QUICK’N DIRTY: LIVE FROM BERLIN
Alois Koch often goes by Al Cook instead. The octogenarian singer and guitarist prefers the anglophone version of his name because he has a passion for the blues and Elvis Presley. Played by Alois Koch/Al Cook himself, our protagonist often listens to his favourite artists on an old record player, and he occasionally performs at a tiny cabaret to an audience of seven to eight people. The titular song The Loneliest Man in Town (by Side Effect) is one of the highlights from his repertoire.
You’d be forgiven for assuming the film took place roughly at the turn of the century. Al still owns a jurassic and barely functioning Nokia. There is not a laptop or even a CD at sight. It is only thanks to a character using a smart phone much later in the story that we realise that The Loneliest Man in Town is set in the present day. It is only that our protagonist fossilised his lifestyle decades earlier. The vintage furniture and the old-fashioned wallpaper offer protection to Al’s memories, thereby enabling him to forge ahead
Entirely set in Vienna, this heartfelt tribute to old age and nostalgia begins as a story of resistance. To the desperation of that property developers that acquired his building, Al refuses to vacate the flat where he was born and has been a tenant ever since. So they resort to all sorts of harassment tactics in order to torment the poor old man. They cut off the electricity on Christmas day, leaving Al to celebrate the holidays on his own to candlelight. A social worker warns him that this could escalate, and that the greedy proprietors could deprive him of his gas, water, change his lock, remove the roof and dump garbage outside his door in order to attract vermin. Instead, they hire a loud and boozy thug to pester Al inside his very own apartment. His predicament is virtually identical to Clara’s (Sonia Braga) in Kleber Mendonca Filho’s Aquarius (2017), if in a completely different context.
A twist transforms the story into something else. The topic of unfulfilled dreams becomes the movie’s main steering force. It is impossible not to be moved by Al handling his handmade collection of Elvis pictures and articles, or watching videos of himself nearly 50 years earlier. His 35-year-old version complains that Vienna is too “narrow-minded” and commits to moving the the US. He never filled such promise. In fact he never set foot in the United States. Is this perhaps the time to rectify this? The revelation that he composed 30 songs for Elvis but could never deliver them to his icon is genuinely heartbreaking. His knowledge of the Mississippi Delta, the cradle of the blues, is impressive.
Our protagonist’s romanticism isn’t confined to music. Al also has a passion for women. A portrait of his late Sylvia adds the finishing touch of melancholia to the proceedings. The resurfacing of an old lover with a very peculiar reason as to why she dumped him suggests that positive change could be on its way. Perhaps Al still has a future as well as a past.
Al’s autofictional performance is outstanding. His soft-spoken and cordial demeanour is extremely charming, as is his Elvis forelock (the same one as half a century earlier) and trousers buckled halfway up his belly. The tender humour often borders on deadpan however without losing its deep humanistic touch. Aki Kaurismaki’s widely-acclaimed Fallen Leaves (2023) comes to mind (except that the topic is music instead of cinema). The Loneliest Man in Town is deeper and also funnier than the Finnish movie.
The Loneliest Man in Town just premiered in the Official Competition of the 76th Berlinale. You may never look at the old vinyls and pictures at your local flea market the same way after watching this little masterpiece of nostalgia.
