Critics reviews

The idea of escaping to the idyllic solitude of a Walden-like locale has an allure in our hyperdigital age. But there’s a flip side, which comes quietly and unsettlingly to life in “The Wall,”... Thoreau could return to society whenever he pleased; the protagonist in “The Wall” doesn’t have that luxury.

Intriguing and mesmerising, The Wall is also demanding and unconventional. The occasionally didactic voiceover may be off-putting for some, but if you surrender to the style and premise, it’s a rich and immensely rewarding film that begs repeat viewing.

Julian Roman Pölsler's bewitching debut manages to be at once a creepy sci-fi parable, a feminist Robinson Crusoe and a clear-eyed ode to the wonders of nature experienced in solitude.

Despair and solitude could render this a potentially pessimistic work of science fiction, or a satirical one... [but] it’s a more consoling and strangely utopian vision — a Walden-esque one, with lengthy passages of voiceover, interspersed with Bach partitas, giving it a somewhat over-emphatic philosophical cast.

Taking a high concept and diluting it into the type of reflective didactic that the likes of Andrei Tarkovsky became renowned for, The Wall is an intimate and tender study of isolation and the effects of solitude upon the mind.

This endless blanket of disembodied words continually undermines both the spectacular views of Austria’s Salzkammergut and Gedeck’s steely physical performance, and also makes it nearly impossible to reflect in the moment on what the wall and its imposed isolation are meant to represent. (Depression, most likely.)

“The Wall” seems to be telling the story about assimilation, about a woman who accepts her lot and attempts to persevere through the cruelest of conditions, an unspoken martyr. Perhaps it would carry much more power had she not been so chatty.

Just as Pölsler, who at times resorts to a heavy-handed use of slow motion to overemphasize the dramatic nature of the story’s events, exhibits too little trust in his visuals to convey the film’s message, he shows even less trust in the audience’s ability to follow both the plot and the implications of his protagonist’s actions without quick, sometimes even preemptive explication.

The wall is an undeniable presence, both solidly tangible and, thanks to some stunning sound design, resonantly audible as it redefines and demarcates the Woman's newly cloistered life. Yet the wall's very invisibility, and the total absence of any explanation for its existence, also lend it a metaphorical construction, as though it might represent the claustrophobia that comes with depression, the isolation that comes with loneliness or marginalisation, or the 'glass ceiling' that has formed part of so many women's experience in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Austrian TV vet Julian Roman Poelsler imbues his widescreen adaptation of the Marlen Haushofer novel with a certain visual majesty, but since the protagonist is always alone, the film relies exclusively on voiceover to suggest her thoughts, inadvertently turning it into something akin to a well-illustrated audiobook.

Narrated in flashback as the Woman writes up her experiences, the picture’s cerebral sombreness signals we’d be foolish to expect any explanations or resolution. The only significant drama revolves around Lynx’s unfortunate fate...

Sparse music includes Bach partitas played by violinist Julia Fischer; but sound design is paramount, from the ambient landscape noise to the wall’s unsettling electronic hum. Pölsler is a veteran TV director, but The Wall is intensely cinematic – a high-risk, high-intelligence drama that will be intensely rewarding for viewers willing to scale its rarefied but heady heights.