Horst in Translation ([email protected]) "Die Siebtelbauern" is an Austrian German-language movie from 1998, so it will have its 20th anniversary the year after next year. The writer and director is Stefan Ruzowitzky and this film was selected to be Austria's official submission to the Oscars that year. And even if it did not get the nomination, it is still interesting from the perspective that Ruzowitzky won an Oscar for another submission ("Die Fälscher") several years later. But back to this one here. It features Austrian (because that's Ruzoqitzky's origin) and German actors playing the main characters and quite a few of these are still very well-known today to German film buffs. The story is about a terrible crime that happens, but actually what happens afterward is really the real tragedy, namely the huge challenge for the members of a small community in dealing with the aftermath, especially from an economic perspective. But there are also all kinds of other genres in here such as occasionally dark comedy (coming from the narration mostly) and romance as well. For the actors playing the main characters, it was a bit of a breakthrough work that allowed them to have a career to this date, almost two decades later. But I personally must say that even if the acting was fairly solid for the most part, I never really managed to develop an interest in the story and the characters for the most part. Maybe you need to be Austrian to appreciate it or just like Ruzowizky's style more than I do. I was underwhelmed almost during the entirety of the film and there were not that many moments I would consider good or even memorable at all. This is why I give "The Inheritors" a thumbs-down and I suggest you to watch something else instead.

rmanory Whenever I see a movie which deals with injustice stories I feel frightened that it may happen to me. Turn of the 20-th century Austria under the Keiser was otherwise a 'modern' country by European standards, and yet such an injustice story is very credible, and it could have happened elsewhere(although not exactly in the same way in classless rural America). The story line is tragic: a land-owner who has been ruthless and evil during his lifetime, is found dead. For an unknown reason he decides to be generous in his death and leaves his property to the ten peasants who were working on it. The plot thickens. The 'peasants' are not supposed to become property owners. The fact that they do own property now causes trouble with the rest of the village farmers who are unwilling to accept the new breed of farmers, they try to burn their property and this causes a chain of events in which Lukas, the main character, is killed and the others have to flee to America. The lawlessness of the ruling class is the topic here, and it hurts to see how much power they have.A second story line is that of another injustice, that done to Rosalind, the mother Lukas never knew, and who turns out to be the one who killed the farmer because of what he did to her when she was young. In a story resembling Charles Dikens's dramas, she was raped by the farmer and then accused of stealing from him. Her child is Lukas, who never knew his mother,and also never knew who was his father, growing up as 'the foundling' and being ridiculed by everyone in the village. The only flaw I found with this movie is that there are a few flat characters, such as the former foreman, who have no real reason for being so evil. The idea is the communist idea, of the exploitation of the poor by the rich, and the existence of the oppressing class society in old Europe. The idea of injustice by the rich and powerful is not new and can be found also in westerns. The film would have been more satisfying however if the final outcome would have been more positive, good overcoming evil in their own society. But of course, one cannot change the course of history, and indeed at that point in time the only way out of the situation would not have been fighting the system but fleeing to America.

GrafZahl The old farmer, a real tyrant, dies. Since he has no (legal) offspring the other local farmers are already dividing his legacy among themselves. But surprisingly, the farm-workers inherit the farm. Since a labourer cannot be accepted as a farmer, incredible waves of intrigues and brutality close over the seven brave inheritors. A fight for justice and life arises.Once you have adopted yourself to the strange camera work this movie will not leave you untouched. The acting is great. Normally, if you have rebels in a film, they are perfect, always good, and superior. These heroes are labourers, uneducated, they have never seen anything more of the world than their valley, and they are absolutely indelicate, and only some of them are real fighters for justice.This is great cinema!

KenE I guess it's a measure of how effectively placed the class-war business of Austria's "The Inheritors" is, since so many people seem to think it takes place in the 19th century. Actually, the film is set in the early 1930s, with the shadow of the coming storm of Nazism and WWII ready to obliterate everything we're seeing, anyway.