The Inheritors (1998)

Admirable film.

I really wanted to like this movie. I feel terribly cynical trashing it, and that's why I'm giving it a middling 5. Actually, I'm giving it a 5 because there were some superb performances.

This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

A terrific literary drama and character piece that shows how the process of creating art can be seen differently by those doing it and those looking at it from the outside.

A most unusual film, set in Alpine Austria before the 2nd World War, in which innocent peasants are pitted against greedy,malevolent farmers. The peasants inherit their farm after their master is murdered, but the other farmers and the local priest cannot accept that peasants should own land. So after the initial exuberance of inheritance, the film gets bleaker as the farmers plot to undermine and drive away the new owners, whose success challenges the traditional hierarchy. It is a confrontation familiar in many Westerns - but much more realistic and in consequence that much more gripping.Sub-plots involving each of the inheritors make this a complex and moving story, including a murder mystery and a rural class struggle. The initial driving force is Emmy, a feminist model as she stands up to the foreman and farmers, despite being labelled a whore. But she, like the others, is not just a one-dimensional heroine. Life is difficult as we see the inheritors cope with and buckle under the pressures. The Alpine landscape is an intrinsic part of the film, as we see the seasons change along with the main characters' moods and fortunes. Stefan Ruzumowsky's photographic techniques enhance the interaction of landscape and character and make for an exciting and absorbing film, well worth searching out.

This German film about some pre-World War II peasants taking over their master's farm after his mysterious death has a surreal edge to it, not unlike Julio Medem's films (though not quite of Medem's calibre). Ruzowitzky gives this parable of German society enough grim humour and imaginative direction, to alleviate any danger of ponderousness. The result is a film that is well worth watching.

This movie was entirely about struggling. Whether it be the single mom or single dad, or an entire neighborhood of people. You could relate to the struggle these people had to go through. It was just like the struggle of everyone who's had to work overtime or work hard period - to pay the rent or the food bill and still have a life apart from work and duty. Do not look at this movie in the movie sense, look at it within yourself as you do everyday in your life.... You might find some examples of yourself in this movie. I did.....So will you.

"The Inheritors" is a truly great movie. Great art can invite you in and massage you, and guide you back out again, hopefully in a new direction. This movie does that for me partly because of its allegorical nature. I see it as a religious allegory, with Lukas as the Christ figure, and the land representing the mystical body. The movie's greatness comes in the way it points out of itself, to a more universal, democratic experience. In this way "The Inheritors" can be compared to another great film, "The Sweet Hereafter". Both generate their emotional impact in loosely holding the viewer while pointing to a possible world outside of the movie. To see the beauty, we simply have to be willing to enter into it.