Wuchak RELEASED IN 2013 and written & directed by Thomas Arslan, "Gold" covers events in 1898 when a single woman (Nina Hoss) joins a small group of other prospectors heading north through Canada to the Klondike gold fields near Dawson City. Their numbers dwindle as they face challenging hardships.My title blurb says it all. Just as "Meek's Cutoff" (2010) covered the adversities of traveling in the late 1800s on an alternative route of the Oregon Trail and "The Homesman" (2014) covered journeying from western Nebraska to Iowa, so "Gold" features the challenges of traveling from Ashcroft, BC, where the train tracks end, to Dawson City in the Yukon territories. Needless to say, "Gold" favors gritty realism to conventional Western staples. Still, there are Indians, Old West boom towns, covered wagons, a possible hanging, alcohol and a believable shootout. I think it's a little more compelling than those other two flicks, although those are worthwhile too if you favor mundane accounts of arduous travel in the Old West. If you'd like to see a more eventful old-fashioned Western covering similar terrain, check out "The Far Country" (1954) with Jimmy Stewart. I suppose the movie should've contained at least one rain sequence, particularly considering it takes place in the Great Northwest. But shooting in the rain is challenging & costly so the viewer is asked to read in-between-the-lines that they experienced rainy days. The film never shows any of the characters 'going to the bathroom' either, but we're to assume it happened.A German/Canadian production, THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour 41 minutes and was shot in British Columbia, Canada. At least half the dialogue is in German with English subtitles.GRADE: B

the_doofy About 35 min in they kill a horse, I kind of saw it coming. Also up to that point all they do is ride horses and lead pack horses, talk about filler.I would not have minded the tediousness if they had at least done some actual western stuff, but it is clear the people who made this movie did not know much about how things were actually done in western times/how people coped on long riding trips, so they had the actors ride horses and lead pack horses.I actually would have finished the movie if it were not for the horse they killed. Its pretty obvious that this is one of those movies that had 'ballot stuffers' and some phony reviews.

samkan As the four COMMENTERS before me point out, GOLD is not a Hollywood western but a rather sincere attempt to depict fellow countrymen (The film is German-made about Germans) a century ago in a foreign land. Indeed many languages were wailed across the western prairies in the 1800's, a fact seldom seen in Westerns. Credit the maker with allowing his culture to have the same faults as the rest of us. But whether this "virtue" of GOLD may have been intended is unknown; e.g., we see a single Chinese, but no mix of trekking humankind. Such was surely financially prohibitive - GOLD was made on a shoestring budget using not sets but small historical parks in British Columbia and with contemporary German actors and limited extras. As much as I loved Nina Hoss in BARBARA I think a younger actress; e.g., Anjorka Strechel, would have been a better fit. The film's plot holds no legitimate twists or surprises and the ending may prove inconsequential to many. GOLD could have been greatly enhanced by superior camera work, vistas and imagination. Instead we appear to see the same locales and areas throughout. The group, at one point, appears reluctant to cross a river that appears ankle-deep. A ten yard splat of mud is likewise a major obstacle. But I found GOLD charming in it's simplicity and consideration of mundane hardships (bad food!). The characters were provided realistic and historical backgrounds. Hey, hard to make a film set in the 18th century North American West WITHOUT falling into the trappings of a "Western". In this GOLD succeeds. PS / I so agree with PlanktonRules observation that the trials of the GOLD crew parallel the 90's video game OREGON TRAIL, which I played dozens of times with my kids. Broken wagon wheels and disease are indeed catastrophes.

guy-bellinger At the time when it was released - right in the middle of August - both in Germany and in France, Thomas Arslan's seventh film, 'Gold', appeared as the ugly duckling puddling clumsily around the pond of Summer movies. No cheap thrills, no big gags, no sultry scenes in this German UFO. Nothing about it to draw huge audiences. To begin with, it is a western, once a popular genre but today the ghost of what it used to be, at least in terms of box office (with the notable recent exception of 'Django Unchained'). Even worse, once again as far as box office is concerned, it is spoken in... Goethe's language! Okay, laugh you cynical money grabbers while it is still time! As for me, I would not be so surprised if this unusual effort should become a classic in the years to come. Agreed, associating the terms "German" and "western" looks incongruous at first sight but let's not forget there HAVE BEEN German "cowboy movies" before, mainly in the 1960's. Of course at the time they were generally nothing but undemanding adventure films meant for the young public, most of the time shot in Yugoslavia and aspiring to nothing higher than "to entertain". Whereas in the present case the ambition is different and while the end credits roll the viewer is now assured that the words "German" and western" can go together quite well. For 'Gold' is a little gem of a western movie, which is made apparent as of the first minutes through the feeling of authenticity it generates. For one thing, Arslan's rough and uncompromising work is shot entirely on location: all the places shown or mentioned (Baskerville, Clinton, Goldbridge as well as the wastelands of British Columbia) are the real ones. Moreover, the writer-director has worked from actual documents of the time (the Yukon gold rush of 1898), among which photographs, newspaper articles and pioneers' diaries. All that is shown is therefore realistic, not to say hyper realistic, from the horse tack to the weapons to the costumes to the train. Such a serious approach is commendable and would suffice to make 'Gold' a good film but there is even more to it than the true-to-life account of the journey of a group of German gold diggers, namely an allegoric dimension. Indeed, Beyond the facts reported lies a fable about the futility of man's efforts. Driven by the lust to get rich quick, the seven characters (with the one exception of the determined female hero... but for how long?) ride and suffer only to give up or die in the end. A sense of utter absurdity is thus gradually built, reinforced by the structure of the movie (almost all the protagonists disappear one by one in the manner of an Agatha Christie whodunit). I am pretty sure John Huston would have liked 'Gold' even if its tone is yet more pessimistic than his (for Huston, the final goal is absurd, only the adventure is worth living whereas for Arslan, the whole thing is purposeless). Well made, well interpreted by competent German actors (among whom Nina Hoss as the dark, untamed Emily Meyer), 'Gold' is an excellent surprise. Not totally flawless (a faster pace would not have gone amiss), it is nevertheless an outstanding achievement in its category. And quite an unexpected one at that!