayor, The Hunter, The Friend, The Social Worker – how cool is that!!!! Who needs names right?

And if that doesn’t surprise you, then get a load of this.  20 minutes into the movie and we have 4 gun shots, 1 death, a little bit of laughter amongst a brother and sister, some incoherent mumbling from a distance, a church sermon that is incidental and not relevant to the plot and then the first dialogue. You have to wait for at least 15 more minutes before the next dialogue.

The first instance of a proper conversation is over 45 minutes into the movie.  Why then would a person stick around for so long with a movie like this?  It is slow and doesn’t have any dialogue.  But go back to your school and remember what your art teacher told you, “A picture paints a thousand words”.  Markus Blunder (the director) took that quite seriously and has used moving image instead of still life.

The Girl (Sophie Lowe) and The Boy (Maximilian Harnisch) are left orphaned after their parents are killed within a couple of days of each other. A few village goons - The Butcher (Gustaf Skarsgård), The Hunter (Samuel Vauramo) and The Friend (Tim Morten Uhlenbrock) – take the opportunity to try and molest The Girl.  While the girl is unable to protect herself the first time around, she and her brother drive themselves into a shell and manage to avoid any further occurances.

Imagine the difficulty that the cast would have gone through, to portray each of their roles without speaking a word more often than not.  Full credit to the entire ensemble that includes Peter Stormare (http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0001780/?ref_=tt_cl_t2) as The Mayor – who is coincidentally The Hunter’s father (or so I deduced).

It takes a lot of courage to conceptualise a story like this and more to execute it to perfection.  The attempt in itself makes the movie worth watching.  Of course, it is slow and takes a while to unravel itself.  But you have to be patient for an idea that is so unique and so well done.  The imagery is stunning and the use of music simply brilliant.  It took some patience for about 20 minutes but at the end, it was worth the patience.  7.5 on 10.  Check it out if you can.

Watch the trailer on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js0G0jWNhfY