Dynamixor
The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.
Glucedee
It's hard to see any effort in the film. There's no comedy to speak of, no real drama and, worst of all.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
Claudio Carvalho
In an undefined time, the environment has been totally destroyed and now the water is contaminated and the animals have been burned. Georges Laurent (Daniel Duval) travels with her wife Anne Laurent (Isabelle Huppert), their teenage daughter Eva (Anaïs Demoustier) and their son Ben (Lucas Biscombe) from the city to their cabin in the countryside. On the arrival, they find that intruders have broken in the house, and one stranger kills George.Anne, Eva and Ben wander through the village asking for shelter and supplies for their acquaintances, but they refuse to help them. They reach an abandoned barn and spend the night inside. On the next morning, they meet a teenage boy and they walk together to a train station, where they find other survivors. Together, they wait for the train expecting to go to a better place in the middle of the chaos. "Le temps du loup", a.k.a. "Time of the Wolf" is a pessimist and depressive view by Michael Haneke of a society without rules, basically the end of the civilization. The story begins with the uncomfortable violence of "Funny Games", with the stranger unexpectedly shooting Georges. The plot is totally different from the post-apocalyptic view of Hollywood movies and there are scenes hard to be seen. Isabelle Huppert and Anaïs Demoustier have extraordinary performances. Hope that the world never comes to this point, probably is what many viewers will think watching this movie. My vote is seven.Title (Brazil): Not Available
amazing_sincodek
Of the Haneke films I've seen, this is the only one that didn't absolutely blow my mind. Funny Games is my all time favorite film, and The Piano Teacher is in the same league. Time of the Wolf (TotW) is stylistically recognizable as Haneke's work, and is certainly a well-made film. Unlike his other films, however, it contains nothing the veteran viewer hasn't seen (a dozen times) before.TotW is a post-apocalyptic drama. The cause of the apocalypse is ambiguous; the focus is on human behavior under stress, and in the absence of authority. The style of the film is appropriately very bleak and dry. Though there are occasional dramatic events, they certainly do not feel like action scenes. Rather, the whole thing deliberately has a very "tired" feel to it. Most of the characters are very convincing, and the film's greatest strength is the horror it creates in showing normal people break under the stress.A difficulty with making a post-apocalyptic story is that there are only so many things one can do with it. If you've read "The Road," you've essentially seen TotW. If you can imagine 28 Days Later with more subtlety and no zombies, you can imagine TotW; some components of the endings are nearly identical. I personally feel that Haneke's directing talents were wasted with this one, because it's such a tired old story that the slow pace and subtlety just makes it tedious--to the veteran viewer, there's no magic, no mystery; just repetition.
kevitron
This movie follows the survivors of an unnamed apocolyptic event. The fact that the details aren't disclosed doesn't bother me. What does bother me, however, is the poor acting and lack of character development. A man is murdered for absolutely no reason whatsoever, and it doesn't seem to phase his wife or children in the least. They just keep on truckin as if nothing ever happened. And nothing else does happen, really, until another half an hour into the flick when they finally arrive at a railroad depot to join more survivors of what is probably an environmental disaster. Once there, you never get to know any of the characters except for a few of them. The rest are merely forgettable faces with no names or personalities. Nothing continues to happen for the remainder of the film, save for a few events that are confusing due to the fact that I don't really know or care who any of these people are. All in all, it's not an absolutely terrible movie, and I think that I agree with the director that human society is only as strong as its' food supply. But I found myself looking at my watch more than the movie screen.
artwk
For me, the most disturbing thing about this film was the zombie-like family at its centre. Isabelle Huppert's deadpan performance is matched by the two children, who react to their father's murder with no more concern than if their car had broken down.Although a number of scenes—such as extended shots of the three walking and walking and walking—are slow and seemingly pointless, the film nonetheless jerks erratically from one scene to another as if footage has been accidentally lost. Plot twists are ridiculously contrived, as when the son disappears in the middle of a pitch-black night for no reason, and the daughter then does likewise, simply to allow an untended fire to get out of control.Given a better script, a more competent director, and characters capable of enlisting the viewer's sympathy, this might have been worth watching.
