Solvent (adj): able to pay all just debts;
having the power of dissolving; causing solution
(n): something that solves or explains
They say the most important thing you can do with your past is learn from it. Honor it in a way that means you can move on from it without forgetting, leave it in the past but carry it forward with you. This is, perhaps, easier said than done when the past in question is traumatic. In the face of trauma—whether personal or collective—there are a couple of ways it tends to go. Either it’s blocked out so thoroughly that time is little more than a black hole, indiscriminately eating away at memory, or it is set so deeply in stone and lifted up in some twisted new version of idealized time. Which way it goes often largely depends on whether you are victim or aggressor. Obviously, these are not the only two ways trauma can manifest and linger, but for the sake of talking Johannes Grenzfurthner’s SOLVENT, they are the two major lenses in constant interaction.
If you are familiar with Grenzfurthner’s previous work—particularly MASKING THRESHOLD and RAZZENNEST—then you have a fairly good idea of what you’re getting into with SOLVENT, both stylistically and, in a sense, thematically. While not explicitly connected to one another, all three films are engaging in a dialogue of individual and societal trauma and the marks it leaves on the psyche of humanity. If you’re not familiar with Grenzfurthner’s narrative work, for better or worse this—as his most narratively direct work—is a pretty good place to start, provided you can stomach it.
In SOLVENT, we follow researcher Gunner S. Hollbrook (Jon Gries) and his team as they search an Austrian farmhouse belonging to one Ernst Bartholdi (Grenzfurthner himself), believed to contain Nazi documents that were harbored away by Bartholdi’s grandfather. Things rather quickly go off the rails in shocking ways, and yet the horror at play still feels equal parts slow and steady. Much like the hoarder house they comb through, there are plenty of crumbs that reveal the characters’ true inner selves almost before the mysterious underground pipe the crew discovers can bring them to light.
Grenzfurthner is firing on all cylinders here. As in MASKING THRESHOLD, the camera work is handheld and confrontationally intimate—even and especially when you wish it wouldn’t be—stitched together with footage and images of real photos, documents, and war paraphernalia. Add in the intricately woven yet bombastically insane story of “war veteran seeks rare documents in an effort to aid victims, and instead finds cellar pipe that leads anyone who comes into direct contact with it to face one of humanity’s worst moments from a head-on first person perspective”, sprinkle in a series of characters who almost entirely seem like they might tip over the edge of insanity if you so much as looked at them sideways, mix it all together and SOLVENT is what you’re left with.
Perhaps my favorite thing about it though, if such a film can have favorite elements, is the name itself. Describing the film, despite its straightforward narrative, sounds like so much insanity, yet it truly all boils down to the various definitions of the word all twisted into one terrifying confrontation with the past. Hollbrook is trying to pay debts for atrocities he’s committed in the name of following orders. He is also trying to solve and explain the mysteries of as-yet-unidentified victims and perpetrators alike. And the pipe in the cellar around which most of the narrative spins, well, that’s an atrocity all its own.
SOLVENT is a potent mix of fiction and reality dosed heavily with obsession, guilt, national and individual trauma, and the power of memory to shape present and future legacy. It is not by any stretch an easy watch—I in fact strongly advise against watching it over a meal—but it does frequently feel like a vital one. Particularly now, as we stare down the barrel of some of humanity’s worst moments fighting like hell for the chance to repeat themselves. It’s also a pretty nice but sobering reminder of who, exactly, gets to shape the stories we carry with us into the future.
I was fortunate enough to catch it on the festival circuit during the 2025 Chattanooga Film Festival, but I have it on good faith a wider release is on the horizon later this year.
Tags: Aleksandra Cwen, Chattanooga Film Festival, Chattanooga Film Festival 2025, Film Festivals, Johannes Grenzfurthner, Jon Gries, Katelyn Nelson, Masking Threshold, Razzennest, Solvent
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