Lemmings (1979)

Chill Phil (0:09)

Lemmings, we are told in the first part of Mikhail Hanake's two-part 1979 television drama of the same name, are a small rodent, best known for compulsive migration patterns that typify the herd mentality in the animal kingdom, leading them to suicide en masse. The popular myth of the suicide or Lemming might not be grounded in fact, but was certainly ensconced in pop culture in a 1958 Disney movie called White Wilderness. Released, curiously enough, the year before part one of Lemmings, subtitled Arcadia, was historically set.

So despite the fact that Lemmings in real life do not live up to their grim reputation as Mother Nature's mass suicide species, their metaphorical heftiness in Anika's work here at least is fairly transparent.

While we had given at first a kind of clinical, almost scientific description of the animal in an early title card in Arcadia, we of course later returned to their importance in a key speech from Mr. Llewenn, who explicitly dismisses his children, Sigrid and Sigrid, and their entire generation, as being just like Lemmings, absurd, filthy creatures set on self-destruction.

That part one of Lemmings has the subheading Arcadia is of no small importance. Referring to a kind of pastoral utopia we might otherwise see in the rural Austrian town of Wiener Neustadt, where Hanecke's action is set, it is of course far from. The title itself drenched instead as the story unfolds, with exactly the kind of cold, bitter irony Hanecke would later develop a reputation for, as he shifted from television to feature films later in his career. That Hanecke himself grew up in Neustadt and is the same age as his protagonists has not gone unnoticed. Many critics observing, while not exactly autobiographical, certainly there is in a broader sense, a general feeling that the focus of his interest was on the kind of broader generational ennui specific to his own Austrian post-war generation. But unlike much of Hanecke's later work, as an early career milestone, Lemmings shows no real signs of the cold clinical tone that would later become his signature. Instead, Lemmings bubbles with a barely disguised disgust, disdain, and even at times, something almost like an anger at the sheer futility of it all. That, like the Lemmings of the title, his ensemble of characters seem almost naturally predestined to self-destruct. Suicide, of course, would also be a centerpiece of his first feature film, The Seventh Continent, made ten years later in 1989 But the shape of the nihilism in Lemmings is notably different. And yet, we find here early traces of themes that would become something of a trademark for the later Hanukkah. The way that, as an audience, he positions us as a kind of complicit witness of violence in all its insidious forms, both physical and emotional. The way that Western consumer society sucks the life out of the human experience, leaving us hollow and despairing. The fundamentally corrupt nature of the middle class family, far from the rosy ideal of the happy family we might see elsewhere. And in Lemmings in particular, we can combine this with a driving fascination with how guilt and violence are handed down from generation to generation. A kind of dark inheritance that, given the historical specificity of the settings, sit in tandem with the specter of Austria's own unspoken post or reckoning with the fact that Adolf Hitler himself was Austrian. If there is a suggestion in Lemmings that we are our own worst enemy, there may be, in this sense alone, a geopolitical reading that only adds further depth.

Arcadia starts, of course, with the vandalism of a row of cars, a random senseless act that speaks immediately of juvenile delinquency, lost youth, and an absence of order and control. This, at first, sits in striking contrast to the introduction of Eva, engrossed in her Bible study. But as she and her friend talk, it becomes clear that matters of a sexual nature are simultaneously central to their thoughts, but also visibly hard to talk about openly, thus adding sexual repression to the mix very early on.

Soon, Christian and Fritz meet at a local cafe, and as the young people talk, Ingmar Bergman's film The Virgin Spring is mentioned as they play chess. While the influence of Bergman and this undisguised homage have not been missed by critics, that it is the Virgin Spring specifically that is mentioned is worthy of note considering the context within which it is raised. Based on a medieval ballad, Bergman's proto-rape revenge film tells the story of a father's religious salvation after avenging the violent rape and murder of his beloved daughter, all in the context of a period where Christianity sat in direct tension with much older pagan beliefs. Lemmings too is a world of violence, but unlike The Virgin Spring, there is no religious or spiritual awakening or redemption for Hanake's protagonists here. As the story unfolds, Arcadia is an ensemble drama which tells a series of intersecting tales. There is, of course, the student Fritz, who is having an affair with Gisela, the needy, jealous wife of his teacher, George.