I WAS AT HOME, BUT

Angela Schanelec’s cinematic opus is defined by unhealed scars. A cinema we are at the mercy of. In I Was at Home, But, which earned the German filmmaker the award for Best Director at the Berlin Film Festival, every image reveals the insistent sensation of injured vulnerability. Oscillating elliptically between the past and the present, we are shown people who need each other, and people who need to be alone. Including a mother who is looking for her own liveliness (excellently played by one of Schanelec’s preferred actresses, Maren Eggert). She is suffering from the loss of her husband and the impossibility of doing justice to her children. Every image of the film is the reproduction of a desperate inner voice. Every fragment alludes to something we can’t see. Be it the cautious rustling of leaves, a trembling scream or the nocturnal visits to the graveyard to lie in the moss, accompanied by the song of a quail and the saddest cover version of “Let’s Dance”. Only the pure and life-affirming presence of children and animals can create an adequate counterweight. We sense that even long after the end credits, this film will not find a conclusion.