All language subtitles for The.Wall.Die.Wand.2012.BluRay.non-HI.eng

Today, the fifth of November,
I will begin my report.

I will set everything down
as precisely as I can.

Yet I don't even know if today
really is the fifth of November.

Over the course of the past winter
I've lost track of a few days.

I can't even say
what day of the week it is.

Not that I think that is very important.

I will have to rely on
a few meager notes,

meager, because I never expected
to write this report.

I'm afraid much of what I remember will
be different from my real experiences

All reports probably share this issue.

I'm not writing for the joy of writing.

So many things have happened
to me that I must write,

if I don't want to lose my mind.

There is no one here
to think and care for me.

I am quite alone

and I must try to get through
the long, dark winter months.

I have taken on this task

to keep me from staring into
the gloom and being frightened.

Because I am frightened.

Fear creeps up on me from all sides,

and I do not want to wait until
it gets to me and overpowers me.

I shall write until darkness falls,

and this new, unfamiliar work
should make my mind tired,

empty and drowsy.

I'm not afraid of morning, only
of the long, gloomy afternoons.

I write on the backs of old
calendars and on faded stationery.

The paper belonged to Hugo Rüttlinger,

a great collector and hypochondriac.

This report should actually
begin with Hugo.

If it weren't for his
collecting and hypochondria,

I wouldn't be sitting here today.

I probably wouldn't even be alive.

It was 3:00 p.m. before we
reached the hunting lodge.

After a snack,
as Hugo was starting to nod off,

Luise suggested that they
go back to the village again.

Come on!

We won't stay long. We'll go
hunting very early in the morning.

The key is in the ignition
if you want to meet us.

- Come on!
- Yes.

Where is Lynx?
Lynx?

The dog stays here!
That stupid dog never obeys.

Lynx? Lynx, come on!

Heel!

Come Lynx!

- Heel!
- Don't be so strict.

Lynx, if you don't want to go,
then you stay up here. Go back!

Go! Go!

At 9:00 I decided to go to bed.

I locked the door and took
the key with me to my room.

Well, Lynx? What's going on?

They must have stayed in the village.

I was very surprised.

Hugo couldn't stand
the short beds at the inn,

and he'd not have been so inconsiderate

as to leave me alone
in the lodge overnight.

I set off towards the village with Lynx.

I couldn't figure out what had happened.

I hardly noticed how cool
and damp it was in the gorge,

because I was brooding about what
happened to the Rüttlingers.

Hugo might have had a heart attack.

As it happens so often
with hypochondria,

we had stopped
taking his condition seriously.

I quickened my pace
and sent Lynx on ahead.

I hadn't thought
to put on my climbing boots

and stumbled clumsily behind him
across the sharp stones.

What is it?

What do you have?
Did you hurt yourself?

Have you bitten on your tongue?

Lynx come!

Come on!

Lynx, what is it?

Come on!

Then I heard a thumping sound
and glanced around

before realizing it was my own
heartbeat thundering in my ears.

My heart had been frightened
before I was even aware of it.

I tentatively tried again,

and once more my hand rested
on something like a windowpane.

Suddenly I realized what might have been
unconsciously worrying me all along.

The road was entirely deserted.

Someone would have
raised the alarm ages ago.

It would have been natural
for the villagers

to be curious and assemble by the wall.

Even if none of them
had discovered the wall,

Hugo and Luise would surely
have bumped into it.

Not seeing a single person

puzzled me even more
than the wall itself.

I got up three more times
and convinced myself

that here, three meters from me,

there really was something
invisible, smooth and cool

blocking my path.

I thought it might be a hallucination

but of course I knew that
it was nothing of that sort.

I could have coped much more
easily with momentary insanity

than with this terrible,
invisible thing.

The first little farmhouse,
only a cottage, in fact,

was just around the next corner.

At last I could see the cottage.

It lay very still in the sunlight...
a peaceful, familiar scene.

Excuse me, I...

Come on, Lynx. Come.

We were in a bad situation, Lynx and I,

and at the time
we didn't know how bad it was.

But we weren't lost entirely,
because we had each other.

And if they did, then not in
little villages in the mountains,

not in Austria and not in Europe.

I know how ridiculous that thought was,

but I must admit that
this is what I was thinking.

I woke up around 6:00,
when the birds started singing.

Although I had barely moved,
Lynx knew I was awake

and came to my bed to greet me.

Suddenly it seemed quite impossible

that I would survive
that bright day in May.

At the same time
I knew I had to survive it

and that I had no means of escape.

I had to stay quite calm
and simply get through it.

It wasn't the first time in my life
that I had had to survive like this.

The less I resisted it,
the more bearable it would be.

I no longer remember
what I did that morning.

Maybe the hours that followed were
so awful I've had to forget them,

maybe I spent them
in a state of numbness.

I can't remember.

I finally emerged
from this state around 2:00 p.m.

when I walked
through the gorge with Lynx.

This time I was better equipped. I
had Hugo's binoculars with me, too.

If the man at the well was dead, and
there could be no doubt about that,

then everyone in the valley was dead,

and not only the people, but
everything that had been live.

If that was death, it had
come very quickly and gently,

almost lovingly.

Perhaps it would have been wiser to have
gone with Hugo and Luise to the village.

Lynx!

What's up?

Lynx, come here.

Come.

Come on.

It had dawned on me that the
cow might well be a blessing,

but it was also a burden.

An animal like that
has to be fed and milked

and needs someone there all the time.

I was the owner
and the prisoner of a cow.

I thought about the cow as well,
of course.

If I was especially lucky,
she would be expecting a calf.

But I couldn't rely on that,

I could only hope my cow would
give milk for as long as possible.

I still saw my situation
as a transitory condition,

at least that's what I tried to do.

I thought of a name for my cow
and called her Bella.

She didn't actually need a name at all.

She was the only cow in the forest,
perhaps the only cow in the region.

Until tomorrow, Bella.

10 days had passed,

and nothing
about my situation had changed.

For ten days I'd been numbing
my mind with work,

but the wall was still there,

and nobody had come to get me.

I had no alternative
but to face up to reality.

I could kill myself,

or try and dig my way under the wall,

which would probably have been
a strenuous form of suicide.

Or I could stay here
and try to stay alive.

I was no longer young enough to
think seriously about suicide.

It was chiefly thoughts about Lynx
and Bella that kept me from it.

Thanks to Hugo's attentiveness,
I had provisions for the summer,

a home, a lifetime's supply
of wood and a cow.

I firmly resolved
to wind up the clocks each day,

and to cross off the days
from the calendar.

At that time
it seemed very important to me.

I was desperately trying to hold on
to the remnants of civilized life.

I don't know why.

It was almost an inner compulsion.

Perhaps I was afraid
that if I did otherwise

I'd slowly cease to be a human being

and soon start to crawl about,
filthy and stinking,

emitting incomprehensible sounds.

It wasn't that I was afraid
of becoming an animal.

That wouldn't have been so bad,

yet a human being
can never become an animal,

he plunges past an animal
existence into the abyss.

I don't want this to happen to me.

Recently that's what
has made me most afraid,

and it is out of that fear
that I write my report.

On the 30th of May, it rained
a warm and fertile rain all day

that forced me to stay inside
or get drenched in a moment.

That evening the cat came into my house.

So there were four of us,
the cow, the cat, Lynx and me.

Lynx was closest to me,

and soon he wasn't just my dog,
but my friend,

my only friend in a world
of troubles and loneliness.

It's okay, Lynx.

Bella kept me tied to the lodge,

but I wanted to try
to have a look around.

I remembered a path
that led to a lodge higher up,

and down from there
into the opposite valley.

That was where I wanted to go.

Lynx! Heel!

Wait, Lynx!

So now I had examined those valleys

I could reach without staying
away for days at a time.

I could still climb up to the pasture
and look out over the landscape,

but I couldn't risk going any further
into the long mountain range.

Of course somebody would find me
if there was no wall over there.

I had to tell myself they'd
surely have found me long since.

I could sit quietly at home and wait.

But I kept feeling compelled to do
something to counteract uncertainty.

At about 1:00 p.m. I sat down to rest.

The forest lay hazily in the midday sun,

and the warm scent
from the pines floated up to me.

It was much quieter
than in the moonlit night,

as if the forest lay paralyzed
by sleep beneath the yellow sun.

A bird of prey
circled high in the blue sky,

Lynx slept, his ears twitching,

and great silence
descended on me like a bell jar.

I wished I could sit here forever,

in the warmth, in the light,

the dog at my feet
and the bird circling above.

When I walked on
I did so with deep regret,

and on the way I slowly changed,

becoming the only creature
that didn't belong here,

a human...

troubled by chaotic thoughts,

cracking branches with clumsy shoes,

engaged in the bloody
business of hunting.

I realize that I never noted down
days on which I'd shot game.

Now I remember I found it
too revolting to write about.

It was bad enough
that I had to do it at all.

I named the little cat Pearl,
she was so white and rosy.

In a few weeks I realized that
Pearl, an unkempt little thing,

was on the point of becoming a beauty.

Pearl was a small miracle,

but even then I knew she'd
been born in the wrong place.

A long-haired white cat
in the middle of the forest

is condemned to an early death.

She had no chance at all.

Perhaps that's why I was so fond of her.

If I think back to the first summer,

it is shadowed more
by the concern for my animals

than by my own desperate situation.

Catastrophe had relieved me
of much responsibility,

but I found, in time, that it
placed a new burden upon me.

Once I was able to assess
the situation a little,

I'd long since ceased being able
to change anything about it.

I don't think my behavior was due
to weakness or sentimentality.

I was simply following an instinct
that had been implanted in me

which I was powerless against

if I didn't want to destroy myself.

I can't see what should be dishonorable

about bearing the burden we're
given, as all animals must.

In the end, we die as all animals do.

I don't even know what honor is.

Being born and dying
is not a matter of honor.

It happens to all creatures

and has no meaning beyond that.

On the 20th of July
I started to harvest the hay.

It took me three weeks
to harvest the meadow.

This wasn't only the weather's fault,

but also that of my clumsiness
and physical weakness.

I was overcome by a wave of despair,

and, for the first time,
I understood quite clearly

the hard blow that had hit me.

I don't know what would have happened

if responsibility for my animals
hadn't forced me

to do at least
the most necessary things.

I don't like remembering that time.

It was 14 days before
I could pull myself together

and start living again.

Autumn was always my favorite season,

although I never felt
very well physically.

In the daytime
I was tired yet wide awake,

and at night I lay for hours
in restless half-sleep

with dreams that were more
confusing and vivid than usual.

My autumnal malaise didn't
spare me in the forest, either,

but since I could hardly afford
it, it took a less extreme form.

Perhaps I didn't have the time
to notice it.

Lynx was very cheerful,
in very high spirits

though an outsider
wouldn't have noticed.

He was, after all,
cheerful almost all the time.

I never saw him stay sulky
for more than three minutes.

He simply couldn't
resist the urge to be cheerful.

And life in the forest was
a constant temptation to him.

Sun, snow, wind, rain...

everything was a cause for joy.

With Lynx nearby,
I could never stay sad for long.

It was almost humbling that
being with me made him so happy.

Perhaps man's delusions
of grandeur come from dogs.

Sometimes I even imagined there
must be something special about me

that made Lynx almost keel over
with joy at the sight of me.

Of course there was
never anything special about me.

Lynx was, like all dogs,
simply addicted to people.

Yes, you're my Lynx. Yes.

Good Boy.

At times now, when I walk alone
in the wintry forest,

I talk to Lynx as I did before.

I have no idea I'm doing it

until something
startles me and I fall silent.

I turn my head and catch the
gleam of a reddish-brown coat.

But the path is empty,
bare bushes and wet stones.

I'm not surprised that
I still hear the dry branches

cracking under
the light tread of his feet.

What else would his little
dog-soul haunt, if not my trail?

He's a friendly ghost
and I'm not afraid of him.

Lynx... beautiful, good dog.

My dog,

it's probably my poor head that
makes the sound of your footsteps,

the gleam of your coat.

As long as I exist
you'll follow my trail,

hungry and yearning,

as I myself, hungry and yearning,
follow invisible trails.

Neither of us will
ever capture our prey.

The first snow fell
on the 27th of October.

It took only a few days
for winter to set in.

Then came the warm wind

and licked the young snow
from the mountains.

It became disagreeably warm,

and the wind hissed
day and night around the lodge.

I slept badly

and listened to the baying of stags
down below for the rutting season.

Both cats were drawn outside
into the warm, damp forest.

I lay awake and worried about Pearl.

The baying of the stags sounded sad,

threatening
and sometimes even desperate.

I only hoped the wind
wouldn't last too long,

and that winter
would finally bring us peace.

The wind only held out for three days,

just long enough to kill Pearl.

Pearl was buried,

and the wind died down overnight,

as if it had accomplished its task.

I haven't forgotten Pearl.

Her death was the first loss
I suffered in the forest.

Once, it must have been
in the first winter,

I saw a fox standing at the stream.

I could have shot it,

I had the gun with me, but I didn't.

Pearl had to die just because one of her
ancestors was an over-bred Angora cat.

From the start she had been
destined as a victim.

Was I to punish the beautiful,
living fox for this?

Pearl had suffered an injustice,

but the same injustice
had also befallen her victims.

Did I have to pass it on to the fox?

The only creature in the forest that
can really do right or wrong is me.

And I alone can show mercy.

Sometimes I wish I were not
burdened by these decisions.

But I am a human,

and I can only
think and act like a human.

Only death will free me from that.

When I think of winter, I see the
frost-covered fox at the stream.

A lonely, adult animal that
follows its predestined path.

It seems that this image
means something important to me,

as if it's only
a sign for something else.

But I can't recognize its meaning.

Yes, my Bella.

Yes, you are beautiful.

Bella had become more rounded,

but I still didn't know
if she was expecting a calf.

After all we have experienced,

Bella has become more than my cow.

She's a poor, patient sister,

who bears her lot in life
with more dignity than I do.

In the night I heard the cold
creaking in the wood.

I'd put on a lot of extra logs,

but was shivering under
the blanket and couldn't sleep.

Sometimes a log would crackle,
then fall silent.

I felt sick.

I knew it was because
I had to keep on killing.

I tried to imagine what a person
who enjoys killing might feel.

I couldn't.

The hair stood up on my arms, and
my mouth grew dry with disgust.

You would probably need
to be born to it.

I could bring myself to do it as
quickly and skillfully as possible,

but I would never get used to it.

I lay awake for ages
in the crackling darkness,

thinking about the little heart

freezing to a clump of ice
in the room above me.

After the great freeze, a wave
of damp, warmer air set in.

Bella grew nervous, and I had
to see to her 10 times a day.

On the 11th of January,
Bella bled a little.

It was after her evening feed,

and I decided to set myself up
in the barn for the night.

Come on, Bella! Hard!

Hard!

Come on, Bella, come on!

So much had happened recently...

Pearl had been killed, a little
bull had come into the world,

deer had frozen to death,

and the carnivores
had had a rich winter.

I myself had had a lot of excitement,

and now I was tired.

When I closed my eyes I saw
snowy mountains on the horizon,

white flakes dropping on my face
in a big, bright silence.

I had no thoughts, no memories,

there was only
the big, silent, snowy light.

I knew this feeling could be
dangerous for a lonely person,

but I couldn't muster
any strength to resist it.

Lynx didn't leave me in peace for long.

He kept coming to me
and prodding me with his nose.

Sighing, I got up
and set about my daily work.

Now Lynx, my friend and
guardian, has ceased to be,

and sometimes the desire to go into the
white and painless silence is very great.

I must take care of myself

and be stricter with myself
than I was before.

Lynx was my sixth sense.

Now he's dead I feel like an amputee.

I miss something
and will always miss it.

It isn't only that I miss him when
I'm hunting and following trails

and have to spend hours clambering
after a deer I've shot.

It's not just that.

The worst thing is that without
Lynx I feel truly alone.

The question of moving to the pasture
occupied me more with every passing day.

The task struck me as terribly arduous,

even if I were
to take only necessities with me

and live quite primitively
in the pasture.

Once I realized that I'd settled
on the move long ago,

when I'd first seen the green pastures,

I grew calmer.

And on the 25th of May

I took my departure
from the hunting lodge.

The path was quite well preserved,

but it was still four hours before our
curious procession reached the pasture.

It was approaching midday.

I was completely exhausted,

less from physical effort
than from nervous tension.

Something new was beginning.

I didn't know what it would bring me,

but my homesickness and anxiety
about the future were fading.

I started to realize that the pasture
is beautiful, strange and dangerous,

and, like all strange things,
filled with secret seductions.

It was a strange feeling to have
an overview of a wide area

unhindered by mountains and trees.

And it was not immediately
comfortable and liberating.

My eyes had to get used to it,

after a year in the narrow,
deep, circular valley.

During my time in the pasture
I wrote no diary entries.

I had taken the calendar with me and
dutifully crossed out each day,

but I didn't even enter important
events such as the hay-harvest.

The memory of that time
has remained fresh, however,

and it isn't hard
for me to write about it.

I shall never forge the fragrance
of summer, the rainstorms

and the evenings glittering with stars.

For the first time in my life
I was calm,

not content or happy, but calm.

It was as if a big hand had
stopped the clock in my head.

Sometimes my thoughts tangle up,

and it is as if the forest
is growing roots in me

and thinking its old,
eternal thoughts with my brain.

Back then, in the second summer,
I hadn't reached that point.

The boundaries
were still firmly in place.

I find it hard to separate my old
self from my new self when I write.

And I'm not sure that my new self

isn't being slowly absorbed
into some greater whole.

But even then
the transformation was starting.

It was the pasture's fault.

It was almost impossible, in the
buzzing stillness of the meadow,

beneath the big sky, to remain
a single, separate self,

a small, blind, independent life

that didn't want to integrate
into a greater community.

Once my major source of pride
was to lead such a life,

but in the pasture it suddenly
struck me as pathetic and absurd,

an over-inflated nothing.

On the 16th of October, after
my return from the pasture,

I began to keep my diary again.

For almost all of October
the weather was fine.

I now made the most of the promising
climate and doubled my wood supply.

On All Saints' Day
it suddenly grew warm,

and I knew that this
could only herald winter.

On the 10th of December
I find a strange entry,

"Time is passing so quickly."

I can't remember writing it.

I don't know what happened
on that 10th of December

that led me to write, beneath
"New-fallen snow" and "Fetched hay,"

"Time is passing so quickly."

Was time passing
especially fast back then?

I can't remember
or give an account of it.

And it isn't true.

Time only seemed to be
passing quickly to me.

I think time stands quite still
and I move around in it,

sometimes slowly
and sometimes at a furious rate.

I do something, things race
ahead, and I forget time.

And then, quite suddenly,
it surrounds me again.

I shall have to get used to it,

its indifference and omnipresence.

Since Lynx died I feel this clearly.

I sit at the table
and time stands still.

I can't see it, smell it or hear it,

but it surrounds me on all sides,

its silence and motionlessness
is terrible.

At heart these thoughts
are quite meaningless.

I pity animals, and I pity people,

because they're thrown into this
life without being consulted.

Maybe people are more deserving of pity,

as they have just enough intelligence
to resist the natural course of things.

It has made them wicked and
desperate, and not very lovable.

And yet, life could have
been lived differently.

There is no impulse
more reasonable than love.

It makes life more bearable
for loving and loved one.

We should have recognized in time
that this was our only chance,

our only hope for a better life.

For an endless army of the dead,
mankind's only chance has vanished forever.

I keep thinking about that.

I can't understand why we
had to take the wrong path.

I only know it's too late.

This autumn a white crow appeared.

It flies a little behind the others

and settles alone on a tree
avoided by its companions.

I can't understand why
the other crows don't like it.

I think it's
an especially beautiful bird,

but it's repugnant to the others.

A miserable absurdity that
shouldn't exist, a white crow.

It sits there until the great
flock has flown away,

and then I bring it a little food.

It can't know why it's been ostracized,

that's the only life it knows.

It will always be an outcast
and so alone

that it is less afraid of people
than its black brethren.

Every day I wait for the
white crow and call to it,

and it looks at me attentively
with its reddish eyes.

I can do very little for it.

Perhaps my scraps are prolonging a
life that shouldn't be prolonged.

But I want the white crow to live,

and sometimes I dream there's
another one in the forest

and that they will find each other.

I don't believe it will happen,
I just wish it dearly.

Gradually I began to disengage
from my past

and grow into a new order.

It was May by the time
the weather really improved.

Two years had passed in the forest.

It struck me
that now I hardly ever thought

that someone might find me at last.

I decided to set off soon
for the alpine pasture.

By the beginning of June I'd managed
to get used to the pasture,

but it was never the same
as the previous year.

That first summer there
was gone irrevocably,

and I didn't want
a weaker version of it,

so I kept myself from succumbing
once more to the old magic.

But the pasture
didn't make it hard for me.

It had closed itself off and
showed me an unfamiliar face.

I often sat, as I'd done a year before,

on the bench by the house
looking out over the meadow.

It hadn't changed from before,

and it smelled just as sweet,

but I didn't go into
the old raptures again.

I'd stopped making longer expeditions,

since I'd drawn up my boundaries
the previous summer.

I no longer cared where the wall went.

That summer I quite forgot that
Lynx was a dog and I a human.

I knew it, but it had lost
any distinctive meaning.

Lynx too had changed.

Now he had so much of my
attention, he had grown calmer

and didn't seem constantly afraid

that I might vanish into thin air as
soon as he went off for five minutes.

Thinking about it today,

I believe that was the only
big fear in his dog's life,

being abandoned, on his own.

I too had learned a lot more

and understood almost all
his movements and sounds.

Now, at last, there was a silent
understanding between us.

I carried Lynx to the hut

and laid him on the bench.

He'd suddenly grown small and light.

And then, as if from a great
distance, I heard Bella roaring.

She was beside herself with fear.

I tried to calm her down.

Only then did I remember the man.

I knew he must be dead.

He had been such a big target
that I couldn't have missed.

I was glad he was dead,

it would have been hard for me
to kill an injured person.

Yet I couldn't have left him alive.

Or maybe I could, I don't know.

I didn't want to leave him in the meadow

not beside the dead bull,
in the virgin grass.

So I picked him up by the legs

and dragged him to the lookout point.

There, where the rocks
fall steeply to the scree-slope

and alpine roses blossom in June,

I let him roll down the hill.

I dug a grave for Lynx in the evening.

I dug the hole deep, laid Lynx into it,

covered him with earth and
stamped the grass down over it.

And then I was very tired,

more tired than ever before.

Then I sat down on the bench
and waited for the long night.

It was a bright, starlit night,

and the wind drifted down coldly
from the cliffs.

But I was colder than the wind
and didn't feel the chill.

At first light I got up
and left the pasture with Bella.

The next day I resumed my usual work.

October came and
I harvested potatoes and fruit.

The straw needed cutting,
but that took only a week,

and finally,
physically beaten and broken,

I stopped my pointless escape attempts

and confronted my thoughts.

Nothing at all came of it.

I would like to know why
the stranger killed my animals.

I shall never find out and
perhaps it is better that way.

Now I am quite calm.

I can see a little further ahead.

I can see that this is not yet the end.

Everything goes on.

Bull, Pearl and Lynx
will never exist again,

but something new is coming,
and I can't avoid that.

The memories, the grief
and the fear will remain,

and the hard work,
for as long as I live.

Today, on the 25th of February,

I shall end my report.

There isn't a single sheet
of paper left.

It's now around 5:00 in the evening,

and already so light that
I can write without the lamp.

The crows have risen and circle
screeching over the forest.

When they are out of sight

I will go to the clearing
and feed the white crow.

It is waiting there for me.