‘Eismayer’ Is A Genre-Defying Boot Camp Drama With A Career-Making Central Performance From Gerhard Liebmann [Venice]
As a fresh batch of boot camp recruits moves through processing, a name keeps resurfacing like some kind of curse — as if its mere mention is enough to call down the power of its wrath. “Classic case for Eismayer,” one experienced soldier remarks about a smart-mouthed inductee, while another explains his fake-illness strategy thusly: “Just trying to avoid drillmaster Eismayer.” A legend in the Austrian armed forces, Sergeant Major Charles Eismayer (Gerhard Liebmann) is equal parts bad-ass and martinet, yet what he is, more than anything else, is afraid, and it’s the exploration of this fear that serves as the backbone of “Eismayer.” A title card at the beginning of the film sets up the story as based on actual events — something that the brutalist architecture, bland color palette, and utilitarian nature of the military base setting reinforces right from the jump.