Schmutz (Fritz Schediwy) is a watchman who takes his job very
seriously, one could even say he lives for his job. So when he and a young
colleague are assigned to watch over a run-down building complex, he sees
it as an honour - while his colleague is bored to death with watching
where there is essentially nothing to watch, and eventually, he brings
booze and prostitutes in - much to the dismay of Schmutz of course, who
almost blows the whistle on his young colleague.
Then the chief inspector (Hans-Michael Rehberg) of Schmutz' security
agency stops by and catches the young watchman drunk on the job and with
two women ... and fires him immediately. Schmutz on the other hand gets
sole responsibility of the whole complex, which he sees as nothing short
of the greatest honour yet, and he starts making up plans of how to secure
the complex even better ... but he also starts acting peculiar, like when
he finds a couple having sex on the premises, he smokes them out and
almost burns them alive. Then though the chief inspector stops by once
more and tells Schmutz the assignement is over since the owners of the
complex no longer need security - this is not to say Schmutz is fired, he
will just be assigned to another job. Schmutz though has by now gotten so
caught up in the job that he has a complete
breakdown, and he gets into such an argument with the chief inspector that
he is fired after all - which is just as well, since now Schmutz can keep
patrolling the complex day and night, and punish tresspassers at his own
liking, like shooting pigeons with bow and arrow and killing a little girl
who broke some windows.
Then though two demolition experts show up to blow up the whole complex
on behalf of its owners, and Schmutz sees no other alternative than to
kill them too - however, one of them manages to escape and notify the
authorities.
When the police arrives though, Schmutz has gone totally over the edge,
has built himself an altar and a totem to worship whatever strange deity
he believes in, and ultimately sets the whole place, including himself, on
fire ...
Weird and unsettling but nevertheless fascinating film about a man who
gets so lost in his job that he doesn't find a way out again, carried by a
very restrained performance by lead Fritz Schediwy as well as by poetic
imagery and by a deliberately slow pace including many silent scenes and the
occasional sudden shock - even if the shock scenes as such are decidedly
non-explicite, but all the more unsettling because of it.
Recommended.
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