Here’s Maren Ade’s first feature, The Forest for the Trees (Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen in the original German), made in 2003. Though low in budget – it was a film-school project – it instantly established her as one to watch.
The remarkable thing is that in the two decades since, Ade has made only two more films, 2009’s Everyone Else and 2016’s Toni Erdmann, the one that made her name internationally and won her an Oscar nomination (she lost out to Asgar Farhadi, who isn’t a bad name to lose out to).
So what’s she been up to all this time? Producing, is the answer. Ade’s name turns up all over the place, usually on films that are apart from the fray – Miguel Gomes’s Tabu and Arabian Nights trilogy, Sebastián Lelio’s A Fantastic Woman, Radu Jude’s I Do Not Care If We Go Down in History as Barbarians, Pablo Larraín’s Spencer and Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s About Dry Grasses, to name a few from a long and impressive list.
But never mind all that, what about The Forest for the Trees? Well, if you’ve seen Toni Erdmann and were gripped by its tone of punishing social awkwardness, it can be traced all the way back to this movie, a film very much in the same vein, though with one ingredient missing.
Ade shot her film on digital video and the camcorder looks suit a story of downbeat desperation, at the centre of which is Melanie (Eva Löbau), a 27-year-old teacher with a new job in an unfamiliar city. Melanie seems socially ill at ease for almost the entirety of the film’s running time, and Ade catches the strangeness of this febrile creature in an early, tightly montaged sequence where Melanie gives housewarming presents to all her new neighbours in the block she’s just moved into. Which isn’t the way housewarming presents work.
At work she struggles with a lack of authority and cannot keep her class under control. In the staffroom the teachers are politely welcoming, until Melanie formally introduces herself with a speech in which she informs them that she’s “a breath of fresh air”. Not how you introduce yourself. Her personal life is a case of more of the same. Melanie insinuates herself into the life of Tina (Daniela Holtz), a boutique owner who is initially friendly. It looks like Tina and Melaine are going to become firm friends, until Melanie starts turning up unannounced in Tina’s life.
Löbau is magnificently good as the dependent, detached, desperate woman not waving but drowning. Hers is a performance of sustained agitation and as Melanie makes one social gaffe after another, alienating her students, colleagues and friends, Löbau cranks it up until it becomes hard to watch. (You might have seen Löbau again being magnificent in the much more recent The Teachers’ Room – more schoolroom unpleasantness).
Ade may be shooting on cheap equipment, but this is a cinematic movie in the proper sense. Her editing is exquisite. Her sense of pace is carefully judged. Her direction of her actors is on the money. The only thing low-budget about The Forest for the Trees is its low budget.
Back to Toni Erdmann, which dealt with similar themes but added a crucial bit of seasoning – humour. It gave a bit of light and shade that is just not there in The Forest for the Trees. So be warned, there is no real let-up, until Ade gives us some right at the end, in a scene that might just be construed as comical… if you’ve got a very dark sense of humour.
The Forest for the Trees (aka Der Wald vor lauter Bäumen) – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
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© Steve Morrissey 2024