Time of the Wolf (2004)

Good story, Not enough for a whole film

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

it is finally so absorbing because it plays like a lyrical road odyssey that’s also a detective story.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I'm really just trying to save other sci-fi fans from wasting their time on this one. This is probably the worst sci-fi I've ever seen. It could really use a plot (why did they leave the city? where were they trying to get to?). One hundred and nine minutes is way too long. Many takes just go on and on pointlessly. I'd say edit to thirty minutes, better yet, just make it a TV episode of The Survivors. Finally, there is some pointless background conversation that receives subtitles, but other important conversations don't get translated at all. I gave it three stars instead of one because the acting is very good and there is one really good music track while they are at the train station.

Of the Haneke films I've seen, this is the only one that didn't absolutely blow my mind. Funny Games is my all time favorite film, and The Piano Teacher is in the same league. Time of the Wolf (TotW) is stylistically recognizable as Haneke's work, and is certainly a well-made film. Unlike his other films, however, it contains nothing the veteran viewer hasn't seen (a dozen times) before.TotW is a post-apocalyptic drama. The cause of the apocalypse is ambiguous; the focus is on human behavior under stress, and in the absence of authority. The style of the film is appropriately very bleak and dry. Though there are occasional dramatic events, they certainly do not feel like action scenes. Rather, the whole thing deliberately has a very "tired" feel to it. Most of the characters are very convincing, and the film's greatest strength is the horror it creates in showing normal people break under the stress.A difficulty with making a post-apocalyptic story is that there are only so many things one can do with it. If you've read "The Road," you've essentially seen TotW. If you can imagine 28 Days Later with more subtlety and no zombies, you can imagine TotW; some components of the endings are nearly identical. I personally feel that Haneke's directing talents were wasted with this one, because it's such a tired old story that the slow pace and subtlety just makes it tedious--to the veteran viewer, there's no magic, no mystery; just repetition.

Drab, pointless, humorless, dreary, are some words that come to mind quickly. The first ten minutes are shock cinema at its finest, but after that it's a more realistic-than-thou, account of an end of the world scenario. What conclusions does it come to? People are mean, racist, xenophobic, and greedy, without social structures to guide them, but maybe, just maybe, if they cling to their humanity and mercy, things could get better, the world can be reborn, etc.The little boy character was trite, running away, at just the right moment when the paced lagged, cus thats what traumatized little boys in these kinds of movies do. There's some nice cinematography, of darkness, with some fires burning, not very subtle symbolism, but nothing in this was. It's less pedantic than "Funny Games", but not as clever. It's bleak, and desperate, and dismal. A live horse is killed on screen, for our viewing pleasure! At least John Waters had his animals f*&$ed before he slaughtered them.Does just being the opposite of the way, Hollywood would film something, make it automatically artful and meaningful? Sure it's more realistic than Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome, but it's themes of desperation, human redemption, and survival, are the same. Just less entertaining. A real life disaster, would indeed probably go down with people crowded in barns, hating each other trying to make due, but so what? That's just a premise, not a story. The final scene of the train in motion, suggests, things get better, but as to why is just as mysterious as what caused the catastrophe in the first place. And ultimately, just as purposeful, to begin and end the movie, that's all.This wasn't very original, provocative, or challenging. It's intense at times but mostly lethargic, and begs by its somberness to be taken seriously, without anything at all serious to contribute.

This movie follows the survivors of an unnamed apocolyptic event. The fact that the details aren't disclosed doesn't bother me. What does bother me, however, is the poor acting and lack of character development. A man is murdered for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and it doesn't seem to phase his wife or children in the least. They just keep on truckin as if nothing ever happened. And nothing else does happen, really, until another half an hour into the flick when they finally arrive at a railroad depot to join more survivors of what is probably an environmental disaster. Once there, you never get to know any of the characters except for a few of them. The rest are merely forgettable faces with no names or personalities. Nothing continues to happen for the remainder of the film, save for a few events that are confusing due to the fact that I don't really know or care who any of these people are. All in all, it's not an absolutely terrible movie, and I think that I agree with the director that human society is only as strong as its' food supply. But I found myself looking at my watch more than the movie screen.