Rediscover:
Dir: Götz Spielmannn
2008
Rediscover is a series of reviews highlighting past releases that have flown under the radar and now deserve a second look.
Playing on the double entendre of the German word “Revanche,” meaning both “revenge” and “second chance,” Austrian filmmaker Götz Spielmannn’s film of the same name is a modern classic, deepening in meaning and characterization with each viewing. Recently released on DVD by the Criterion Collection, Revanche is an existential work of art featuring a beating heart of humanism at its center.
Revanche focuses on a handful of major characters: Alex (Johannes Krisch) works as a bouncer in Viennese nightclub and longs to escape with his secret prostitute girlfriend Tamara (Irina Potapenko), a Ukrainian immigrant who works at the club. Alex decides to rob a bank in his rural hometown so he and Tamara can escape together to Ibiza. However, a tragic turn of events roots Alex on his grandfather Hausner’s (Hannes Thanheiser) farm and his story becomes intertwined with policeman neighbor Robert (Andrea Lust) and his wife Susanne (Ursula Strauss).
While the plot may sound like something out of a Hollywood film, Spielmann is not interested in the bank heist or any chase that ensues. Rather, the trinity of Alex’s grief, Robert’s feelings of inadequacy and Susanne’s childless chasm of loneliness fill the screen. Above all, Revanche probes into the existence of faith and how the shared human experience connects us all more than we would like to think.
Spielmann juxtaposes the similarities and differences between the characters to further this point. Both prostitute and housewife believe in God while the policeman and the criminal are atheists. All of the characters are dealing with loss: Alex with the loss of a lover, Hausner with his wife of many years while Susanne and Robert mourn the miscarriage of an unborn child. Yet, the film never veers into sentimental or cloying territory. The pain is real and Spielmann allows the film space to breathe whether we’re watching Alex chop wood or Susanne stare out into the rolling fields of her backyard.
Perhaps the film’s most obvious indicator of its trajectory is its geography. Most of the first section takes place in a claustrophobic Vienna with tight apartments, cell-like hotel rooms and the dark purgatory of the brothel. Spielmann uses tight shots for his scenes in Vienna in almost suffocating manner. However, it is not all terror in the city. Alex and Tamara share a few frank and intimate moments while she is off-duty, under the nose of Alex’s employer, her abusive pimp.
Once the story moves to the Austrian countryside, Spielmann opens up his aperture, allowing us long, pastoral shots of bucolic farms, a placid lake and a fateful spot in the woods that becomes the most sorrowful place of all in the film. However, while the airy nature of the rural scenes feel preferential to the urban hell, Spielmannn does not proffer that the city dwellers are doomed. Instead, we find all of the major characters in Revanche at important moral junctures and locale, like death, is not an indicator of vindication.
According to film critic Armond White, “Spielmann is interested in aspects of life that exceed simple comprehension. Fathoming the interconnections between disparate people, he emphasizes realistic perception and spiritual discovery.” While we are plugged into our iPods, feeling disconnect from the world and people around us, Spielmann and Revanche argues that we are more interconnected than we would like to think. Rather than be weighed down but we perceive by the limitations of life, it is our lack of understanding that is limiting.
While all the characters in Revanche are immensely different, Spielmann cannot help but point out their many similarities. When Alex and Robert meet at the pond, each man is suffering from the same event but neither realizes how the other feels. It’s those opportunities, those important intersections that Spielmann proves we fail to recognize, yet for most of the characters in Revanche, they get that second chance to do so.
by David Harris
