Yes, I am well aware of the fact this movie was in some way "seminal" and was banned in the former GDR for a very long time. Nonetheless it is a quite sluggish and dull film, as dull and boring as the stuffy East German state with its peculiar preachy economy of scarcity in general. Besides, it is at least half an hour too long in its runtime, with many irrelevant scenes and - let's be outright - a couple of characters you don't really care about. Manfred Krug is as good as always, a true professional actor, but the story is not at all captivating. So let's not interpret too many cinematic ideas into this movie. It's simply a fairly dull piece of art that had the chance of being politically adverse to socialist mainstream back in 1966. Otherwise nobody would be discussing it any more today.
Review of Trace of Stones
