More User Reviews for:
Harvest
|
|
No Rating
Meeting Marko
Amos Lassen wrote:
German director Benjamin Cantu’s debut feature is about Marko (Lukas Steiner), a German farm boy, who is considered by others on the farm to be a bit of an enigma. He does not drink and he lives alone, good with his hands and bored with study. He has no future plans and he isn’t sure that he wants to be a farmer. When Jacob (Kai-Michael Muller), a new apprentice comes to the farm, he manages to get Marko out of his shell.
Jacob is good looking and begins working right away and even though his head is not always together, he does manage to reach Marko and Marko sneaks looks at Jacob. The crush they share brings them to a kiss in the barn but Marko is so shocked by it that he stays away from Jacob. Yet they go into the city together and spend the night together and this seems to be the glue they need for their relationship.
The film is set on a farm in Brandenburg and the population there is made up of adult supervisors and agriculture students undertaking an internship. Marko and Jacob are total opposites but they still seem to be perfect for each other, maybe because neither can seem to find his place in society. Marko resents that his parents have abandoned him and he is unsure and nervous about his sexuality and therefore becomes closed, even to himself. He is defiant and avoids work yet he is able to control his impulses.
Jacob is a bit calmer from a middle class family but he finds his planned life to be boring. The differences in the two boys and their feelings for each other are established when the two share a sandwich and when they speak for the first time, it is obvious that they are completely different yet they becomes closer as a result. Spontaneously they kiss and they share each other’s feelings. There is not a lot of information about the confusion and turmoil within the two but we see how each deals with the kiss—for Marko, it separates them as he is afraid of how he feels and for Jacob, it is natural. They break through their feelings when the two sneak off to Berlin for a night.
One of the interesting things about this film is that it moves slowly yet it never bores. The story comes to us at its own rhythm and we learn about the characters slowly. The manual labor on the farm is a way to get rid of the stereotypical gay and this also underscores the thought that what Marko and Jacob share is not natural but it is right for them.
The cinematography is gorgeous and I have since learned that aside from the boys playing Marko and Jacob, all of the workers that we see in the film actually work on the farm. The romance we see is beautiful and tugs at your heartstrings. I predict that this will be one of the big hits this year. |
