In a small German town where time passes by the raising and lowering of the railroad crossing bar, three aging mine workers find things have gotten even slower since their involuntary early retirement. Until one of them, Schultze, decides to pursue his accordion hobby down previously untraveled avenues, and his pace quickens ever so imperceptibly. Michael Schorr's Schultze Gets the Blues is masterful at painting portraits of humdrum pleasures and minor sorrows, cheery even when it's gloomy, and it's blessed with a keen retro-shabby production design. The film truly is comprised of portraits, as Schorr plants that stationary camera and leaves it for a succession of long shots -- both in terms of their depth of field, and their duration. This contemplative pace sometimes acts like a narcotic -- more soothing than numbing, to be sure -- but it also allows the filmmakers to say much with relatively little dialogue, using telltale environmental details to speak volumes. Music is the story's universal form of communication, especially when Schultze travels to the United States, where his already taciturn nature is challenged further by the language barrier. There's nothing glamorous about the Bayou towns portrayed here -- in fact, the similarities to his hometown are driven home humorously -- but the trip itself is an earth-shattering achievement for this creature of habit, who worries, for example, that a change in his musical tastes is a sign of failing mental health. Played by the rotund and wonderfully understated Horst Krause, Schultze doesn't undergo the huge character revelations and other big moments a viewer might expect of a protagonist. But Schultze Gets the Blues should be proud that it has a different definition of what passes for "big moments," and it rewards viewers capable of appreciating its sense of relativity.