So finally got a chance to hang out with CDMCC and Elizabeth last night. It’s been a long time and we’ve both been busy with work. I was looking at the traffic, trying to decide a good time to leave, but the part before the bridge was still back at 8pm and decided I have to go now. Turns out that there was a police office near the beginning of the bridge checking out people who are driving in the carpool lane. I hate those who violate the carpool lane w/ a passion, but sticking a cop there and slowing down overall traffic is just not right. Immediately after the police officer, traffic sped up.
After dinner at TOI (pronounced Toy and not Twa according to the waitress), we rented a couple movies from Blockbuster and decided to watch Schultze Gets the Blues. The movie was beautifully shot, but that’s pretty much all it had going for it. I didn’t really see a point to the movie and it had a somewhat abrupt ending.
Official Site
IMDb: 7.1/10 (1,079 votes)
Yahoo! Movies: The Critics: n/a / Yahoo! Users: C
Rotten Tomatoes: Rating: 73% / Average Rating: 6.9/10
Apple Trailer
Amazon.com DVD
Spoilers: (Show)
So movie is about this German guy who just retired from working in a salt mine. As a retirement gift, he gets a salt lamp (illuminated salt rock). Along with him, 2 other friends retired on the same day. One friend is married and his wife is forcing him to find another job. Schultze apparently is alone, with a mother in a senior home, but he spends a lot of time playing his accordian and apparently is part of this music club. One day, when he was listening to the radio, he hears some Louisiana music and starts playing it on his according.
At first he thought there was something wrong with him, as he’s only played polka before this. The doctor tells him there’s nothing wrong with him.
He played the Louisiana music at his annual music club’s festival, and people started calling him a nigger. It was a somewhat odd moment.
Schultze somehow gets picked to be the person representing their music club to visit their twin city in Texas and he flies over there with his accordian. At first, I thought he was going to perform there, but apparently he got out-Germaned by another accordian player and gave up and just left. Very odd scene.
He then gets a boat and starts driving it to Louisiana or I think it’s Louisiana. Of course he also has his language barrier, as he knew close to no English. Some funny things happen along the way as someone duck hunting lands him a duck in his boat. He just secretly drives off and has roast duck that night. Then there was the scene where his boat got stuck and the police came and he thought he was under arrest and raised both hands.
Schultze seems to have the ability to attract woman, though he never closes the gap as there’s always some barrier.
His final meeting was with a lady on a house boat making crabs and invites him for dinner. After dinner, they go dancing and in the middle it appears Schultze has a heart attack. They return to the house boat and Schultze goes to sleep… forever. The lady brings his ashes back to Germany and all his friends attend his funeral.
What was odd about this entire movie was he never played his according once in America, and it seemed like that was his only luggage he brought.
I’m not too sure what to make of this movie. The cinematography was amazing. As CDMCC said, this would have be a very beautiful powerpoint slide show.
