WOODLAND (TIFF 2023) – Review by Rachel West
A naked woman tilts her head back and screams into the sky in the opening frames of Elisabeth Scharang’s Woodland. It’s a compelling and bold way to begin a film that will quietly tell a story filled with anger, fear, trauma, forgiveness, and, ultimately, healing.
Woodland is inspired by Doris Knecht’s novel Wald and Scharang’s personal experience witnessing a 2020 terrorist attack by a shooter in Vienna which left four people dead and 23 others injured.
In the film, Marian (Brigitte Hobmeier) is a successful woman with a career and a husband she loves until she witnesses a terror attack in Vienna. Though her external injuries heal, the internal ones continue to damage her emotional and mental well-being. Fleeing the city to her late grandparents’ country farmhouse and the village where she grew up, Marian slowly begins to repair the traumatic effects of the attack. Marian slowly regains her sense of freedom and purpose by confronting the uncomfortable past and reconnecting with her childhood friends Gerti (Gerti Drassi) and Franz (Johannes Kirsch).
Her third theatrical feature film, Scharang directs the story with grace and ease, never allowing the camera to feel intrusive. Together with the simply radiant Hobmeier, Woodland is able to say so much without needing too many words. In virtually every scene of the film, she fills the quiet moments of solitude with a range of emotions. There is so much here that is left unsaid, the internal workings of her mind playing out with grace through her movements. Despite the remoteness and lack of electricity or hot water, in the woods, Marian finds the freedom she hasn’t known since she was a child. For her, this escape brings challenging questions of what it really means to have a “comfort zone”, and more importantly, what happens when the illusion of safety is shattered. Questioning everything she valued and placed importance on in her urban city life, Maria’s path forward through life is ever-changed by her time spent on her own.
A secondary story of friendship and healing old relationship wounds runs through Woodland, and Scharang has tapped another dynamic performer in co-star Drassi. As Marian and Gerti’s friendship thaws with time, it’s a pleasure to watch the two actors build their chemistry on screen. What does it mean to be the friend left behind when teenage years come to an end and the big city beckons? It’s a struggle that Marian faces and the ire of the villagers who look down on her for turning her back on her country life.
The film is a beauty to watch. Set in the fall and winter, you can almost smell the crisp fall air through cinematographer Jörg Widmer’s lens. A past collaborator of Terrence Malick and Wim Wenders, Woodland is visually striking as Marian stalks across a farmer’s land or jogs through the verdant wood.
A soul-searching drama, Woodland is an appropriately moody and healing experience, that should resonate with a TIFF audience and beyond.
