Heimkehr der Jäger (2000)

Franz, in his early forties, is a copyist of paintings by the old masters and works in a large art gallery in Vienna, the (fictional) MIHO Museum. His seven-year-old daughter Alexandra is everything to him, but his ex-wife would rather have nothing more to do with him and calls the police when he comes to visit. The officers put him out on the street, chair and all. A new copyist works in the same gallery room as Franz, copying Calm Sea at Low Tide by Hendrik Dubbels. A young woman, Mathilde, sits in the museum repeatedly. When Franz’s local greengrocer closes down—the shopkeeper had been setting aside suitable fruit for his current still life, Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber by Juan Sánchez Cotán—Franz goes to the impersonal “MIMA” supermarket, where he can barely find any usable fruit. Mathilde works there as a cashier. Outside the window of Franz’s apartment is a huge billboard dominated by a large man’s face, eyes and mouth wide open, and the slogan “Won again?” The ham from MIMA shrinks enormously when fried. Franz calls his dismissive ex-wife and insists on joining her when she plans to go swimming with their daughter, but waits for them in vain at the subway station. Once again, a tour bus bothers Franz by idling and belching exhaust and noise. When the driver ignores him, Franz crashes his car into the back of the bus. Franz wants to confront his ex-wife. She calls the police again, and for a moment the officers appear to Franz to be dressed in medieval armor. Two inconspicuous men in a car inspect the damage from the crash and begin keeping Franz under surveillance. On a whim, Franz paints a supermarket label onto a piece of fruit in his still-life copy at the museum. Just as he finishes the copy at closing time and examines the original in the dark, the alarm goes off. The guards are reassured when they see that Franz was the one who set it off. Franz watches jealously as visitors gather around his colleague. The colleague is also copying a painting of a woman that had next been promised to Franz. Franz picks up a brush, paints a moustache on his colleague with a single stroke, and bolts from the museum. Mathilde gives Franz a ride in her car to Burgenland. They grow closer and, in one scene, lie in bed with their heads together, facing opposite ways. When he leaves, he takes her video camera with him. Back in Vienna, Franz has had enough of the grotesque billboard outside his window and saws it down during the night. He then dreams of the museum, where supermarket products are displayed instead of works of art and Mathilde explains them to visitors as an art educator. The next day, the police and fire department inspect the sabotaged billboard. Franz turns up at the museum and forces a guard to give him a muzzle-loading rifle and an old English helmet from the collection. He goes to MIMA and, holding a knife to the cashier, forces her to hand over money, but then simply presses it on the customers, who are supposed to be paid for their groceries today instead of paying for them. At night, he breaks into a huge construction site where a new, enormous supermarket is being built and erects a barricade out of cement bags. In the morning, he tells the construction workers to leave. They destroy the barricade with an excavator and chase Franz away; he fires just one shot into the air. Franz wanders through the countryside and reaches a rural community. Even there, there is a MIMA branch. He gets a light from a group in an inn whose members bear a striking resemblance to the peasants in Bruegel’s Peasant Wedding. In the next scene, the supermarket is ablaze and Franz has already moved on. Franz is at a provincial railway station, hoping to meet Mathilde on a train heading toward Hungary. He does find her, but she is very reserved because of his strange get-up, with his helmet and rifle. Still, when she gets out, she lets him ride in her car. They drive to the Rudolfshof guesthouse, where Franz’s older friend Ulrich lives. They enjoy a few hours of hospitality and normality. The watchers’ car appears, and Franz flees. Franz returns to the town where he set the supermarket on fire. At the post office, he makes color copies of his still life and then mails the painting to his daughter. He hands the rifle over to the postal clerk. Outside, two cars carrying pursuers have already arrived. Armed only with his video camera, Franz walks boldly toward them until a shot hits him in the stomach. In Mathilde’s lap—she has followed him—Franz is carried away in the car by the unmoved pursuers. The landscape appears to him wintry and snow-covered, like in Bruegel’s The Hunters in the Snow. Franz’s daughter is at the museum with her class when she discovers the painted label on the displayed still life. She has received the original by mail, along with a video showing Franz’s “protest actions” played in reverse.