A woman attempts to sort through her past while also dealing with the traumatic repercussions of surviving a terrorist attack in Elisabeth Scharang’s elliptical film “Woodland,” based on Doris Knect’s 2015 WALD. A non-linear slow burn that’s more interested in unpacking the layers of trauma that Marian (Brigette Hobmeier) is dealing with than outright showing the aftermath of the terrorist attack, Scharang’s film works best when it’s narrowed in on the small farming community she returns to, less so when it skirts around her present-day relationships and the actual shooting that serves as the inciting incident for her trip back.
READ MORE: Toronto International Film Festival 2023: 26 Must-See Films To Watch At TIFF
It’s also more concerned with the configurations of three people who had been romantically involved before Marian up and left the town that she grew up in, abandoning her mother in the process. Gerti (Gerti Drassl) and Franz (Johannes Krisch) make up the two other points of the triangle as Marian woozily walks through the town, directly confronted by the memories that she tried to escape from. Here, Scharang slows down enough to individualize the townsfolk, doling out Marian’s backstory to each of them throughout the film.
The connections between the three are quite obvious — involving unrequited feelings and a late-act revelation — but they are nevertheless delicately handled, as Scharang fluidly moves between present and past, Alarich Lenz’s editing rhyming narrative beats in a way that never feels forced. These trips into the past are also punctuated by Marian’s husband (Bogdan Dumitrache), who occasionally comes into town, reminding Marian of the life that she cannot yet get back to.
But, Scharang also lingers often on the complicated relationship between former best friends Marian and Gerti. Gerti now keeps Marian at arm’s length, considering she’s already abandoned her once. This is all interesting, but it also plays out in too many scenes that often feel like variations on a single theme, despite lived-in performances by Hohmeier and Drassl. By the time Marian and Gerti begin their reconciliation, we’ve seen too many shots of the two distanced from each other. A similar feeling crops up with a subplot involving Gerti’s angry father that culminates in a particularly violent way that seems out of character, even if its echoes to the terrorist attack feel obvious.
It’s also a bold choice to simultaneously stress the centrality of the terrorist incident to Marian while also only presenting it in quick fragments. We never pause too much on the gory details but instead are shown Marian’s own subjective experience in an almost blink-and-you-’ll-miss-it fashion. Less successful, however, is her relationship with her husband, which is never really properly developed. Why he’s kept on the periphery is only hinted at, a somewhat frustrating choice considering the narrative space that is given to Gerti and Franz.
Shot by Terrence Malick’s DP Jorg Widmer (“A Hidden Life” and, if it’s ever released, “The Way of the Wind”), “Woodland’s” naturalistic style works well, juxtaposing the expansive yet dreary farmland with Marian’s internalized grief. Late in the film, when Marian becomes sick, Widmer eschews the previous naturalism for something more ethereal (and more in line with his Malick collaboration). While Marian devolves further into sickness, the life she ran away from literalizes.
It’s quite a breathtaking moment in a film that is consistently beautiful but also one that never calls attention to itself. That sentiment goes for the entire film, as well. Scharang has crafted a quiet, contemplative film and, in the end, a moving exploration of how the past constantly informs the present. [B+]
Follow along with all our coverage of the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival.