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Crime scene "The Lord of the Forest" from Saarbrücken: The horror continues

2021-04-02T14:23:02.703Z


Murder with a bow and arrow, crime fiction art at the highest level: The Saar “crime scene” about a violent crime in the forest shows how a thriller plot is confidently spun over several episodes.


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Scene from the Saar “crime scene”: cliffs, torrents, wild green

Photo: Manuela Meyer / SR

For once, let's start with the end: In this »crime scene«, a murder puzzle full of scenes of violence is solved at the end, but then there is a juicy cliffhanger that will not be resolved for the audience until the spring of next year.

There is only one Saar “crime scene” per year;

the next one should be shot from this May at the earliest.

Nevertheless, there is no doubt that the plot will be easy to return to when it is broadcast in 2022.

Because it is - so far at least - sensationally well built.

In the current episode, you are immediately back in the horizontal plot around the Saar investigative team, which began on Easter Monday a year ago.

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Actresses Brigitte Urhausen and Ines Marie Westernströer: Despite the strong plot, condemned to cue prose

Photo: Manuela Meyer / SR

You remember?

Commissioners Leo Hölzer (Vladimir Burlakov) and Adam Schürk (Daniel Sträßer) share a cruel secret from their youth;

one has beaten the violent father of the other into a coma, the crime they both covered over a fire.

Now the old man (Torsten Michaelis) has woken up after 15 years, and the meanwhile grown up childhood friends are anxiously asking themselves whether he can remember the act.

Willow man horror

At the same time, an archer hunts people in the forest on the other side of Saarbrücken's city limits.

A high school graduate was found dead in the moss with open wounds and open entrails; someone had put a pine branch on her lips, just as hunters do with their hunted prey.

Willow man's horror, Willow man's thanks.

The victim's classmates seem to know more about the bestial act than they want to tell the criminal investigation department.

So the commissioners have to expose the lies of others while trying to keep their own lies alive.

Scriptwriter Hendrik Hölzemann and Christian Theede - the two were also responsible for the opening episode of the young Saar team - succeeds in perfectly interlinking these opposing dynamics of uncovering and covering up.

With Hölzemann and Theede, two tell the story who apparently still have the first scene of the first episode in their head when they develop the last of the second - and then possibly see the first of the third in front of them again.

The wild nature as a mirror of the soul

In addition, the two filmmakers find a setting in the Saarbrücken area in which the troubled, complicated psychological situation of the investigators is reflected.

Cliffs, torrents, wild green.

In addition to a strong plot, this »crime scene« also has a strong look.

There are a few things that can be criticized: As always in the Saarbrücken “Tatort”, the female investigator characters are condemned to recite cue prose for their colleagues, and the male investigator characters are sometimes overdrawn.

Nor does "The Lord of the Forest" develop such a psychological and political sharpness as the previous episode about the residues of the German Nazi past in the West German present.

But all that is made up for by the long, calm breath with which those responsible dovetail the different levels and tonalities of their story.

This is particularly noteworthy because the thriller was created under the most difficult conditions in the Corona summer 2020 - when the film teams were initially forced to improvise after the first shutdown during the shoot.

You don't notice anything about the Saar shocker.

Clever, cool and cruel, the audience is directed into a horror scenario that does not end with the credits.

Rating:

9 out of 10 points

"Tatort: ​​The Lord of the Forest",

Easter Monday (!), 8.15 p.m., Das Erste

Source: spiegel

All life articles on 2021-04-02

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