‘Eismayer’ Review: Military Secrets
A tough Austrian military officer is utterly disarmed by a crush on one of his soldiers in the poignant drama 'Eismayer.'
It takes a while for the portentous recurring image in Eismayer (★★★☆☆) — snow falling softly inside a desolate building — to really resonate with the story. But it doesn’t take long at all for the film, a promising feature debut from writer-director David Wagner, to reveal that the titular Sergeant Major Charles Eismayer, feared among the soldiers in his charge, lies to his wife about where he goes when he doesn’t come straight home from the barracks.
Gerhard Liebmann, in a riveting performance that’s already earned him Best Actor honors from the Austrian Film Academy, stars as the hardass career officer who is not merely the tyrant he seems to be on base.
First, he’s far more relaxed at home with his wife Christina (Julia Koschitz) and their little boy Niki (Lion Tatzber). From screaming every other sentence at his trainees of the elite Fourth Guards Company, he downshifts smoothly to making goofy voices on the phone with his kid.
Christina is reasonably suspicious her husband is hiding something — he is — but Eismayer rests more or less easily in the belief he has his apparent double life under control. The man is a fortress, or so he’s led his fellow officers, his soldiers, and his family to believe.
Still, his defenses might not withstand his interest in handsome new trainee Mario Falak, played by Luka Dimic (who joined Liebmann in the Austrian Film Awards winners’ circle, earning Best Supporting Actor).
Dimic is good as the ambitious but affable Falak, a proud Bosnian immigrant who’s also an unapologetically out gay man. But Liebmann’s convincing portrayal of Eismayer is levels above in terms of depth and dimension, showing the slipcover of toughness this closeted gay man uses to conceal his insecurities, and unfolding his gradual surrender to his feelings for Falak.
Koschitz, in the underwritten role of a wife who learns she married a gay man, hits her one note resoundingly. The film acknowledges only in passing both the toll that Eismayer’s sexual awakening takes on Christine, and the discomforting power imbalance between the Sergeant Major and his recruit as their comradeship turns to romance.
And any effect on little Niki from seeing dad and mom split over dad coming out is wrapped up in a single, well-acted scene between father and son.
The intent to frame this love story, based on true events, in an endearing light overrides Wagner’s mostly keen instincts on how to plot the drama. Consequently, he crowds the final act with scenes of contrived rom-com uplift.
Before that, Liebmann and Dimic certainly keep the slow-burn romance sizzling as Eismayer and Falak’s encounters escalate towards a barracks shower scene, and a tastefully hot love scene.
Their journey entails some suffering as well, but remarkably, whatever threats they face, individually or as a pair, homophobia is not their most vicious enemy.
Wagner depicts Guards Company personnel representing a wide range of opinions on the subject of gays in the military, some plainly offensive, but for the most part, Falak finds acceptance and support among his peers, who generally react to him like giggly middle-schoolers.
In the scene that cements the bond of allyship between Falak and Eismayer, the recruit seizes up with fear trying to complete a perilous training highwire walk across a cavern.
The suspense of the scene is not so much in whether Falak can make it across, but in how Eismayer might try to buck up his recruit to get him to believe he can make it. Will he shout Falak into submission, or show the tender, nurturing side he shows his son?
Meanwhile, the other recruits in Falak’s unit wait on the other side, cheering him on, brothers-in-arms who serve as the film’s example that the world can get better for enlisted men like Eismayer.
Eismayer is available Oct. 10 on DVD and digital from Dark Star Pictures. Visit www.darkstarpics.com.
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