Ein irrer Duft von frischem Heu (1977)

A theater curtain opens. Comrade Dr. phil. Angelika Unglaube reaches the fictional little village of Trutzlaff in Mecklenburg after a long walk. She has been sent by the SED district leadership to investigate something unheard-of in Trutzlaff: Comrade Mattes is said to have second sight and to be able to perform miracles. This is all the worse for the district leadership because Mattes is an LPG farmer and party secretary. But the Party is not the only one who looks critically on Mattes. Pastor Himmelknecht also dislikes miraculous healings, especially when he has just symbolically presented the sick person as bearing the cross in a sermon. Angelika and Mattes meet warily. He admits that “working miracles” is part of a well-established family tradition, and promptly astonishes Angelika with several statements about her and her family background. The table is also set for two, although Angelika had not announced her arrival. Since she has missed her last train, Angelika spends the night at Mattes’s. During the night, she sees Mattes secretly go into the neighboring house and heal the supposedly crooked Paul there. The next day, Paul stands perfectly straight, and Mattes’s weather forecast from the previous day—which Angelika’s superior also regularly requests—has come true, as it does every day. Angelika now mingles with the villagers to learn about Mattes’s miracles. By evening, she has uncovered 13 of the farmer’s acts of witchcraft, including bringing someone who was already dead back to life and predicting a serious accident—especially since she herself saw Paul’s healing. The drug-like effect of the fresh hay in the fields around the village further confuses Angelika, who has been given a week by her superior to investigate the cases. One day, much to the annoyance of the Protestant pastor Himmelknecht, a Vatican emissary, Monsignor Romeo Aventuro, appears at the door. He has heard about Mattes’s miracles from the village shoemaker, and intends to document them as an employee of the Vatican’s special department, “Contemporary Miracles.” Mattes does indeed astonish him with an exact prediction of a thunderstorm despite the fine weather, as well as various minor miracles. When Romeo Aventuro makes more detailed inquiries in the village the next day about Mattes’s deeds, Pastor Himmelknecht in particular tries to find a down-to-earth explanation for the miracles. For instance, Mattes did not bring a dead woman back to life with a kiss; he merely performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. Mattes also tells Angelika that he did not heal Paul. Paul had only pretended to be ill so that he would not be drafted into the army. Not everything, however, can be explained. Mattes soon grows tired of all the fuss about him, which is beginning to attract negative comments. He had carelessly lent out a generator for milking at a concert in the neighboring village, and now needs it back. He imagines that one of the musicians might break a leg, causing the concert to be canceled. In fact, the musicians have spent the day in the hay and, in his presence, tumble down from the hay wagon in a drunken stupor. They suffer broken legs and arms, and Mattes blames himself; after all, he could just as easily have imagined a simple viral illness. That evening, the monsignor, the pastor, Angelika, various “poachers” (members of the district council), and a farmer’s wife looking for her husband all show up at his place, each wanting something from him. Exasperated, he cries out that he is only human, too. When a “poacher” carrying a lantern promptly appears behind him and gives him a radiant halo, this statement also makes a deep impression on Romeo Aventuro. He leaves the village with Angelika by train. As Mattes seems to be floating among the clouds while waving goodbye, Angelika realizes that there simply cannot be an explanation for everything. The train passes through the theater curtain. Back on the film set, Mattes steps down from the lift platform, the fog machines are switched off, and the film crew begins to clear away the set.