The Invisible Frame (2009) Movie Script
1
Twenty one years.
What have I learnt
in twenty one years?
All I have to do is stay
on this bike,
and keep my eyes and ears open.
And keep my mind
as free as I can.
I want to know
what the wall was like
from the other side.
They are building another wall,
somewhere else now.
The foster child grows
bigger and bigger,
and the redbreast
begins looking thin...
and exhausted.
Three weeks later the cuckoo
flutters out of the nest.
He stays close by...
and cries greedily for
food, food, food.
Now you see it, now you don't.
It's like a trick of the light.
You come around the corner,
and there it is.
And something is completely unchanged.
All these odds and ends,
these bits of wall and watchtowers,
and binoculars, and...
uniforms and photographs.
They are like
the archeological remains of some
long long long dead civilisation,
sort of pre-1300
maybe Byzantine...
So far... Prehistoric.
There's no way of really understanding
how it ever worked.
But it was 20 years ago!
Where is everybody?
Where are the people
who man these watchtowers?
Why must we guess everything?
It's all underground,
it's like a trapdoor has just shut
and a carpet has been rolled over it.
And it's vanished, underneath...
acres and acres and acres of shame,
and re-written history.
Such a bad idea.
It will all come out in the wash.
It won't all come out in the wash.
When this wall,
this...
ex-wall...
this...
manifestation of this ghost wall
was here,
it felt so much more invisible
than it is now.
It has my attention in a way
that it never did before.
One can really taste the brutality of
when it was put up,
because one sees what it divided
was just space,
just land, just streets,
and just people,
and families and communities
and a nation.
And the brutality was submerged before
and...
ameliorated and translated
into some kind of...
stoic acceptance.
Call the plumber,
hang the washing,
remortgage the house,
dig the garden,
pay the phone bill,
phone the garage,
mend the school bag,
make the bee costume,
prune the roses,
plan the tree house,
climb the high hill,
hunt the symbol,
do the fandango.
The lake was a prohibited area.
From the West you could
only swim to the middle.
The shadows and the generations,
the shrill doctors and the plangent wars,
go by into ultimate silence and emptiness;
But underneath all this,
a man may see, out of the windows,
much green and peaceful landscape.
Many fire-lit parlours,
good people laughing, drinking
and making love, as they did before
the Flood or the French Revolution;
And the old shepherd telling his tale
under the hawthorn.
One wall comes down and there's all these
other little ones that pop up.
It's like the legendary sea serpent
where you...
cut its head off and it...
grows back many more.
Greed, greed, and more greed.
Greed, greed, and more greed.
I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there,
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer,
And noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now,
For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway,
Or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
It's a fearful heart
that builds a wall,
And it's a fearless heart
that can live without it.
And coming into contact with someone
with a fearless heart...
disarms you.
You lay down your arms...
in the presence of a fearless heart,
a wall-less heart.
And it's a very solitary decision
to have a fearless heart.
It's a real freedom.
Birds,
birds, birds.
The material wind...
sometimes so solid,
sometimes so light,
and see-through.
You've got a job there;
you need to use a cloth.
I want to see where I'm going.
Where is it? Where is it gone?
Where is it?
I wish they put trees and hedges
and bird nests on maps.
Easier to find your way.
Maps are very fake things.
They tell you that time has stopped.
And it hasn't,
it's going on,
remaking itself
all the time.
Where am I now?
Am I in the East or am I in the West?
Does it matter?
Why does it matter?
Why does it matter?
Because it does,
because it means:
a history and it means...
a point of view
and it means...
a perspective.
I bear equally with you
The black permanent separation.
Why are you crying?
Rather give me your hand.
Promise to come again in a dream.
You and I, are a mountain of grief.
You and I, will never meet on this earth.
If only you could send me, at midnight,
a greeting, through the stars.
On February 5th, 1989
20-year-old Chris Gueffroy
was killed here.
He was the last escapee to be shot.
Open doors,
open eyes,
open ears,
open air,
open country,
open season,
open fields,
open hearts,
open minds,
open locks,
open borders,
open future,
open sky,
open arms,
open sesame.
DEDICATED TO THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE
Twenty one years.
What have I learnt
in twenty one years?
All I have to do is stay
on this bike,
and keep my eyes and ears open.
And keep my mind
as free as I can.
I want to know
what the wall was like
from the other side.
They are building another wall,
somewhere else now.
The foster child grows
bigger and bigger,
and the redbreast
begins looking thin...
and exhausted.
Three weeks later the cuckoo
flutters out of the nest.
He stays close by...
and cries greedily for
food, food, food.
Now you see it, now you don't.
It's like a trick of the light.
You come around the corner,
and there it is.
And something is completely unchanged.
All these odds and ends,
these bits of wall and watchtowers,
and binoculars, and...
uniforms and photographs.
They are like
the archeological remains of some
long long long dead civilisation,
sort of pre-1300
maybe Byzantine...
So far... Prehistoric.
There's no way of really understanding
how it ever worked.
But it was 20 years ago!
Where is everybody?
Where are the people
who man these watchtowers?
Why must we guess everything?
It's all underground,
it's like a trapdoor has just shut
and a carpet has been rolled over it.
And it's vanished, underneath...
acres and acres and acres of shame,
and re-written history.
Such a bad idea.
It will all come out in the wash.
It won't all come out in the wash.
When this wall,
this...
ex-wall...
this...
manifestation of this ghost wall
was here,
it felt so much more invisible
than it is now.
It has my attention in a way
that it never did before.
One can really taste the brutality of
when it was put up,
because one sees what it divided
was just space,
just land, just streets,
and just people,
and families and communities
and a nation.
And the brutality was submerged before
and...
ameliorated and translated
into some kind of...
stoic acceptance.
Call the plumber,
hang the washing,
remortgage the house,
dig the garden,
pay the phone bill,
phone the garage,
mend the school bag,
make the bee costume,
prune the roses,
plan the tree house,
climb the high hill,
hunt the symbol,
do the fandango.
The lake was a prohibited area.
From the West you could
only swim to the middle.
The shadows and the generations,
the shrill doctors and the plangent wars,
go by into ultimate silence and emptiness;
But underneath all this,
a man may see, out of the windows,
much green and peaceful landscape.
Many fire-lit parlours,
good people laughing, drinking
and making love, as they did before
the Flood or the French Revolution;
And the old shepherd telling his tale
under the hawthorn.
One wall comes down and there's all these
other little ones that pop up.
It's like the legendary sea serpent
where you...
cut its head off and it...
grows back many more.
Greed, greed, and more greed.
Greed, greed, and more greed.
I will arise and go now,
And go to Innisfree,
And a small cabin build there,
Of clay and wattles made;
Nine bean-rows will I have there,
A hive for the honey-bee,
And live alone in the bee-loud glade.
And I shall have some peace there,
For peace comes dropping slow,
Dropping from the veils of the morning
To where the cricket sings;
There midnight's all a glimmer,
And noon a purple glow,
And evening full of the linnet's wings.
I will arise and go now,
For always night and day
I hear lake water lapping
With low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway,
Or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
It's a fearful heart
that builds a wall,
And it's a fearless heart
that can live without it.
And coming into contact with someone
with a fearless heart...
disarms you.
You lay down your arms...
in the presence of a fearless heart,
a wall-less heart.
And it's a very solitary decision
to have a fearless heart.
It's a real freedom.
Birds,
birds, birds.
The material wind...
sometimes so solid,
sometimes so light,
and see-through.
You've got a job there;
you need to use a cloth.
I want to see where I'm going.
Where is it? Where is it gone?
Where is it?
I wish they put trees and hedges
and bird nests on maps.
Easier to find your way.
Maps are very fake things.
They tell you that time has stopped.
And it hasn't,
it's going on,
remaking itself
all the time.
Where am I now?
Am I in the East or am I in the West?
Does it matter?
Why does it matter?
Why does it matter?
Because it does,
because it means:
a history and it means...
a point of view
and it means...
a perspective.
I bear equally with you
The black permanent separation.
Why are you crying?
Rather give me your hand.
Promise to come again in a dream.
You and I, are a mountain of grief.
You and I, will never meet on this earth.
If only you could send me, at midnight,
a greeting, through the stars.
On February 5th, 1989
20-year-old Chris Gueffroy
was killed here.
He was the last escapee to be shot.
Open doors,
open eyes,
open ears,
open air,
open country,
open season,
open fields,
open hearts,
open minds,
open locks,
open borders,
open future,
open sky,
open arms,
open sesame.
DEDICATED TO THE PEOPLE OF PALESTINE