Der Samurai

Village Cop vs. Swordsman @ Perspektive Deutsches Kino 2014

(Germany 2014 directed by Till Kleinert with Pit Bukowski, Michael Schumacher, Ulrike Biefert, Uwe Preuss | 79 min)

Critique by Sieva Diamantakos

Der Samurai, Michael Schumacher © Emi Maria Bohacek, Edition Salzgeber

Jakob, a young police officer, works in a small town close to the polish border surrounded by dark woods. A wolf lives there that the shy police officer feeds with meat.

This small, secure world has now been threatened by an ominous samurai; a young man dressed like a woman that kills with the katana, a Japanese sword.

Jakob is on his trail but the more he manages to get in contact with him the more the samurai becomes cruel and dangerous. Jakob’s world that previously relied on a fragile system of values collapses amid the audacious personality of the samurai who, with his life and his words, questions the young policeman’s way of life.

Jakob finds himself fighting against his insecurities, against his fears, against his inability to stand out in life while the reality around him changes into a surreal landscape, filled with magic. That is, until the inevitable final fight where our tragic hero must fight both his bold enemy and himself.

Though the samurai is not the only presence that provokes the main character, he just does so in the most spectacular way. The film explores other real situations and implies the various impacts these have on Jakob while he waits for his reaction to awake. The guys of the village, for instance, bully him despite his role as an officer. A girl he encounters on the way expresses her libertine personality. The wolf itself symbolises an appetite for freedom and strong instincts, repressed by Jakob’s everyday duties.

In one interview director Till Kleinert stated that he got a lot inspired by the writer HP Lovecraft and particularly in the sense that his characters are mostly alienated in a world that they don’t fully understand and are “…on the verge of being overwhelmed by something that is out of our conscious.”

He adds:  “…There are always forces from outside that try to destroy this little conscious safety that we have”. This theme constitutes the spine of Kleinert’s work, and it is the core of his battle against the mainstream realism which is spread so widely nowadays.

It’s difficult to define a genre for this movie, it stands among horror, drama and psycho-thriller, but, although the subject is uncanny, its purpose is not only to provoke the audience’s reaction but further strengthen the story’s ability to rely on the interesting characters and on the well structured dramaturgy.

Dialogues are remarkable, especially where they stress out the dialectic pupil-master dichotomy that develops between the two main characters.

During the vision we are lead to identify ourselves with the young officer, to question our lives ruled by routine and to ask ourselves what our reaction might be if something so extreme happened to us. Pit Bukowski is outstanding in the lead role; his free spirit - which embodies anger, craziness, boldness and violence - magnificently contrasts with the shy and submissive attitude of Michael Schumacher (the policeman). The photography of the scenes, mostly shot in the evening/night time, manages to deepen the mysterious and dramatic atmosphere into which the film melts.

In the nineteen thirties Germany had a well deserved reputation for combining unheimlich stories with expressionist shootings, now that this genre is long gone there’s the possibility to fill this void with something fresh that again blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy.

According to the director this genre could easily find a commercial outlet, and I personally hope that German producers will recognise its potential - at least until the time that the crowd funding campaigns in Europe become a viable alternative to the state film funding.

Rating: * * * * 

Der Samurai, Pit Bukowski © Emi Maria Bohacek, Edition Salzgeber