Valeska Grisebach's 'Western' is a broodingly intelligent drama of culture clash
Like its title, "Western" is both startlingly direct and full of resonance and ambiguity. Written and directed by the gifted Valeska Grisebach, the movie follows German construction workers into a remote stretch of Bulgarian countryside, near the Greek border, where they have come to build a hydroelectric power plant.
The story is a faultlessly observed, broodingly intelligent piece of realism, a dispatch from a sun-baked frontier that could hardly feel more mundane or specific but that
