Dir. Maren Ade, 2004, Germany, 81mins, subtitles
Cast: Eva Loebau, Daniela Holtz, Jan Neumann, Ilona Schultz, Robert Schupp
Review by Paul Murphy
‘No laughter in the classroom till Christmas’, is a tried and trusted maxim that has served many a teacher well. Deciphered it means the seemingly obvious; you are the teacher, you control the classroom and its students, so don’t try to be their friend, or allow them to accept you as anything but their teacher; stern, implacable, in control, to be feared, and ultimately respected. Good advice then, but for all the people who listen to such time honoured truisms there are always those who strive to try things their way, to get to grips with their occupation on their own terms; the brave and belligerent with success, but the timid and misguided with disastrous consequences, and it is the latter that The Forest For The Trees seeks to explore.
Bursting with youthful idealism and verve Melanie Pröschle (Eva Löbau), a young small-town teacher leaves her rural home, her long-term boyfriend and her too-helpful parents to move to the bright lights and brighter possibilities of a big teaching job in the city. Arriving in a tricky mid-year period she sets off to work, outlining her fresh ideas for education to her older, more established colleagues, trying to initiate them in the classroom to limited success with her bunch of unruly, hormonal ninth graders. The only one to follow her up on her lofty concerns is Thorsten Rehm (Jan Neumann), a geeky, shy, inoffensive science teacher, who takes an instant liking to his new female peer, offering as much help, advice, and romantic advances he can. Carrying on the same tack in her private life, she welcomes herself to her new, largely disinterested, apartment block neighbours by introducing herself with homemade schnapps and a smile.
Inevitably though loneliness sets in, and between reassuring phone calls to her ex-boyfriend and parents, obsessive lesson planning, and a weekend house-cleaning regime, Melanie begins a tentative friendship with the infinitely more worldly Tina (Daniela Holtz), a fellow neighbour, who welcomes the friendship as a respite from her tempestuous relationship with her boyfriend Tobias (Robert Schupp).
As days turn to weeks and the cold hard light of reality starts to dawn on Melanie, everything slowly starts to disintegrate. As her non-existent authority crumbles in the classroom, her social alienation intensifies, and she transfers this lack of control into her relationship with Tina, pushing their already awkward friendship to boundaries far too demanding, veering from pathetic toadying, inept socialising, to blatant stalking. Perhaps oblivious to how desperate she is becoming, or compelled to continue the friendship, whatever the cost, watching the inevitability of what is to come is nauseating yet addictive; you want to leave the cinema desperate to get away from such a truly dismal individual, but you are compelled to stay to the very end.
Watching The Forest For The Trees is like watching the most cringe inducing moments of The Office, but without the safety net of laughter to save us. Truly it excels at painting a portrait of middle of the road loneliness, the most pathetic, misplaced, misjudged, desperate, horrible, attributes of a mediocre life, but a life none the less, superbly played by Eva Löbau (a talent to watch in the future), a mixture of timid mannerisms, stolen glances, half uttered sentences and pure abject plainness. The remarkable acting by all concerned is very, very true, and emotionally raw, which is it’s praise and interestingly enough its curse, as it is very difficult to witness the excruciatingly pathetic breakdown of a person, without feeling very, very uncomfortable. It is Löbau’s naturalistic performance though that ultimately centres the film, making the viewer feel both revulsion and empathy for such a misguided fool as Melanie.
As a debut feature, and also a final year student film, it’s a remarkable achievement. Shot in just 26 days in director Maren Ade’s hometown, using a mixture of script/ improvisation, professional/non-professional actors, it’s an assured and confident piece of filmmaking. Shot with precision and economy by a documentary cameraman on DVCam, with a tight, invisible edit helping it along, it has very little superfluous excess to weigh it down. The grainy, washed out, flat video image lends it an even more chilling veracity. Praise too must go to the costume designer who dresses Melanie in the most garish and childishly inappropriate clothing possible, heightening her social pariah status, and make up for giving her a gruesomely bad haircut!
The only gripe I have with it is its repetitiveness. We get the point very early on of Melanie’s self inflicted hopelessness, and the film seeks to reaffirm it at every instance. There’s only so much one can watch a poor woman breakdown as she drowns in her own ineptitude, and I thought it veered a little on the overkill side at times. However, ending the film on a beautiful slice of magical realism that comes out of nowhere takes your breath away and provides respite, at least for a little while, on poor Melanie’s dire situation.
All in all a very commendable, challenging and unique piece of work, which although hard going and a little too close to the bone, demands to be seen.
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