Do you know what an okapi looks like? That weirdly misshapen forest giraffe that looks like it’s made up of different animals? No? Be happy. Because an okapi that appears in a dream brings death to someone in the village. At least with grandmother Selma (Corinna Harfouch) with certainty. Fate never makes exceptions, it just takes its time.
The cursed, recurring dream of the okapi is at the heart of Mariana Leky’s best-selling 2017 novel “What you can see from here”. A declaration of love to the German provinces – smart, entertaining, warm-hearted. The five years that passed until the film adaptation were worth it. Director Aron Lehmann (“The most beautiful girl in the world”) has staged a splendid adaptation that comes very close to the book.
Luise (as a child Ava Petsch, as an adult Luna Wedler) grows up in the 1980s in the dreariness of a village in the Westerwald. She and her best friend Martin (Cosmo Taut) both didn’t have it easy as children. Martin suffers from his father, a choleric thug and drunk. Luise, on the other hand, suffers from the breaking up of her parents’ marriage, who are hardly interested in their daughter.
The two only get warmth and general education from grandmother Selma and her secret admirer, the optician, whose name is never mentioned and who is condemned to shyness by evil inner voices. Nevertheless, it is a sheltered environment between forests, fields and high-voltage pylons, until a catastrophe ends Luise’s childhood. Only years later does she finally seem to find happiness.
Karl Markovics as the secret star
The secret star of this homeland film with brain and heart is Karl Markovics as “the optician”. The Viennese theater star fits perfectly into an excellently cast village community, whose charm often arises from cranky grumpiness – as often happens in real life. In the center: Luise, who since the shock of her childhood no longer dares to look strangers in the eye. And yet she tries to lead a normal life among all the crazy people. After all, at this end of the world, she even runs into the man for life. But he is a Buddhist – he goes to distant Japan for training.
“What You Can See From Here” is a wonderful, tragicomic, glossy production that many children of the 1970s and 1980s will find themselves in. The lovingly designed furnishings pull you deep into post-war West Germany, where chugging red railbuses with fabric curtains still connected the village stations with civilization. When in many kitchens lightbulbs were still burning in wicker lampshades and Pril flowers clung to the sink. But this village is not an idyll from a picture book: the chronically bad-tempered villager Marlies (Rosalie Thomass) still has the splattered blood on the wall from the last suicide in the family. In general, the subject of death gains a lot of space in the film version. It is also death that ultimately causes everyone to confess their feelings.
What you can see from here, Germany 2022, 109 minutes, FSK from 12, by Aron Lehmann, with Corinna Harfouch, Luna Wedler, Karl Markovics, Cosmo Taut, Katja Studt and many more.
