Ragged peasants inherit master's riches in movie

Thursday, October 29, 1998

FILM: Brilliant direction, talented cast pass down

experiences to audience

By Ricky Herzog

Daily Bruin Contributor

A huge inheritance from someone you despise would seem to be an unexpectedly wonderful blessing, but life is always more complicated than that. Director Stefan Ruzowitzky builds a complex social drama on this intriguing premise.

"The Inheritors" is a brilliant, almost mythical tale of seven Austrian peasants who, after their cruel master's mysterious murder, inherit his entire farm. Set in the timeless past, when a strict social stratification governed the land, the peasants meet the resistance of a community bent on upholding the status quo (in other words, not allowing peasants to become important landowners overnight). The powerful farmer Danninger (Ulrich Wildgruber) becomes their main opponent, pushing them down at every possible turn. Along the way, Ruzowitzky aptly chronicles the peasant's hopes, mistakes, triumphs and tragedies. As the film comes to a head, one intensely dramatic night shapes their lives forever.

In the hands of a lesser director, "The Inheritors" could easily have slipped into an over-sentimentalized account of the plight of the peasant. Ruzowitzky, however, always maintains a firm control over the film. He deftly incorporates various perspectives, fleshed out characters and beautiful, natural cinematography.

Being largely an ensemble film, the cast, made up of Austrian stage and film actors, has the difficult task of holding the film together with powerful, believable chemistry and interaction. They more than live up to the job, as each character is infused with a complexity and fullness all their own.

As Emmy, the intelligently determined peasant woman constantly standing up to a community trying to suppress her, Sophie Ross delivers the film's stand-out performance, giving her character strength, pride, vulnerability and morality all at once.

The narrator Severin (Lars Rudolph) provides the film's outside perspective, as a city man who has moved back to the country and reflects upon the events around him. Though he has comparatively little screen time, Rudolph manages to turn what could have been a simple "everyman" character into an emotionally complex human. And as the peasant's nemesis and a symbol of old world rigidity, Danninger (Ulrich Wildbruger) has a grandly commanding screen presence that evokes a shiver of fear each time he appears.

The brilliance of "The Inheritors," aside from stellar directing and acting, is that it defies genre; it plays out as a morality tale, psychological drama, mythical history and class struggle rolled into one. Though set in the past, the themes and struggles depicted in the film are universal, giving it a timeless relevance. Quite simply, Ruzowitzky has created a small masterpiece.

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