Kritiken

It is a new film that observes old rules in the same manner as other slightly less new films, only to slide imperceptibly into other sets of less obvious rules. But perhaps most radically, Gold adopts an immediately apparent gesture—providing a German riff on the most American of film genres—only to slyly reveal a different approach. Arslan's film, to its bones, is secretly Canadian.

Set in 1898, Gold is frustratingly evasive about its period setting and is more interested in the (less interesting) playoffs between its ensemble of stiff stereotypes, led by stoically heroic Nina Hoss, who commands the screen with the more internalised emotional register for which she's become known.

Arslan's film lacks the rigor and nuance of Reichardt's film, instead offering an accidental parody of the expedition-film complete with twangy guitar swells and wise locals who caution our band of outsiders about proceeding through the threatening terrain.

Although it fits neatly into the trek-through-the-west subgenre, Gold oscillates between calm, contemplative sociodrama typical of the Berliner Schule and deadpan action-comedy... If the music buoys the film from art-house melancholia, then the final act lets it veer toward classic cowboy-movie terrain.

...A film so terrible it almost legitimizes accusations of programmer bias towards German productions. Overlong and exasperatingly tedious...

...Much of my adult life has been spent in Germany, looking at the country and its people through American eyes; further, much of my youth was spent in Texas, a state seeped to the bone in pioneer lore. To see these Germans in their Karl May costumes and to hear them discuss coping with the rugged land and being overwhelmed (eventually quite literally) by the sheer vastness of the North American continent just sounds all sorts of chords—for me.