The indifference of a dangerous mind A stranger opens the door and enters a room where dozens of people are chatting lively. At first, no one pays attention to the newcomer, but gradually those present, one by one, show interest: he says little, carefully selecting words, giving them more weight; unobtrusively jokes, and his humor, sometimes black, cheers and makes him smile. Similar was the appearance in the cinema of Thomas Sieben: the entered speaks thoughtfully, slowly, his words drag him into a world where silence rings, where there is no past and future - only an empty "now"; there the distance of one from all is an impartial given, and the actions of one against all are not attempts to reduce it, only its inevitable consequence. Rapidly mounting statements in a single film text, the “stranger” tells how quietly they go mad.
At the distance of a pebble dropped from a bridge onto a car, a closed Daniel is kept from people. Day work in the garden, obedient performance of their duties and monosyllabic answers to annoying colleagues. In the evening, stones from the bridge and television for sleep. What if? One day a cobblestone will fly off the bridge. One day, the guy will witness the murder of a fox: a shot will sound, one will separate from the group of hunters to look closer at the animal, then everyone will leave together. Everything will be like this: meaningless, unnecessary, easy and fun. He will bend over a dead body in a field, stroke red hair, feel blood on his fingers. What if? He'll go hunting. Driven by revenge? But he doesn't care about the unfortunate hunters. “The more I get to know people, the more I love ... killing them,” Daniel probably thinks. Probably, since it is hardly possible to trace the course of his thoughts in a still look. Often the camera freezes in place, admiring a pale face, but does not help to penetrate into the fenced-off world, rather, reminds of the difficulty of this. Everything will be like this: meaningless, unnecessary, easy and fun. His victims will disappear instantly and quietly: there will be no background music that can emphasize the sense of tragedy of what is happening, there will be no torments and death agony. A ridiculous death, a social anti-advertising of a healthy lifestyle. He'll bend over a dead body in the park, feel blood on his fingers. This is how one unsociable person will put another experience.
So one mentally unstable person will go a distance (long? short?) to want to hunt other than animals. The shell of alienation gradually breaks when an attractive employee falls in love with him. And perhaps it would be wrong to say that nothing has changed in Daniel’s life since Yana appeared. Music is already playing in the apartment, although before that the silence here was broken only by the background noise of TV in the evenings. A young couple begins to live together, repairs are started, and the hallway is painted in life-affirming yellow. Yana is the blonde talkative catalyst of the silent gardener’s inner struggle. A bag with a rifle from a temporary shelter behind the sofa in the living room moves under the bed in the bedroom, then moves to the barn with working tools, so that it seems to dust there on the top shelf from now on. It seemed, because to get it out of there and go to a favorite hunting place is still pulling. People like Daniel look like empty closets – opening them, you find nothing inside. From the open cabinets in his apartment, as well as from his eyes, the void looks at Jan. Not hot, not cold - a stranger, and she does not seek to be filled with communication, affection.
Such a case of personality disorder is practically untreatable, and manifestations of violence are not explained by traumas of the past. Perhaps this is dictated by the approach of Thomas Sieben to the study of the nature of insanity, the sudden desire to kill, which will manifest itself in the next tape Staudamm: not to delve into the past, not to look for explanations, causes, but to present the phenomenon through the prism of effects, to study the manifestations of characters in given circumstances. Playing distance on different levels: alternation of general and close-up plans, emotional distance of the hero from other people and from himself. Ironically, the director also remains indifferent to him: does not dispense with moralizing, does not leave hope for sympathy, does not write a detailed portrait of a psychopath. Controls and observes. In the distance. In the traditions of the Berlin school, it is realistic, approaching documentary in style. Such a "distance" could be dry and uninteresting, without the pervasive darkness of indifference, permeated by the rays of un daring feeling. In the clash of opposites that cannot be attracted, the question arises: is love able to change something, to correct it in a person? Is this person able to respond to the feeling that instead of his heart, he has a black hole? Not for long fills the aching void another's death. Desire to kill. The urge to kill that desire. In both cases, a small distance, figuratively several steps. Same way?