Schultze Gets the Blues is the first feature
film for German writer/director Michael Schorr and it should be the envy of far more
experienced moviemakers. Setting its own leisurely pace, it is a film that takes the
ordinary and makes it extraordinary both in its thoughtful take on its characters and its
brilliantly artistic filmic eye.
Schultze (Horst Krause) is shown with his two friends, all
grim-faced and wearing hard hats, descending in an elevator into the depths of the salt
mine where they have worked for years. From the get-go, Schorr's camera finds beauty where
others wouldn't even think to look -- a shot of the heavily textured mine wall becomes an
expressionistic abstraction, a well-used coffee maker sitting on a small table becomes a
classical still life, the pitch black of a mining tunnel is briefly illuminated as a
mining vehicle goes around a curve. Schorr doesn't force any of this in a pretentious way;
he simply lets his camera linger as he tells his story. 
