A Piece Of Sky

There is a moment early on in Michael Koch’s film, Switzerland’s submission to the 2023 Academy Awards, when Marco (Simon Wisler) is ordered to take a cow, Olga, to slaughter because, after several attempts, she has failed to conceive. They don’t have the resources to care for those who can’t be productive, even if they like them, explains the farmer. Marco complies, unhappily. Wisler is a farmer in real life and his empathy with the animal is clear. The farmer’s sentiment will echo throughout the film.

It begins with little things. Marco suffers from persistent, debilitating headaches. He’s impulsive, especially with Anna (Michèle Brand), whom he marries in a terribly Swiss ceremony at which red-clad men play tubas and Anna’s daughter Julia (Elin Zgraggen) serves as a bridesmaid. He makes odd little mistakes. When he has an accident, doctors take a look, and he is diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumour. With no clue what she’s really taking on, but with no shortage of sincerity, Anna vows to stand by him. She doesn’t really take in what the doctors try to explain: that not only will be become physically disabled and eventually die, but his personality will change along the way.

The loss of control is gradual. Putting cereal in the fridge is odd, but not a big deal. Leaving cows free to wander is rather more serious. Soon work dries up. He makes too many mistakes; he is no longer productive. Anna is asked why she doesn’t send him away somewhere, as if his personhood has become invisible to people, and likewise her love for him. Frustrated, she wants him to get emotional, but he doesn’t see the point. It is what it is. On a log car drive together, they listen to Haddaway’s What Is Love, and all the old emotion comes flooding back. but when she realises that he might pose a risk to Julia, the situation becomes still more difficult.

Shot in square format, A Piece Of Sky immerses viewers in a world as much vertical as horizontal, where men thresh hay on steep slopes and wooden houses cling to the mountainside. Terrific sound design by the director’s brother, Tobias Koch, conjures up the wind, birdsong, tinkling cowbells, rushing water. Tobias also composed the score, and from time to time the action is paused so we can watch a choir signing, standing in one stunning natural location or another. The film could not be more Swiss if it were made out of chocolate, yet it feels real, organic, a natural expression of the world in which it is set.

Michael Koch found his cast locally. Brand, on whose shoulders the bulk of it rests, is an architect in day to day life, but her performance is something extraordinary. For large stretches of the film Anna has no-one to talk to about her feelings, yet we are always able to connect with what’s going on inside her head. Koch’s slow, lingering approach allows plenty of time for us to take in expressions and small interactions, but also to gaze at objects, at the slope of a mountain, at the play of light upon a wall. Life is made up of all these things. Marco, finding it harder to speak and to reason, still observes and knows. There is still a part of him which is himself, and we watch as he and Anna try to maintain a connection.

There are moments of brightness. Zgraggen is full of life, and even in the most uncomfortable scenes, she reminds us of the resilience of which children are capable. She doesn’t believe in God, she says, but in various aspects on the natural world. In a curious interlude, a Bollywood film production comes to the area. Anna goes along to watch the filming, sees romance expressed in the way she might have wanted it to be. Sees, also, her familiar landscape as it looks to outsiders. Roots herself in these mountains, in the place where her love began.