Visitation

Never quite getting the recognition his contribution to the film canon deserves, Volker Schlöndorff’s body of work crowns him an absolute authority on tailoring stories from the page to the screen. Whether it’s classics of his native Germany (The Tin Drum, The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum) or world literature (Death of a Salesman, Swann in Love, The Handmaid’s Tale), his hard-hitting adaptations are a staple in any educational institution.

Which is why it comes as a surprise that his filmisation of Jenny Erpenbeck’s novel feels like a project that’s been sitting on a shelf for years, collecting dust, until Sound of Falling‘s success had executives hastily reaching for something similar to produce. Despite their obvious thematic and cultural similarities (both pictures chronicle a century of German history within the containment of a family home), Visitation (Heimsuchung) lacks the unique selling points of last year’s Jury Prize winner, which were the female perspective and the haunting qualities of the proverbial ghosts of the past.

Narrated by a voice from the future, Schlöndorff’s feature introduces a plot of land by the lake, referred to as “Klara’s Woods.” Instead of inheriting the place that was named after her, the young woman is cast out of the family and the property falls into the hands of an ambitious architect (Lars Eidinger). His relationship to the Nazi regime – and whether it ultimately saves or condemns him – sits at the moral centre of the story.

The piece is comprised of beautifully orchestrated stand-alone images, in particular every time the camera gets close to the water, where it lingers just above the surface and frames bodies suspended between weight and weightlessness. Perhaps somewhat by default, this controlled and precise staging creates an emotional detachment from the material. Both voice-over and character dialogues inform the audience of the country’s political swing from one extreme to the other, and one grasps that this particularly affected the area in the East, where this film is set, but it registers as little more than a history lesson.

Those with a keen interest in the turbulent 20^th century might find something of value within the continued attempt of reconstructing and deconstructing these events, and perhaps the book has avid fans for whom this story will be unmissable. But while Visitation once again demonstrates the director’s keen eye for composition, it also proves that no amount of skill can turn a boilerplate narrative into a masterpiece.