Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
For all its stellar nature photography, its low hum of suspense, and Gedeck's raw and affecting performance, the film often feels like an illustrated audiobook rather than narrative drama.
✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Austria, Germany · 2012
1h 44m
Director Julian Pölsler
Starring Martina Gedeck, Ulrike Beimpold, Karlheinz Hackl, Wolfgang Maria Bauer
Genre Drama, Science Fiction
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A woman finds herself inexplicably cut off from all human contact when an invisible, unyielding wall suddenly surrounds her countryside cabin. Accompanied by her loyal dog Lynx, she must learn to survive in a world untouched by civilization and ruled by the laws of nature.
Village Voice by Alan Scherstuhl
For all its stellar nature photography, its low hum of suspense, and Gedeck's raw and affecting performance, the film often feels like an illustrated audiobook rather than narrative drama.
Though complementary, the pic’s images and voiceover never quite fuse into a single whole.
Though its blanketed voiceover narration can be too on-the-nose—it’s a metaphor, we get it—the film packs a psychic punch, thanks to Gedeck’s spectrally wearied face.
New York Post by Farran Smith Nehme
The Wall winds up as a captivating fable, an end-times scenario that’s more about the survival of the spirit than the body.
The Wall seems to be telling the story about assimilation, about a woman who accepts her lot and attempts to persevere through the cruelest of conditions, an unspoken martyr. Perhaps it would carry much more power had she not been so chatty.
Los Angeles Times by Gary Goldstein
The Wall is a remarkably involving film, especially given its brave, self-imposed limitations.
The A.V. Club by Mike D'Angelo
Haushofer’s book may be a classic, but this is the least imaginative way of filming it imaginable, short of simply pointing the camera at a copy and rapidly flipping the pages.
The New York Times by Neil Genzlinger
The photography is often lovely, and Ms. Gedeck convincingly portrays a woman who as the ordeal stretches on month after month seems to be gradually losing her individuality and blending into the landscape.
The Hollywood Reporter by Neil Young
There's plenty of time for the viewer to muse on what The Wall might or might not symbolize -- when events finally take an abruptly surprising and violent turn, the tonal shift is unsatisfyingly awkward.
Slant Magazine by Tomas Hachard
We may find out how Gedeck's character reacts to her isolation, but we're never privy to her actual feelings, largely because in a film about a sudden onset of solitude, Pölsler is far too afraid of silence.
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