Subtle imagery, soaring landscapes and the unspoken troubles of old age are the focal foundations of Ludwig Wüst’s brusque film, DEPARTURE (AUFBRUCH). The story takes us on a lucid journey of two strangers accidentally encountering each other in the country, both struggling with personal grief and head out wandering from an abandoned woodshop to a rundown house in the country.
The lack of dialogue at points is so unnerving that it becomes amusing, with just the faint buzz of the three-wheeled canary motor trundling across the barren, Austrian wilderness. It dips into focusing on monosyllabic Foley sound effects; the gripping of the muscles in his hands as he saws, footsteps crunching across the autumnal landscape – the abruptness of this is uncomfortably captivating. The relationship between the two is comfortable and content, but one might find the atmosphere suspenseful in regards to questioning the motives of the characters and their true intentions. They seldom speak, but just accept the pain each other is experiencing unconditionally.
DEPARTURE is portrayed as completely raw and unsettling, the viewer sinking deeper into their chair, torn, as the woman (Claudia Martini) crumbles against the wall, sobbing, lit only by a single window. The contrast of her darkened silhouette against the wall is hauntingly tragic. Moments later, she is seen flinging herself at the bare wood, slathering it in white paints with her hands as the shot pans out, a desperate attempt to shed light on an altogether gloomy location. The man (Ludwig Wüst) walks out and places the flowers at her feet, still silent, as she spreads them out in a forlorn, almost ceremonial manner.
The film navigates the theme of ageing and loss through symbolisation and imagery, as words cannot always capture the moment when everything feels lost and hopeless. They reach a pause later on, a wooden cross he constructed carried out onto the lake, the single hammering of a distant drum interpreted as an omen of death. She grips a portrait of someone once lost, taking momentary peace in the gushing of the water.
The framing of the wide-angle shots is austere and stark, the barren aesthetic nature being all too familiar. When they finally speak, the stories navigate the cracks in the road of life, the unsuspecting potholes and inability to control the future.
A feature at the 68th Berlin Film Festival, the piece is captivating in an individualistic, artistic way. Their journey together is tedious and frustrating, the pace carrying too slowly at times, but could be forgiven for its visual profoundness. Wüst commented that his inspiration draws on the Japanese proverb: Mono No Aware ‘the sadness for the passing of things’. Entrails of empathy may seep out as a viewer, only exposed to brief contexts of the characters’ sadness which is understood regardless. It edges on too long on occasions, but the final scenes navigating the deep, inner torment they both face helps to regain its captive allure.