The railway is to be shut down in an idyllic valley in the Allgäu; the taciturn old linesman, Waller, whose life has run parallel to the life of the railway for years, sets out on one last inspection. As he checks the signals and points, in their place come memories of his youth: his first job, the loss of his best friend to the war, the forbidden love of his life...In the course of the film, Waller goes through time as time has gone through him until, by the end, a metamorphosis has been completed: grass covers the railway line, as if it had been in disuse for years. Director Christian Wagner's first film is a meditation on the region of his birth and memories-the Allgäu in Bavaria-cast with local actors (Rolf Illig as the old Waller, Herbert Knaup as his younger self). In the tradition of Antonioni and Tarkovsky, he uses landscape to evoke the personal realm of memory and time. German critics have lauded the film, which was shot by Thomas Mauch, as "full of feeling and yet so utterly unsentimental" (Die Welt), with "cinematographic images of original, enchanting beauty" (Abendzeitung Muenchen). It won the 1988 Bavarian Film Prize and the German Critics' Prize at the Berlin Film Festival '89.