Fear for material and physical existence, fear of loneliness, fear of death: Elias overcame all these human insecurities. “I’ve gotten rid of the fear of the people down there,” writes the farmer’s son, who spends the summer in the “Märzengrund” alpine hut in the Zillertal.
And when he doesn’t descend into the valley with the cattle at the end of it, but turns around to the horror of his parents and sister and hikes even higher up to beyond the tree line, his freedom increases even further. “I’ve finally found my place in society,” sighs Elias (Jakob Mader) in the face of the majestic peaks, “namely far away from her.” And from her insignia such as money and possessions.
It is a dropout drama, a modern hermit story that the Austrian filmmaker Adrian Goiginger tells in “Märzengrund”. In front of the breathtaking and quite celebrated backdrop, a mountain landscape that puts human existence into perspective. And which has already made it possible for many to “you down there, I up here” distancing.
Not to mention mountain film heroes and novel characters like Thomas Mann’s Hans Castorp, who all saw life at high altitude as both an existential challenge and a purification. So far from the vain bustle of the world, so close to yourself, to God or other metaphysical forces.
Goiginger’s hero actually lived lonely high up in the Zillertal Alps in the 1960s, which doesn’t necessarily mean anything in cinema. Much more important than the authentic material, told in the local dialect, is the artistic truthfulness of the cinematic narrative, which strikes consistent tones in “Märzengrund” right down to the romanticizing ending.
Even Goiginger’s feature film debut “The Best of All Worlds”, which received an award at the Berlinale in 2017 in the Perspektive Deutsches Kino, captivated with its sensitive character drawings. This also applies to the sensitive farmer’s son Elias, who at the age of 18 is the best in his class, but his father (Harald Windisch) considers him to be a soft-spoken bookworm.
When the big farmer also buys up the property of a neighbor who is in debt in order to expand the farm that Elias is supposed to take over according to tradition, he feels only warm sympathy for the bankrupt. However, that does not prevent him from enthusiastically accepting the car that his father put in the yard with the sentence “A young farmer needs a car”. Having your own car in 1967 is no small feat and testifies to farmer pride, but also to the father’s love.
The mustiness of the sixties in the country and the impossibility of Elias’ first love for Moid (Verena Altenberger), a divorced thirty-year-old against whom the jealous mother (Gerti Grassl) rages – that’s what “Märzengrund” tells atmospherically and not in the least defamatory. In general, rural theater clichés like that of the obstinate patriarch are foreign to this neo-Heimatfilm. Only the later stylization of the domineering mother as an aged stroke monster with a paralyzed face gets a bit bold.
The life story, divided into three artfully interwoven narrative periods, spans 40 years. It begins with the rescue helicopter that flies the aged Elias (Johannes Krisch) to the hospital after a breakdown. A flashback tells of his youth in the valley when, already marked by the onset of depression, he says to Moid: “I feel like a stranger in the world.”
The third level consists of ramified flashbacks that describe Elias’ life as a hermit. How he builds a cottage out of roughly hewn logs, catches fish in the stream, cooks tree bark and lichen over the fire in winter, and in the beauty of nature makes his peace with his own existence, which civilization has experienced as painful.
The longing for a connection with the elements, the landscape, with plants and animals and the question of what a good life is. They are not only inherent in dropouts, but are omnipresent in the face of pandemics, wars and the climate crisis. Even now, cities, society and the economic system are perceived by more and more people as an impertinence.
“Märzengrund” does not provide a generally valid counter-life plan. Adrian Goiginger shows very clearly that Elias and his family pay a devastating price for his love of freedom. Also that radicalism makes antisocial. But Elias simply has no choice. He has to go up. Even if it costs your life.
