REEDLAND (RIETLAND) – Review by Nadine Whitney
Only questions remain in Reedland (Rietland) Sven Bresser’s slowly building film of the anxiety of uncertainty.
Ruination appears to be Bresser’s theme. In a small and increasingly compromised Overijssel community in the rural Netherlands, Johan (non-professional actor and reed farmer Gerrit Knobbe), a generational reed farmer finds the dead and raped body of a young local teen. Simultaneously his village is facing external financial and political issues: the price of their main product, dried reeds for thatching is dropping, the lease conditions are changing for farmers, there is a large pressure put on those who hand cut (or mow) the reeds to upgrade to threshers and other heavy agricultural equipment they can’t really afford and will cause damage to the land. A barely investigated murder allows for supposition and a firmer stance against outsiders among the locals, but as for it’s truly horrific impact of a dead girl being so violently ended, it seems to hover most particularly in Johan’s psyche. Ruination appears to be Bresser’s theme. Whether sudden or inevitable, or simply a no longer sustainable way of life, there will come a time in the not-so-distant future where the village’s way of life simply fades away.
Johan is caring for his pre-teen granddaughter, Dana during her term at the local school. As with many aspects of the film we never see his daughter Aalf or know the reason why Dana (Loïs Reinders) is there. Many things in Bresser’s film simply are. The ritual of reed mowing, bailing, and burning. The xenophobia of the village. The landscape which is at once overwhelmingly beautiful and forbidding. He is a caring Opa and assists in her imaginative pursuits. However, he also seems to feel an attraction to a girl only a few years older than Dana. Aleida (Anna Loeffen), the daughter of his friend, who having blossomed in puberty is aware of when something feels uncomfortable. A ride offered home in a rainstorm becomes heavy with discomfort despite Aleida nor Johan barely interacting with each other. Perhaps it is that lack of interaction and conversation which speaks of a change in the dynamics – once a defined child is resembling womanhood and the older man is no longer a neutral or paternal presence. The balance is askew in Johan’s life and the audience questions his actions and intentions, not because they necessarily believe him guilty of a murder, but because after the murder he believes something untrustworthy in himself.
Johan’s life seems to have stayed in its rhythm and ritual even after the death of his wife. What challenges the man is the finding of the murdered girl in his field of reeds. He begins to question the narrative that a “trooter” (a farmer from a village across the river) was responsible and understands the culprit might be closer to home, but how close? Unexplained events occur which lead to Johan enacting unfathomable behaviour. What is the evil? Who is evil? Where does it come from?
There’s a correlation between Hamaguchi’s Evil Does Not Exist and Reedland. A way of life will be violently or otherwise brought to an end and a man who has formed a pact with the unknowable and vast vicissitudes of the environment is placed in the centre of the tension. The murdered girl who we learn so little about fades into the background, but the sense of profound wrongness does not.
The cinematography and sound design are haunting. Because so few characters either stay in the frame long enough to make an impact, or they’re essentially unreadable, Bresser builds up the environment to be expressive. The torrential rain. The noise of the reeds in the wind. The colour of the reeds and their (psychologically) varying heights and density. The early evening fire stacks and the smoke. One scene in particular makes the audience aware that something is happening in the corner of a frame the camera then obscures leaving them lost in the reeds and the canopies of trees. A small tar or oil pit is initially easy to mistake for the night sky.
If you want easy answers, defined heroes and villains, and a sense of potential ‘better days to come’ Reedland will disappoint. However, if you’re prepared to be immersed in stunning, mysterious, and bewildering depiction of a rarely depicted place, Reedland is transfixing and beguiling.
