Movie Review

Directed by Axel Schneppat, starring: Horst Krause, Paramount Classics, German with subtitles, 107 minutes, 2003.

This award winning film is a lovely comedy, very reminiscent of Jack Nicholson's About Schmidt , but like many European films that depend on mood, slow going in the beginning. Schultze and his two buddies retire after many years working in a salt mine. Their retirement gifts are lamps made from salt! Each of them tries to find meaningful activities in their "golden years". They are buddies and continue to socialize and fish together. Schultz is alone as his wife is in a 'Care Facility' and suffers dementia. He continues to play his accordion in the local music society but he drags himself around in a depressing loneliness. The social director at his wife's institution encourages him to get out and live a little, go to the local casino but he has no motivation or energy.

One night when he can't sleep he twiddles the dial on his radio and picks up some zydeco music (Cajun, bayou music from the U.S. south east). He turns it off in disgust, goes back to it, turns it off again and finally dons his accordion and picks up the chords and rhythm enough to play some of his favourite, familiar tunes in the new style. He tries it out with some friends to not much enthusiasm and then plays it at the local music society. He is supported by some and reviled by the majority of others for playing "nigger music". (OUCH!)

Any choir leader, cleric or congregation member who has attempted to introduce innovation in music, indeed in almost anything, will recognize the forces of tradition that resist innovation, especially by someone who is not an expert but a mere enthusiast. And, lets face it, a depressed Schultze, is not the most enthusiastic advocate for his new interest.

The local music society however, chooses him to go to an international polka festival to be held in Texas, USA. The movie becomes a romantic tale at this point, a journey ' to begin to live a little'. Somewhat reluctantly he sets out but he soon abandons the festival to its traditional oompapa music, finds an apparently abandoned boat down on the riverbank and sets out east on an odyssey of encounters with kind and generous folk in a strange land. He wanders into bars and dance halls, past musicians practicing on their patios and eventually into the home of a black woman and her daughter living in a houseboat on the river. They invite him in to eat with them. Friends back home receive postcards that keep them, and us, updated on his travels. In all this he begins to 'come out', to live a little. After dancing vigorously at a local dance he complains of stomach upset and is escorted home to the houseboat where we see him settled into a deck chair to rest for the night. In the final scene of the movie we view a funeral procession that I initially thought was the "money shot' for a movie about the bayou, (cf. Easy Rider or a barn raising for a movie involving the Amish). Shockingly it is Schultz's own funeral and his friends in the local music society play the music. Schultz found the blues and so did his friends.

The journey in faith often seems to stall in the latter part of life when illness, retirement, depression and boredom may occupy our horizon. Schultze becomes a reluctant journeyer despite the encouragement of a figure like the social director at his wife's Hospice. To his credit, he bravely adopts the innovation of zydeco and pursues it in the face of passive resistance from friends and colleagues.

It is indeed hard for us to break out of the faith habits developed over years of practice. Music is a fine metaphor for this journey since Schultze plays the old songs to a new rhythm and tempo even though he cuts a somewhat ridiculous figure in the transition. Initially we have sympathy but then affection, for Schultz in an odyssey that is familiar to us.