“Custody of a white horse is one of several bones of contention between Bulgarian locals and visiting German laborers in Valeska Grisebach’s Western, a dispute that takes on the most classic symbolic dimension of the traditional oater,” begins Guy Lodge in Variety. “Does he who rides the white horse also get to be the good guy? That’s one of several oblique ways in which the eponymous genre improbably bleeds into this quietly involving culture-clash drama, down to its lone-wolf protagonist (Meinhard Neumann): a strong, mostly silent stranger whose incursions into the Bulgarian community set masculine tensions flaring on both sides. A welcome return for writer-helmer Grisebach, ending the too-long hiatus that followed 2006’s heart-piercing Longing, Western lacks that film’s emotional force, but it’s a sharp, expertly slow burn.”
“Much of the drama and the character-play emerge in the film’s use of language, as Meinhard and the Bulgarians master enough of each other’s tongues to communicate effectively, looks and hand gestures filling in the gaps,” writes Jonathan Romney for Screen. “A Komplizen Film production, with Maren Ade amongst the producers, the film explores German presence in Eastern Europe with a curiosity and seriousness akin to Toni Erdmann’s scrutiny of corporate dealings in Romania, but here looking at the theme on level of grassroots personal and community relations in an enclosed, traditional culture that is about to be transformed, somewhat aggressively, by the outsiders.”
“Whether the residents and the interlopers will resort to violence or learn to trust each other is the driving question of the film,” writes Ben Kenigsberg at RogerEbert.com, “and the answer, never simple, varies whether the matter at hand is money, the men's attitude toward the village's women, or who has the right to control the water supply. The film's implicit subject is not just xenophobia but, in what's become a theme at Cannes in recent years, the state of the European Union, and particularly its struggles to reconcile between richer and poorer countries. The future Western proposes is less bleak than you might expect.”
“The film, which was shot without a traditional screenplay, doesn’t quite follow a regular introduction-conflict-resolution template, and it thus takes a while for audiences to find their bearings amid this group of hard-working, uncouth but not necessarily unfriendly men,” writes Boyd van Hoeij for the Hollywood Reporter. “Western never quite comes together in the way that Longing did, where the titular emotion gave that film its laser-sharp focus.”
“Western is so far a high point in this festival” for Mónica Delgado at desistfilm and, writing for Cineuropa, where you’ll find a video interview with Grisebach, Fabien Lemercier finds the film “imbued with intelligence and a fantastic, creeping charm.” Kelsey Moore has a few questions for Grisebach at Women and Hollywood.
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