Absurdism and minimalism are the basic ingredients for this one. It reminded me of Sånger från andra våningen / Songs from the Second Floor in composition and of Bagdad Cafe in storyline. Not much is said in this movie. Schultze leads a simple life after (and before) retirement with his two co-workers and friends. All events and actions happen around him; he has almost no influence on them or disapproval. There's a railway worker commenting the story, but he inexplicably disappears from the movie at some point.
Shots are almost all static with the action revolving in and around the frame. Many shots have a rigid, symmetric composition with many distant shots (When Schultze has a near-collision with a tanker, we see this only in a small part of the right upper corner of the screen).
The movie plays with stereotypes about Germans and Americans of each other. When Schultze is stuck with his boat in Louisiana he thinks the police will arrest him instead of help. American-German immigrants have a strange and watered-down view of life in Germany.
The whole idea is that Schultze breaks out of his own life by discovering blues music. But in contrast this movie ends up being a slave of its own form, therefore oddly the content is the reverse of the form.
Shots are almost all static with the action revolving in and around the frame. Many shots have a rigid, symmetric composition with many distant shots (When Schultze has a near-collision with a tanker, we see this only in a small part of the right upper corner of the screen).
The movie plays with stereotypes about Germans and Americans of each other. When Schultze is stuck with his boat in Louisiana he thinks the police will arrest him instead of help. American-German immigrants have a strange and watered-down view of life in Germany.
The whole idea is that Schultze breaks out of his own life by discovering blues music. But in contrast this movie ends up being a slave of its own form, therefore oddly the content is the reverse of the form.