Germany has a body that, through independent juries, recommends outstanding films for their cultural and artistic achievements: The FBM or German Film and Media Assessment board. David Narwath's debut feature The Mover, part of our Canada-wide May 15-23 GOETHE FILMS @ digital TIFF Lightbox series
"Loneliness and the City," was assigned the rating "highly recommended:"
A strong feature film debut that tells the dramatic story of a man who finds his son by chance after many years and then does all he can to protect him from a criminal real estate clan.
Walter is a moving man for evictions. As a former weightlifter, he can still lift more heavy furniture than all of his younger colleagues put together. Although even his strength is gradually waning, Walter doesn’t want to quit; his work is all he has. When he discovers one day during a planned eviction that the tenant is his son Jan, Walter decides that he has to find his way back to Jan, whom he left when he was little. Jan, though, has different problems. A real estate clan wants to get him out of his apartment, by force if necessary. Walter wants to do everything possible to help Jan but when he realizes the danger he’s putting himself in, it’s almost too late.
David Nawrath’s debut feature film The Mover (the original German title is Atlas, alluding to the Greek titan burdened with carrying the weight of the world) attains tremendous emotional force as its plot develops and surprises the viewer with its unpredictable and quietly mounting dramaturgical structure.
The people, situations and dialogues never seem artificial or staged, one always has the impression that reality has been captured on the screen in forceful images. As a setting, Frankfurt am Main’s unspent bleakness is employed wonderfully, far from the world of finance. Tobias von dem Borne’s cinematography remains very close to the protagonist and finds expressive and symbolic images.
Lead Rainer Bock moves stoically through the film as Walter. But when his desire to stay under the radar in life is thrown overboard by the encounter with his son, one notices Bock’s great strength of filling the character with life and energy. The rest of the ensemble is also convincing in terms of accuracy and authenticity. Uwe Preuss as an ambitious and overwhelmed CEO who is chummy with his staff but gets involved with the wrong people; Thorsten Merten as a bailiff broken down by divorce and alcoholism, living his life in the certainty that things won’t get any better. And this year's Berlinale Shooting star Albrecht Schuch (Fabian; Berlin Alexanderplatz), who embodies Jan as an open and thoroughly honest person who is determined to oppose the real estate clan.
The Mover by David Nawrath is a strong debut that, with its quiet cinematic flow, develops a pull that you can hardly escape.
The jury statement in full:
"Sixty-year-old Walter, a former weightlifter who has worked as a moving man for evictions for thirty years, is a withdrawn loner. He ignores the increasing pain that his back-breaking job causes him as well as the suffering of the tenant debtors into whose privacy he intrudes on a daily basis. During an eviction he meets his son Jan, with whom he has had no contact for decades, but doesn’t reveal himself to him. Jan succeeds in preventing the eviction with a court order, but the old building in a prime location is the object of a venture owned by a Kurdish-Lebanese clan that will do anything to evict the last tenants. Walter’s attempt to fend off the impending danger from Jan and his family ends in disaster.
The debut film by David Nawrath, who wrote the script together with Paul Salisbury, is dramaturgically cleverly constructed and well-crafted. The film develops a great emotional impact and takes a close look at a milieu that is not often seen. The symbolic image of “Atlas” is introduced right at the beginning when Walter lashes a wardrobe to his back and laboriously descends the stairs with it: He bears the burden of the world. The film, which develops from a drama to a thriller, says a great deal through images and gazes.
Nothing happens without a reason yet no phrase seems fabricated. The characters are superbly cast right down to the supporting roles, above all Rainer Bock as Walter and Thorsten Merten in the ambivalent character of the bailiff. The cinematography, art direction, editing, sound and music harmonize perfectly in this remarkable male drama. The jury awards The Mover the rating 'highly recommended.'”
image courtesy Pandora Film © 23/5 Filmproduktion Rainer Bock in The Mover 2017
