If I were to give someone a film from the Venice Film Festival, then the big names like Aronofsky, Baumbach, Iñárritu wouldn’t be there. No, it would be a small inconspicuous film that screamed its way into my heart in no time. It’s about Eismayer by David Wagner.
He tells the true story of a feared trainer in the Austrian sovereignwho falls in love with a male recruit. Think of the first half of Full Metal Jacket starring Drill Sergeant R. Lee Ermey as a romantic comedy and you’ll get the idea.
Eismayer will scream into your heart
Gerhard Liebmann (Blutgletscher) plays Charles Eismayer, a figure feared and ridiculed by conscripts and officers. Eismayer plagues his military apprentices. If the rifle sits crookedly during drill, there will be shouting. If the bed isn’t made properly, people scream. If there are signs of exhaustion, they scream. If there is screaming in anger at the treatment, then… there will be screaming.
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Eismayer
Eismayer is a tough guy who multiplies his disciplined personality by a hundred when he sees a uniform. He’s also gay, but not openly. Then the Bosnian-born recruit Mario Falak (Luka Dimic) is placed in front of him, who challenges Eismayer in three respects: he has a talent for weaponry, defies the instructor and is openly homosexual.
If Netflix romcoms were half as original…
This unlikely romcom couples must come together in the following minutes. The screenplay by David Wagner skilfully works with the classic stations of the genre through to the dramatic sprint to the lover shortly before the happy ending, as it occurs in Harry and Sally and so many other romantic comedies. The result is an engaging mixture: the sober everyday military life, the orders, the soldierly demeanor are on the list of ingredients. The magical intoxication of love and desire as well. In camouflage colors, of course.
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The standard RomCom product can only dream of such original contrasts. Netflix has more or less saved the romantic comedy in recent years after it led a sad existence in the cinema. But the results look more uniform than a regiment in rank and file.
If the estimated thousand comedies of the streaming service between The Kissing Booth and One Like No One were told halfway as original in form and content as Eismayer, the world would be a better place. Or at least the romantic comedy is a more varied genre.
Eismayer is an endearing RomCom, but also a nuanced take on images of masculinity
© Golden Girls Film Production
Eismayer
Glazing on cannons and machine guns is fortunately avoided in the Austrian film. This film is not out to trivialize or glorify military activity. The only beauty Wagner finds while training comes from nature. When the troops go to the mountains for an exercise, the conscripts stand in tremendous landscape panoramas. They should become people, acting as unyielding and callous as rock. But you just look lost.
The film already observes the human image that is formed in the Lord in the first few minutes in which the charismatic Mario starts work. Racist and homophobic insults are part of the tone, in Eismayer’s shouting and among the trainees.
Against the background of the military’s absurd heteronormative visions of masculinity, what men are looking for in them and what they want to hide under the camouflage colors is examined. In it he is reminiscent of classics like The Foreign Legionnaire, but also newer films like Moffie.
Although Eismayer’s look is reminiscent of the spartan corners of Austrian cinema (Seidl, Haneke, etc.), Eismayer remains a romantic comedy that gets a lot out of the bizarreness of the disciplined hustle and bustle. The best part: It’s over after 87 minutes and that suits his curt heroes quite well.