Ornately literary, with the most incessant narration this side of a 1940s newsreel, director Julian Roman Pölsler’s adaptation of Marlen Haushofer’s 1968 novel holds the interest throughout its nearly two-hour length.
It’s the story of a woman (Martina Gedeck of “The Lives of Others”) who’s on a visit to a remote hunting lodge in a gorgeous part of the Alps. Her hosts take a walk to the village — and the nameless woman never sees them again. Overnight she’s been cut off from the rest of the world by an invisible, yet impenetrable wall. All other humans, it seems, are dead.
She’s left with a dog named Lynx (the director’s own Bavarian hound), a cow and a couple of cats who prove themselves to be of not much practical use at all. Gradually, she learns how to live off the land, moving past loneliness and fear to a sense of communion with her animals and surroundings.
You can tell Pölsler worships the book because the narration scarcely seems to cut a word of it. Fortunately, Gedeck’s reading constitutes a remarkable vocal performance, and her physical presence is also impressive. The mountainous countryside is pure, uncomputerized nature. There are numerous points where the stunning landscape would easily do the work of the text, if only Pölsler would permit it.
Still, “The Wall” winds up as a captivating fable, an end-times scenario that’s more about the survival of the spirit than the body.