A Piece of Sky Movie Review

“A Piece of Sky” shows that Switzerland is not just for travelogues and documentaries. This is a slow-moving drama about life in a small village in the Swiss Alps. The movie is one that might be considered for a Foreign Film nomination at the Academy Awards. At the Berlin Film Festival 2022, this received ‘special mention’. The sad story is told at a meandering pace, and it never quite leaves the valleys far below the peaks.

Marco (played by Simon Wisler) is a bear of a man. He is large and stocky, yet he seems gentle and easy. He is from the low-land areas in Switzerland and has moved to the Swiss alpine village to find work. There is a lot of work to be done on the slopes near the peaks. All the grain grown on mountainsides and the steers and the cattle are keeping the farmers and ranchers busy. There are rocks to remove from fields and cows to take over for a stud session. Marco is fond of the cows that he cares for.

Marco is also fond of Anna (played by Michèle Brand). She is a local village woman who is totally busy. She has a young daughter from a failed marriage. She works helping her family run a small inn, and she serves drinks in the attached tavern. She is also a part-time mail carrier for the village. So, she keeps pretty busy. But she also loves that beast of a man, Marco.

Marco is mostly quiet and shy, but he does let Anna know that he wants to marry her. He doesn’t mind about her young child, Julia. That is not his bother. Many of local fellows gossip about Anna and her prior troubles with love. Anna has to listen to that sometimes when she is serving up beer to the same loudmouth jerks.

The marriage ceremony is quite an affair for the village, since it is so small. Nobody quite knows what Anna sees in the big lug they all call Marco. He works pretty hard, but sometimes he gets distracted by cows. He thinks they are almost like his pets, and he will keep them forever. But when a cow is brought to a stud bull, and she does not produce a calf – then that cow is sent to slaughter. That saddens Marco to no end.

Marco has started getting worse on the job, messing up some things. He is complaining of headaches all the time. One day he takes a big tumble on his motorcycle. He winds up in the hospital for a checkup. Anna is concerned that Marco might have broken some bones. But that is not the main problem.

The doctor tells Anna that Marco has a tumor in his brain. It can be removed, and it does not seem to be caused by cancer. Marco will be able to recover, but it will still cause him some issues. He will lose some of his mental acuity, and that wasn’t all that great to begin with. He could lose many of the things that he needs. He could lose any willingness to finish things, and lose self-control. Marco will be the same bear-man as before, but not quite as sharp.

Anna is glad the surgery goes well, and Marco seems to be recovering very nicely. But before too long, he does not show up to work. He goes to the local ranch to visit his favorite cow, but she has been put out for slaughter. Marco does not know the social limits of right and wrong anymore. He exposes himself to Anna’s young daughter. Anna is horrified and leaves with her young girl.

Marco does not understand totally why nobody in the village likes him anymore. He’s unable to get a job on any ranch or farm. He is a social outcast. Anna tries to get help from the authorities. The only way that they will intervene is to press charges against her husband. She refuses to do that, because that would leaver her off even worse than she is now. She arranges for a place where Marco can stay on a local farm.

Anna seems to still be unlucky in love. Her first marriage failed, and now this has happened to Marco. But she continues to care for her husband. He does finally realize that he was a knucklehead, and tells her that he is sorry. But soon after that his health gets worse, and Marco becomes bed-ridden. Perhaps it is high-altitude that has caught up to him, or maybe that tumor might have returned. But Marco is not going to be around forever.

“A Piece of Sky” was created by Michael Koch (Writer and Director). The story, and these characters, is very plain and static. There is certain sameness to the actions and how they behave. Perhaps that idea is to invoke the isolation of a high Swiss village. But the result is that the movie is beautiful to look at, but a chore to watch. It is like having the Mona Lisa on your kitchen wall when you need to wash the dishes.

This is movie that has very little movement in the plot (what there is of it). The acting is fairly basic, since the two leads are first time acting in a movie. The shots, the background and scenery are glorious. There is a well-placed eye from the Cinematographer (Armin Dierolf). But even with that, there is an opening shot of a large rock on a mountain. It goes on for a few minutes, until it is covered in fog. This is NOT an action movie!

The movie is moody and a forlorn piece of movie-making. There a couple of times when Koch makes an unusual choice in the sequence of the movie. At a few key times, there is a cutaway shot of a large acapella chorus, and each time they are set right in front of scenic views. They show up near river banks, or near lake shores, or in front of waterfalls. But each time, this group sings an old folk tune or an ancient hymn about being cursed and about being ready to die. It might seem like an odd decision to make. But it does break up slow pace.

“A Piece of Sky” is slow and tedious, yet it is a heart-felt look at slow mental destruction of a man and how it affects the people around him, especially his wife.