“Man cries out from the depths of his soul; the whole age becomes a single, penetrating cry. Art also cries out, in the deep darkness, cries out for help, cries out for the spirit. This is expressionism.” That’s the Austrian playwright Hermann Bahr wrote: about the emerging and ever-evolving art movement known as expressionism (and later post-expressionism), not only in painting but also in the great silent horror films. In many ways this art was a response to war.
During and after the First World War, a variety of new aesthetics emerged to reflect the enormous changes and horrors in Europe. Hinterland (or Home front), an excellent film available today, October 7, on digital platforms and Video On Demand, reflects that period outside the trenches better than almost any other film in decades. In one scene, as a group of artists and theorists fiercely debate the new trends and declare themselves anarchist, a character says, “Communists, at best. Futurists, Dadaists, everyone is an-ist these days.”
The sheer amount of artistic movements that took place around World War I is a testament to how much was going on in Europe at the time, and Hinterland masterfully describes the malaise, suffering and hopelessness that produced great expressionist art, art that ‘cries out for the spirit’. Hinterland yells too.
Stefan Ruzowitzky recreates post-war Austria in the hinterland
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Hinterland is directed by Stefan Ruzowitzkywho won the Oscar for Best International Feature Film for The forgers. Like that film, much of Ruzowitsky’s filmography focuses on war, explicit or tangential, but Hinterland arguably his most exciting achievement to date. Filmed with a great deal of bluescreen technology, Ruzowitzky recreates 1920s Austria through the lens of expressionist art. The past is a memory and history is subjective, so it’s almost fairer to see post-war Austria playing out in a digital haze than an expensive Spielbergian recreation of a city.
Hinterland follows Lieutenant Peter Perg as he and other soldiers return home after two grueling years of holding prisoners of war. When they left to fight in World War I, they swore allegiance to a monarchy and defend an empire; when they returned, that mighty Austro-Hungarian Empire had been reduced to a small, smoldering republic. Perg had fought for an empire that no longer existed and returned to a decomposed house.
He and his fellow soldiers are treated horribly on the streets of Vienna, which is littered with wet garbage and overflowing with people. In Ruzowitzky’s digital metropolis, which is part seven and share dark city, buildings are as skewed as the camera angles, and life is eternally gray. Smoke rises into the industrial distance, lingers in the air and obscures the sun. War-wounded soldiers stumble on crutches or beg on the sidewalks, and dirty children with no parents or home run through alleyways.
Hinterland and the horrors of war
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Perg’s wife and daughter never expected to return home (like the million other Austro-Hungarians who did not), and have fled to the countryside where the chances of food and survival are higher. He can’t bring himself to see them for fear that what he did in the war (and what was done to him) has disturbed him.
He is a haunted man, and when? Hinterland scanning the faces of his war-traumatized fellow soldiers, it is clear that Ruzowitzky understands the shame of these men. “Look nobody in the eye here,” says a man at the shelter. It is in this subtle, tacit way that Hinterland suggests why National Socialism and Nazism gripped so many people who had lost everything and desperately needed dignity.
Perg may have lost everything, but he is the lucky one, a formerly respected detective and formerly wealthy man who sleeps in a house instead of the streets or crowded shelters. In this grim but beautifully evocative engineering marvel of a city, a serial killer prowls the streets and tortures to death former soldiers, soldiers Perg used to know. The crime scenes are disturbing and add an overall atmosphere of horror, even if this isn’t a horror movie. if Hinterland is horror, it’s the same way that seven or real detective is horror – morbid meditation on the existential dilemma and darkness embedded in humanity.
World War I and the Death of Morals in the Hinterland
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“Killing and torturing is indeed very human,” Perg says at one point. ‘Inhuman? Just look at the newspapers.’ Like any great war movie, Hinterland examines the nature of violence and examines the ethical ambiguity of wartime. As Perg becomes involved in the investigation and current Detective Victor Renner and the beautiful forensic criminologist Dr. Theresa Körner, he is forced to face his traumas in an almost painfully therapeutic way. As the revelations of its past and the film’s well-constructed mystery unfold, Hinterland asks some gloomy and fascinating questions.
While World War I has often been brushed aside in favor of the simpler tales of World War II or Vietnam, a surprising number of good films have come out in the past decade that focus on the period – Testament of Youth, 1917, Journey’s End, They Shall Not Grow Old, Foxhole, The Silent Mountainand the upcoming remake of No news from the western front.
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Most of them (and war movies in general) focus on battles themselves, but Hinterland is able to brilliantly discuss the war and its aftermath without going into the trenches. Hinterland understands that the most devastating effect of World War I was the end of shared morality.
“God died in the war,” says one character, and he couldn’t be more correct. However, this is not necessarily a theological statement; “God” here means objective morality, shared humanity, a belief in the future. All of that ended with the mustard gas, trench warfare and biological weapons of World War I, and this is partly what paved the way for the myriad future atrocities and genocides of the 20th century. At its best, Hinterland reveals these remnants of war and how they destroyed not only a universal ethic, but part of the human mind forever. “What we did was wrong,” says one character. “Wrong because there was no right.”
Hinterland is a technically great achievement that is now available
Murathan Muslu is great as Peter Perg, with a battered face and eyes more wounded than his body telling most of his story for us. He seems to be forever tense; even in his big, dusty coat, Muslu’s body language is perfect, like a stern and sturdy thing now cracked and chipped. Liv Lisa Fries as Dr. Körner remains a joy in whatever she does, albeit Babylon Berlin or Munich – The Edge of the War. She is light and smart, but in a grounded, natural way. Even when the two actors recite lines that resemble police procedure, they still seem organic.
Kyan Bayani’s score is perfect, the melodramatic, operatic tense complements the expressionistic imagery and the intensity of the plot. Benedict Neuenfels and Ruzowtizky have achieved something very special with the images in Hinterlandusing the bluescreen technology to great effect while at the same time creating a realistic foundation that never lets the movie drift away in CGI abstraction like Sin City or Sky Captain and the world of tomorrow. Even if the world they create is clearly digitized, it almost always works, harking back to great expressionist films like the silent masterpieces The cabinet of Dr. Caligaria and Metropolis. If them, Hinterland understands the nature (and importance) of artifice.
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It’s usually a mess when a script has multiple writers, but Robert Buchschwenter, Hanno Pinter, and Stefan Ruzowitzky perfectly compress their thoughts into a solid, utterly gripping 90 minutes, without exceeding their welcome. Even longer and the ominous, gloomy design of this Hinterland perhaps become an exercise in glorified misery. As it stands, Hinterland may be bleak, but the short cut, great performances, thoughtful ideas and expansive visuals make it a perfect post-war contemplation.
Hinterland is a production of FreibeuterFilm and Amour Fou Luxembourg, in co-production with Scope Pictures Belgium and Lieblingsfilm Germany, and is now available digitally and On Demand thanks to Film Movement.