"Schultze Gets the Blues" is like a German "Straight Story" crossed with the Lou Reed lyric "couldn't believe what (he) heard at all . . . (his) life was saved by rock 'n' roll" though here it's a folk music revelation for a guy literally laid off from a salt mine who is saved.
Here, the power of music that reaches through the speakers and speaks directly to him in the heart of traditional Bavaria is the zydeco music of the Louisiana bayous. Like the obsessed Blues Brothers on a mission from God, he is powerfully drawn to the source.
Leisurely paced, there are frequent shots of modern windmills that keep emphasizing how quixotic his quest is, though he is surrounded by equally eccentric people with dreams, such as a waitress who wants to dance "ole," a friend's son seeking a motorcycle championship, a nursing home resident who longs to gamble at a casino and a railroad gate operator who spouts poetry.
The various physical landscapes figure almost as much as the music as the camera sweeps over the home and away environments Schultze explores, though it's more than a bit fantastical as I'm not sure his travels are geographically possible.
Much of the leisurely paced film is of the one simplistic joke per scene variety around the dumpy figure of Horst Krause as Schultze in incongruous situations or activities, but overall it is charming, especially due to the natural, open-hearted characters he disarmingly meets up with everywhere.
Seeing him play a zydeco tune at an Oktoberfest is very similar to the bluegrass performers in the Finnish movie "Man Without A Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä)." While "The Commitments" made a stronger case for cross-cultural empathy in why the Irish could perform African-American soul music, ethnomusicologist Nick Spitzer of the public radio American Routes show would be delighted at how the movie weaves a story while affectionately and amusingly tracing the accordion from the Bavarian polka through Czech immigrants to Tex Mex music to the Cajun descendants of the French Arcadians and on to the creole amalgamation that is zydeco.
Here, the power of music that reaches through the speakers and speaks directly to him in the heart of traditional Bavaria is the zydeco music of the Louisiana bayous. Like the obsessed Blues Brothers on a mission from God, he is powerfully drawn to the source.
Leisurely paced, there are frequent shots of modern windmills that keep emphasizing how quixotic his quest is, though he is surrounded by equally eccentric people with dreams, such as a waitress who wants to dance "ole," a friend's son seeking a motorcycle championship, a nursing home resident who longs to gamble at a casino and a railroad gate operator who spouts poetry.
The various physical landscapes figure almost as much as the music as the camera sweeps over the home and away environments Schultze explores, though it's more than a bit fantastical as I'm not sure his travels are geographically possible.
Much of the leisurely paced film is of the one simplistic joke per scene variety around the dumpy figure of Horst Krause as Schultze in incongruous situations or activities, but overall it is charming, especially due to the natural, open-hearted characters he disarmingly meets up with everywhere.
Seeing him play a zydeco tune at an Oktoberfest is very similar to the bluegrass performers in the Finnish movie "Man Without A Past (Mies vailla menneisyyttä)." While "The Commitments" made a stronger case for cross-cultural empathy in why the Irish could perform African-American soul music, ethnomusicologist Nick Spitzer of the public radio American Routes show would be delighted at how the movie weaves a story while affectionately and amusingly tracing the accordion from the Bavarian polka through Czech immigrants to Tex Mex music to the Cajun descendants of the French Arcadians and on to the creole amalgamation that is zydeco.