"The Dstettensaga: The Rise of Eschenfried" is a social-commentary sausage, run through a Monty Python meat grinder and seasoned with a sprinkling of "Kin-dza-dza!" Two heroes search for the elusive Echsenfriedl (translation: Freddy Lizard) as they wonder a post-apocalyptic world armed with the "newest" gadgets (a VHS camera and a "field telephone" connected to a 10-foot-tall satellite dish carted around in a wheelbarrow). Most of the movie has an a no-budget, anti-aesthetic, DIY, zombie-flashmob vibe, while other parts are beautifully filmed and prove surprisingly striking. The soundtrack sounds like a 8-bit video game, which suits the retro-nostalgic content and visuals.
The main plot, of a out-of-date media mogul who tries to stop progress (which here means "Tele-O-Vision"), is part satire and part parable about old vs. new, how the latest thing soon becomes problematic and old-hat and usurped by yet another new thing, and so on. Some of the satire may resonate most in Northern Europe (one plot thread has farmer collectives capture travelers and make them fill out faded EU grant applications before cannibalizing them for slow food). But if you're been wondering where you can see people wearing tinsel dance around a gravel pit singing into a vibrator about free markets, this is the place.
There are some good lines ("My dear, I wish I could show you on a rag doll where Baby Jesus has touched me."), but most of the humor comes from funny ideas. At first it is unclear why a militia of heavily armed postal workers is manning checkpoints and confiscating technology until one asks, "Who will have to do the dirty work when everything goes wrong again with the New Media? We, of course! The Postal Services! And the Postal Partner Militias And the carrier pigeon raisers."
Certainly, this is the only movie set in the Austrian Alps to declare that "the hills are alive with the sound of illiterate nostalgics!"
The main plot, of a out-of-date media mogul who tries to stop progress (which here means "Tele-O-Vision"), is part satire and part parable about old vs. new, how the latest thing soon becomes problematic and old-hat and usurped by yet another new thing, and so on. Some of the satire may resonate most in Northern Europe (one plot thread has farmer collectives capture travelers and make them fill out faded EU grant applications before cannibalizing them for slow food). But if you're been wondering where you can see people wearing tinsel dance around a gravel pit singing into a vibrator about free markets, this is the place.
There are some good lines ("My dear, I wish I could show you on a rag doll where Baby Jesus has touched me."), but most of the humor comes from funny ideas. At first it is unclear why a militia of heavily armed postal workers is manning checkpoints and confiscating technology until one asks, "Who will have to do the dirty work when everything goes wrong again with the New Media? We, of course! The Postal Services! And the Postal Partner Militias And the carrier pigeon raisers."
Certainly, this is the only movie set in the Austrian Alps to declare that "the hills are alive with the sound of illiterate nostalgics!"