Biyyrtr Ernte
West Germany,
1985, 107 min
Shown in 1986
CREDITS
- dir
-
Agnieszka Holland
- prod
-
Artur Brauner
- scr
-
Agnieszka Holland, Paul Hengge
- cam
-
Josef Ort-Snep
- cast
-
Armin Müller-Stahl, Elisabeth Trissenaar, Kathe Jaenicke, Hans Beerhenke
- source
-
European Classics, Washington, D.C.
-
COMMENTS
Agnieszka Holland in person.
OTHER
Angry Harvest is like Strindberg stripped of misogyny, a deliberately claustrophobic kammespiel in which the antagonists’ shifts of dependency and rage are as plausible as they are constantly surprising. During the German occupation of Western Poland, a shrewd peasant farmer (Armin Müller-Stahl), whose Catholic piety battles his carnal instincts, harbors a chic Jewish refugee (Elisabeth Trissenaar) from Nazi annihilation. Holland dissects their strange symbiosis with a clinical objectivity which spares neither member of this mutually wounding couple. If Rosa relies on her host’s goodwill for her very survival, her hold over him is just as potent, if more intangible. In the end, they are both unfulfilled and both trapped. Within its self-imposed limitations, Angry Harvest is a movie of remarkable resourcefulness. Holland’s camera makes a virtue of the confined spaces dictated by her story and she has drawn superlative performances from her cast, as Trissenaar’s careworn astringency collides against the petulance and aggression of Müller-Stahl’s lovelorn rube. Müller-Stahl’s versatility is pretty astonishing—when last seen, he was the forbiddingly gimlet-eyed Crown Prince who consigned Colonel Redl to oblivion.
—Stephen Harvey
FACTOID #12
In our occasional film series, The Unvanquished, we showcased the work of filmmakers who continued to make their art despite suffering artistic repression. Those honored include directors Paul Carpita (1996), Paul Meyer (1996), Abraham Polonsky (1996) and John Berry (1998) and actors Karen Morley (1999) and Behrouz Vossoughi (2001).
