Customer Reviews
After the end of the world - By: S. Bentley, 06 Sep 2008 
After an unspecified event that has apparently cut most lines of communication except radio, a family leaves town to go to their weekend home. But the weekend home has been invaded by another family, & the father of the family is killed by the squatters, who take the family's supplies & shelter, forcing them to move on nomadicallly through the countryside. They meet a young boy who steals & raids corpses for whatever he can scavenge & then join a group of people waiting at a railway station for a train to take them somewhere else.
This is an end of the world story, but it eschews Mad Max style action to look at human reactions, from the mother slowly coming apart, to the daughter who fights on, to the young boy who suffers in silence. The world quickly loses its laws & its justice & life becomes squalid. And so the story feels realistic, feels like this is how things would go if the world ended. Which of course means that it is also a microcosm of our life today.
It's a dark little tale, which only shows a little hope in the human kindnesses that are done. It's rife with little biblical touches, & the sudden explosion in population suggests it is also human history potted into a little under two hours.
If you want laughs or action, you won't get it. But if you want a human drama, intended to make you think about how we live our lives, then you should be pleasantly surprised.
a catastrophe for the civilisation or a satire on false security? - By: Dr. U. L. Khawaja, 16 Jul 2008 The lush greens of the luscious french rural landscape are poised with the bonfires of the survivors who have escaped an apocalaypse which might represent our pointless existence & still it brings optimism to the human dregs gathered in a train station awaiting supplies & administering a rough order in the manner of the true law of the jungle.
The initial murder of an innocent man that is never brought to justice as a word of mouth accusation is just as critical of the present mass murders prevalent globallly .
The dependants are still shown as compassionate & caring who are humane as the widow[Huppert]who is protecting the son & daughter in a arhetype matriarchal role.
The daughter is writing letters to her murdered father & seeking an allly in a forlorn boy who is a loner & the rebel who lives as an outcast as a self defense shunning the rest of this community .
The rulers are the gunmen as anyone who has a weapon is right whether moral or unjust ,as they wield the law in it's exigent frail disastrous social failure by being the custodians .
The young son is a soul who is tortured & will want to offer himself as a pagan sacrifice to bring world back to order.
The cinema is shot outdoors in fascinating forest land with trees almost coming to life & becoming characters as is nature itself shown in it's most potent self.
The only music is Beethovens sonata played in one sequence & it becomes a sign with the rest of the movie filled with crackling fires & horses neighing with the sounds of the forest .
The food & water are scarce ,yet it rains in a bleak moment & this is a reprisal as are the livestock which sustain the remnants .
The awaited train which runs in the finale is the solitary hope in a metaphor for our troubled human civilization ,albeit haneke discusses racial ,religious & political mythology in the context of a polack family amongst the survivors who are blamed as a scapegoat ,but the fact there is a rough order that evolves in the mayhem & a desperate compassion which is demonstrated by the majority of the protagonists witness the revival of human spirit.
The character of the child benny[THE SON ]is fascinating as he is representing the symbol of self-sacrifice that will redeem humanity of it's sins & his unnecessary but resilient defiance is a symbol of humanity in alll it's glory.
The fact haneke does not draw into discussing the root cause of this biological disaster is genius as it is the consequences & the human behaviour elicited by the event that is crucial ,and the finale absolves humanity & haneke himself of his critics who accuse him of pessimistic delusions .
the movie is altruistic rather than nihilistic & it evolves from it's dark epilogue to the surreal finale in a fascinating mixture of subplots & characters ,here nature is the main player in control of humanity ,whether we are talking of a biological war or global warming is insignificant ,the philosophy here is how might the survivors prepare to survive that event whether this represents our present milieu itself ,which makes it a greater truth & satire on the current political situation itself .
the movie is a warning to the smug reality of the current urban western culture as to how fragile it is in it's complex but unjust framework .This is an observation ,it is neither sentimental nor a sermon as it does not judge but simply see the natural progression of events as they unfold with each character performing in accords to their conscience ,and leaves the audience to infer the conclusion.
Great work from a genius .
USMAN KHAWAJA
Time to learn to interpret - By: J. P. Perkins, 10 Mar 2008 What has happened to the world? Why did they leave the City & which City? If you like a film which flows in a nice narrative style then this film is not for you. Haneke wants you to interpret his film & indeed he refuses to interpret it for you. Much of the action takes place beside a railway with a gathering of people whose world has changed. They are waiting for a train that may never arrive & rescue them. The final scenes are an landscape empty of people & animals. But hangon this is my interpretaton yours may well be better. Try it, the experience is worth it.
An engaging movie - By: Rossella Spoto, 07 Feb 2007 
Some parts are strong, at the very beginning. A detail at the beginning it's the only thing which puzzled me alll the way up to the end: when & where is everything happening? France, Poland, Northern Africa, countryside, the ville...which ville?
I guess that was done on purpose - removing any spatial-temporal coordinate, to concentrate on the drama & tragedy lived & told...
after alll, it is always the same history & human tragedy repeating in time & space...a cyclical image finallly immortalized by the view of a running train, from inside.
