Brilliantly conceived and produced, true to the spirit of the Haushofer's book. And it warms the heart to read so many glowing and insightful reviews from people who allowed themselves be enthralled for 108 minutes. By some miracle, as you sit in the theatre (or on your sofa streaming online) faced with the raw wilderness of the Austrian mountainside, you forget entirely that behind the solitary narrator there is a crew of up to fifty people contributing to this solid product of creativity and coherence. Try also to imagine what it means to act in close-up without words (or makeup) for nearly two hours. Recent forays into the dystopian annihilation of mankind have tended to shuffle the blame from human folly onto intrusive outside forces and Michael Bay-type pyrotechnics. In the case of The Wall, there was no need for CGI effects: the snow is as real and challenging as the Alpine sunshine is warm and soothing. No explanation is offered as to either the rationale or the mechanics of the invisible Wall, the focus shifting to human resilience in circumstances so extraordinary that few others could have endured with anything like her aplomb and practical gumption: today we're living in an era in which a sudden lack of wi-fi can cause a riot considerably less edifying than a murmur of starlings in terms of coordinated mass behaviour. Here in The Wall we have resilience, and above all inwardness and reflection, patently in short supply for those fast-food urban denizens ("slow" is their byword) who saw "self-indulgence" and "solipsism" or lament the lack of "conclusiveness" in the ending: they have missed the spirit of the story, and will perhaps believe they deserve a refund of their money and time. Chop wood, light a candle, stoke a fire, make hay, milk a cow? Even write with a pencil, on paper? Egad!