THE END OF THE WORLD WEEK - IT'S THE TIME OF THE WOLF

Ok, as we said we are going to do this “end of the world movie” thing with a touch of class. And the point of this post - and in fact this film - is that there is more to the world ending than fire-balls and dinosours. This, of course, is Michael Haneke’s classic film “The Time Of The Wolf”. No special effects here. No actual apocalypse to speak of either. Haneke has focused on something that is probably more important. The catastrophe has come and gone, leaving devastation in its wake. How will the survivors cope?
As far as we can gather, we are in France. A family of four are journeying towards their summer house. An unnamed catastrophe has shaken the county (perhaps the whole world, who knows…) and they hope that they will be safer outside the city in the countryside. The moment they arrive they realize how wrong they were to think that. Lack of provisions has plunged the entire countryside into desperation. Money has no value anymore; people are reduced to “exchanging goods”. Men on horses with guns sell water at exorbitant prices instead of moonshine liquor. You might be robbed at any time, disease is everywhere and survival is a very, VERY tough game indeed…
The aim of the film (as we can confirm from the interviews with the director and cast as well) is to bring a sense of devastation and desperation to people who live in comfort most of their lives while wars and famine ravage three quarters of the globe. A lot of the characters we meet, including our heroes, are as far as we can tell normal middle class people who led very ordinary lives until this nameless crisis occurred. They struggle to cope, they break down from time to time, and they try to hold on. In the end, they figure out ways of surviving, and in the process revert to ancient practices, exchanging goods being just one of them. Stealing has become common practice. If a murder occurs, you need to provide hard evidence or deal with it yourself, rule of law and justice have all become ancient luxuries. The camera in the film is more of a spectator. It doesn’t narrate per se. Or rather, it doesn’t put the viewer in an “omnipotent” position. You know what I mean, that whole breed of films where the viewer always knows a lot more of the whole picture as opposed to the characters. In this film we nearly always know less. I mean, it’s very basic, we don’t even know what this apocalyptic crisis is. There are various hints in the film that it could be connected to water. We notice the lack of animals and birdsong in the woods. In fact, animals seem to be dying left and right. But apart from that nothing. Another thing you can’t help feeling is distinct alienation as we watch people coping somehow, often doing things we couldn’t imagine ourselves doing. And yet we see it happen, well dressed middle class women who could be your neighbor, selling their bodies for food. Stealing. Killing horses and roasting them on open fires.
Yes, it’s nasty, but the whole point of the film is to make you stop and think. You have to remember that this is the day to day reality of some people. And that, dear friends, merits one heck of a lot of thinking about…