"The Inheritors" is a truly great movie. Great art can invite you in and massage you, and guide you back out again, hopefully in a new direction. This movie does that for me partly because of its allegorical nature. I see it as a religious allegory, with Lukas as the Christ figure, and the land representing the mystical body. The movie's greatness comes in the way it points out of itself, to a more universal, democratic experience. In this way "The Inheritors" can be compared to another great film, "The Sweet Hereafter". Both generate their emotional impact in loosely holding the viewer while pointing to a possible world outside of the movie. To see the beauty, we simply have to be willing to enter into it.

This film is not about an idealized, bucolic, peaceful country life. Rather it portrays the harsh reality of the feudal system that continued n Europe until well into the 20'th century. Peasants were considered "uppity" if they dared to believe they could be the equal of Farmers, and women were so victimized that a woman reporting her violent rape could be sent to prison for having the audacity to accuse her employer of a crime. In fact, European peasants were in many ways as ill treated as the slaves of the Deep South. I enjoyed this film for its cultural realism and historical value, but the story is quite depressing. I rate it a 7.

I really don't know why there are all those brilliant reviews in so many respected papers and magazines. This was a hell of a deception to me, an utterly boring (cinematography & story) display of cardboard characters played by wooden actors, esp. the highly credited Sophie Rois delivers an exceptionally bad performance. Too much of an artificial appeal to be realistic, too pretentious to be funny, too silly to be taken seriously: so the film doesn't even make it to be a "good bad movie". Not amused.

This film is extremely well paced and beautifully photographed, and the characters are easy to relate to. Seven peasants unexpectedly inherit the farm on which they work after the farmer dies. The neighboring farmers view this as a breach of the rigid class structure in rural 19th century Austria and try to destroy the "One-Seventh Farmers." The tenacity with which the new owners defend their farm (and one another) is very touching. I loved it!