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At the end of the Milky Way

At the end of the Milky Way

Deutschland 2012

The Frankfurt-Tipp rating:

Movie info

Genre:Documentary
Direction:Leopold Grün und Dirk Uhlig
Cinema release:24.10.2013
Production country:Deutschland 2012
Running time:Approx. 97 min
Rated:Age 6+
Web page:www.neuevisionen.de

A small village somewhere in Mecklenburg-Vorpommern: the area seems forgotten by society. Shopping facilities are nonexistent, every now and then a supermarket cart pops by to offer the residents the bare necessities. The infrastructure is poorly developed, the bus rarely stops near the entrance to the village. There are hardly any job opportunities, there are no prospects for the future. And yet the people here have found a way not to have to leave their home, to defy all hardship and to remember old virtues together. They live on the edge of the subsistence level, but they don't let it get them down. Mutual help and the use of natural resources make it possible for the 50-soul community to live a life that one can hardly imagine in the big cities determined by constant change.

In their documentary film At the End of the Milky Way, filmmakers Leopold Grün and Dirk Uhlig portray this unusual village community. Representative of the inhabitants, the cameras follow the farmer Maxe, his partner Cordula and their daughter Nicole, the mother of five Gabi and her son Maik, the boy Ulli, the handyman Harry, the sociable Oli as well as Ronald, Gabi's 73-year-old father-in-law. With almost stoic calm, especially at the beginning, the filmmakers follow these protagonists through their everyday lives. They show the people at work, pondering life together, at the annual village festival or rather boredly killing time. In the process, the protagonists talk about their lives in the isolated village, the difficulties involved, but also about the beautiful sides, about their dreams, wishes and worries. It's a quiet, very personal film with a really interesting underlying idea.

But unfortunately the viewer is made very hard to sustain the basic interest that the premise knows how to build. This is because the filmmakers' decision to completely pull back and act only as observers makes the whole thing arguably unwieldy and somewhat exhausting, especially at the beginning. For example, hardly a word is spoken in the first twenty minutes and the protagonists are neither introduced to the viewer through text inserts, nor through comments or the like. You don't know where the documentary is set, nor who you are actually dealing with. This builds up an emotional distance, especially at the beginning, which is then difficult to break down.

Another problem caused by this kind of staging is that potentially interesting aspects are only touched upon, but not deepened by an additional flow of information from the filmmakers. An example is the opening sequence, which shows the rolling supermarket stopping in the community and some of the residents shopping there. After that, the cart disappears again, and with it all the information that viewers might have liked to learn more about. Certainly, in many scenes the film's narrative style feels very authentic and honest. Still, the lives of the villagers at the end of the Milky Way raise an incredible number of intriguing questions, especially for movie audiences in the city, that unfortunately go largely unanswered by the documentary. Instead, there are many very long snapshots that, while sympathetic and unadulterated, offer a glimpse into the lives of the people in the community portrayed. This has its charm and is also very entertaining in some moments. But you really don't have to go to the cinema for that

An article by Frankfurt-Tipp

Media:

  • At the end of the Milky Way
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  • At the end of the Milky Way
  • At the end of the Milky Way
Cinema trailer for the movie "At the end of the Milky Way (Deutschland 2012)"
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