Crossed wires and wounded pride
Western, by the German director Valeska Grisebach, isn’t literally a western – it’s set on a hilly building site in presentday Bulgaria. The point of the title is to invoke a parallel, conjure a certain tradition. But it’s the aggression and naked tensions of the genre that Grisebach has her eye on.
A troupe of German construction workers have a tough job on the hillside, laying the foundations for a hydroelectric power plant. Rather than getting on with the task, these guys are stricken with a weird case of performance anxiety, and keep vying for dubious cool points.
In a typical example of peacocking behaviour, the burly, insecure project manager Vincent (Reinhardt Wetrek) wades into a river to retrieve a young woman’s hat, hoping to make an impression on some locals – and by extension the rest of his crew. Instead he comes over as a lunatic, and word quickly gets back to the Bulgarian menfolk that their daughters have been disrespected. The main character, and most fascinating figure, is Meinhard (Meinhard Neumann), a mustachioed ex-legionnaire who keeps his distance from the rest of the group. He has the air of a lone rider, especially when he finds a white horse in the mountains. Bareback, he makes Clint-eastwood-ish sorties into the village, where the residents go back and forth on what to make of him.
Grisebach divides her dialogue in two – half German, half Bulgarian, with only a couple of the 20-strong ensemble in a position to translate. The opportunities for crossed wires are innumerable. Memories here are long, and the German use of Bulgaria as a docile staging base during the Second World War is a crucial part of the film’s historical context. When the builders plant their national flag in the scaffolding, it’s a boorish brag about annexation.
Meinhard’s cultivation of a laconic mystique feels like a veteran’s tactic to outmanoeuvre the Vincents of this world, whose more open bluster and desire to exploit local resources – women included – self-destruct for all to see. Grisebach has an observational grasp of the male psyche – especially its pathological obsession with pride – that fairly takes the breath away. The worst things that happen in her film are all eminently survivable – but try telling that to the men involved, for whom the simple matter of losing face is life or death, and whose inability to let their guard down makes for mesmerising psychological drama. TR