The apocalypse angel

Plays like the apocalypse. Fassbinder’s final film. Expressionist character sexual safari. The thought of murder often evokes thoughts of the sea and sailors. Querelle (1982, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is part entry into the filthy uninhibited sex drive of one man part processing his psychology his feelings his desires. These aren’t to be reconciled. The accounting isn’t neat or tidy. But volatile. Impulsive. Esoteric. Personal. Individual.

     I wanna say Querelle seems to constantly attempt constructing his own identity based on other men around him. Finding someone like you. The search to connect contrasted with masculine passivity. As a character he embodies freedom. His attitude confidence sly guile wily provocative defiantly content with himself on the outside. Tempestuous interior. 
     His perpetuating cycle of enacting his own destruction as both means and end is the end of the world. Revelations. Or atonement once again? Or both? Fighting his brother is fighting himself and he has no brother.
 
How cool is it that we get a return to the offputting wooden line readings with languorous pauses as characters look of into the distance their eyeline nowhere aimed at the character they’re talking to? And Xaver Schwarzenberger’s full on artificial color palette throughout the entirety of the film’s runtime? Amazing. Candy corn sky as source casting molten movie popcorn butter hue over all. Blue silver accents.
     Drone. Chanting. The air of a funeral elegy. Exalted mourning. All with the dispassionate disaffected defiance of a singular voice the likes of which we’ll never see again.

Light and shadow the two secrets of motion pictures

Lucid deathmarch. Drug addiction. Junk. Dope. Needle. Pills. Escape from the pain. Veronika Voss (1982, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is in terms of its aesthetic values a parody of a 40’s Hollywood schlocky B (yes I know that’s redundant) melodrama. But at its very core is genius. An interior portrayed through stark high contrast black and white imagery conspiracy plot that emerges as one of the few if not only original druggie films to say something new about substance abuse.

     It’s always bugged me how every drug abuse movie I can think of having seen always follows the same general plot. Rise and fall. Someone with everything loses it all. Loss of dignity. Loss of self. Rock bottom pasty sweaty desperate begging for another fix. And always so bombastic. The plot of Veronika Voss pits an aging former UFA star against her primary care physician DR KATZ. Veronika goes to this magnificent spa clinic brilliantly art designed all white complete with white plaster statues sculptures and any and all other decorative items likewhite. What is this place? Rehab? A methadone clinic? Worse.
     The doctor is her dealer. Man I am taken with this screenplay. The dealer is selling her patients dope that they in return sign their possessions home life over to her for. And there’s later some bureaucrat who’s on the take with them overseeing scrips for the state corrupt covering up anything that could compromise their racket. That’s it. There’s no resolution. No way to save Veronika. Dope costs a fortune. When she runs out of money she’s no good to the dealer so let her die.
 
Thematically I gotta say this but Veronika Voss feels like it in some way I can’t prove or describe link drug addiction with the Holocaust. There’s that one elderly couple that Robert’s gf goes to to try to pawn some priceless vase so Veronika can buy more dope who refuse to accept it. 
     Veronika lives in a house where all of the furniture is draped in cloth. Like someone who knows they’re going to die and has to take care of every loose end before they go. The elderly man has the concentration camp tattoo on his forearm. He was at Treblinka. The couple and Veronika are all trying to escape their pain. The mysterious question to ask is why won’t he giver the young woman money? “Do you see now why I want nothing to do with your world?” 
     Someone mentions that Goebbels blacklisted Veronika but it’s not confirmed. Which could mean only that she’s Jewish. There doesn’t seem to be enough to put together what I’m trying to say but the vase feels like precious artifacts stolen from Jewish people by the Nazis. I’m probably wrong. But the feeling is we know the elderly couple and Veronika both get their dope from Dr. Katz. They’re being sent to die. They are suffering their own pain.
     Veronika is a has been. Younger actresses are getting the parts she used to. We even see one fresh off the casting couch. This whole dark sordid blackmarket exchange of flesh and shooting up become indistinguishable. When Veronika runs out of money and Dr. Katz plans her demise after the farewell party locked in her apartment with no more morphine only pills she’ll od. And she does. And what day does that happen on? Good Friday. The day of Christ’s Crucifixion. Lamb of God. Veronika sacrificed by overdose.
 
Such an effective portrayal of addiction at the end Veronika in her apartment room in disarray. Fidgeting. Lipstick. Mirror. Country western music mournful sad on the radio way more powerful than any other loud obnoxious run amok shenanigans Hollywood’s done elsewhere. Xaver Schwarzenberger’s star filter takes on secondary meaning. Distorted reality.
     The expressionist black and white world of Veronika Voss is artifice awareness transport beauty by art. Don’t you dare say German Expressionism. There’s more to life than Caligari. This film is cold. Clinical. Controlled. Balanced. Death.
 
The film opens with again with Fassbinder a movie within a movie that foreshadows the extent of the meaning we’re about to get. One of Veronika’s old movies. She plays a drug addict. Her character deteriorating from drug dependency. “I’ll give you everything I possess. Everything I am. Now I belong to you. Everything I have belongs to you.” She’s talking to her addiction. To her dealer.
     And in the theater she watches full of fear. And at the end of the film she’ll finally add “all I have left to give you is my death.” The earlier scene is her watching a premonition of her deathmarch. And Fassbinder is there right next to her in the theater not saying anything. Just watching. And he’ll die in real life from drugs the same year this film was released. An actress playing an actress watching an actress. An addict can become different people on a whim invariably to manipulate gain sympathy confide confess subterfuge withhold intimacy for protection. Confusion. Despair. Death.

The Pink Angel

Embrace the cuck. Accept it. Surface veneer (I know that’s redundant) of a 50’s Technicolor melodrama. Lola (1981, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) cuts too deep. So deep it angers me. Were I to judge it based on a film’s impact its ability to stay with you then this thing wins the award.

     Jumping to the end. Do you find this narrative credible once VON BOHM (Armin Mueller-Stahl) marries LOLA (Sukowa)? That’s what I wrestle with. This old fashioned strictly by the book bureaucrat middle-aged romantic lured away by his own lust taking the biggest whore in town as his bride knowing full well that she’s owned and operated by his most detested employee. That’s his arc. Inevitable. The only way this narrative could end. That I hate it so much means it works so well. Like the pathetic schlub he is I also fell for it.
     Because Sukowa is amazing. She makes it work. Her ebullient effervescence. Her raucous rowdy laughter and that squeak ever so often that’s an octave higher. I was so into this thing I missed the Fassbinder bubble coalescing right before my eyes. Lola wanting this respectable acceptable they say she can’t have. To legitimize her own reputation? No to conquer him for her own gain. When she dresses up as a bookworm. Their first date going to that church they have all to themselves singing hymns together. Her dalmatian dotted hoop dress. All the better to destroy you with.
     She even warns him. Leave town. I’m corrupt. He’s a frumpy age gap with what to offer her though? Her playing him I get. But marrying her? And Schuckert’s wedding present a trustfund whorehouse left to his illegitimate daughter Lola is to rear with von Bohm is further than I’ve seen Fassbinder or anyone else satirize the legacy of tradwife as secret prostie. The twist is von Bohm doesn’t wind up a geek in a catatonic stupor. He seems content. And that’s what’s truly chilling. I’ll save the final ending for you to experience yourself.
 
Being deceived is one thing. That’s a cuckold. But to know what you’re walking into is the stuff of tragedy. This is one of Fassbinder’s bleakest plots. One of the most transactional of all time. But that’s the point. Pussy is a line item of the town’s budget and integral to its infrastructure. Lola leverages it to her own advantage. And furthermore that of her daughter’s. Are they victim or survivor?
     Anyway Xaver Schwarzenberger’s color cinematography here is what I’ve always considered the most colorful movie ever. Except in terms of primary hues and saturation it’s beat by Speed Racer (2008, Wachowskis). In Lola the brothel is sumptuously lit with gels that give it this robust palette of mostly pinks with reds oranges purples baby blue and occasionally a burst of lime. Have you ever noticed how many of the sources in this film are unmotivated? The real outrage is how come there’s never been more of it? Think Bob Richadson. Natural Born Killers (1994, Oliver Stone). That’s my cause. My protest. More unmotivated light sources. Yeah early morning at von Bohm’s office where does that blast of lime bursting in come from? Exactly. This film is a monument to gels. When von Bohm is brought to the brothel the first time and he’s hit with that baby blue cast and the reverse of Lola on stage in pink then switches her to matching blue and pushes in is expressionist code for us to feel. There’s not another movie I can think of that compares to Lola in terms of lighting.
    

Crap with a stench of death

No stakes corny WWII Jew-Nazi romance thriller popcorn anomaly. Throw-away equivalent of fast food. But what fun. Lili Marleen (1981, Fassbinder) deals with the wealthy class. Something unusual for Fassbinder. Yet it’s also got lavish production values tons of extras pyro and stunts combat footage. Love late Fassbinder. Love fast food.

     This movie’s not bad. There’s just nothing to care about. WILLIE (Schygulla) writes this hit song. She sleeps around a bit and one of her hookups Grüppenfuhrer Henkel sets her up in a recording studio. And it’s at this precise moment the radio announces a blitzkrieg occurs meaning the Reichstag is officially at war while Henkel exclaims to all his National Socialist bros in the studio hey guys we got a record to finish! Delightful mashup territory. Color me tickled. Plot moving pretty quickly her song is a radio hit as the Wehrmacht captures Belgrade. Score. 
     This movie’s like the rise of a pop singer to the top of the charts paralleled with the Nazis rising along with her. Yes I know I shouldn’t be laughing at this. But like okay her love interest is played by Giancarlo Giannini ROBERT a Jewish crusader who’s in a group that smuggles Jewish passports and does everything they can to smuggle out and negotiate with Nazis for release of other Jews. Other than he and Willie hooking up in the first half and the perilous risk that comes with that (there’s a scene where he tells her “there are things happening in Germany right now more horrible than anything imaginable,” to which she replies “I don’t know about any of that I just sing a song,” at which point theyr’e both so turned on they have hot passionate sex) he goes his own way until the end out of nowhere mentioned prior he’s now a successful orchestra conductor. 
     Okay I am laughing at the tone and how I can’t imagine taking any of this seriously. But oh uh oh I can’t stop. She gets to meet the Führer because even though Goebbels hates her music apparently the Führer stans her. So she goes with her main hookup Henkel to have tea with Hitler and when they go in this ginormous set of doors open up and from within out pours white light. Get it? And when she first walks in to the suite Hitler’s bought her she asks “How did you know I like white?” Sorry ok I’ll stop with the making fun. Making light of it all.
 
The Nazi gala with hundreds of extras is gorgeous with the first glimpse of Xaver Schwarzenberger’s kandy kolored kaleidoscopic karnival kreations all pink hues baby blues and key lights aflame with orangefire and red contrast actors faces. Too cool. More to come.
     The Fassbinder cameo is him smuggling Willie film out of the atrocities occurring at Auschwitz Treblinka and Majdanek. Top secret stuff. But superficial escapist entertainment not seen since the War. And for fans of the obscure major easter egg: at the end when Willie is being walked through the forest and her guide says something happened here a pimp killed his girl we know he’s talking about Franz Biberkopf from Berlin Alexanderplatz. And wait when the Gestapo throw Robert in that room and lock him in torturing him making him listen to “Lili Marleen” loud skipping on repeat that kind of anguish torment is pretty Fassbinder. 

The Mount Everest of modern cinema

Can people change? Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is not only the crowning achievement of Fassbinder’s entire career but perhaps the crowning achievement of cinema itself. A fifteen hour film about an ex con who just finished a four year stretch making a sincere effort to straighten up. 

     FRANZ BIBERKOPF (Günter Lamprecht) was a pimp who beat his girlfriend IDA to death in their flat. The court gave him four years for manslaughter. On parole he vows to himself to keep clean. Yet what’s most profound and the reason we care about this epic drama is that despite convincing himself and us he’s gonna make it when we least expect it and furthermore are in no way equipped to comprehend he starts slowly inevitably on the path to his doom. Franz gets alot of ass. And when he finally falls in love with MEIZE (Barbara Sukowa) the romance feels so perfect that knowing Fassbinder it’s a bubble. And you know what happens to bubbles.
     Meize is a child in her temperament. Like Franz. She meets him at a pretty low point. He joined the crime syndicate he said he never would. With no conceivable reason to whatsoever making it hit even harder. And REINHOLD (Gottfried John) has to take Mieze from Franz because they’re so perfectly happy in love with each other. End of plot synopsis. Maybe the important thing I’ve left out is how much Fassbinder enjoys turning the screw.
 
Everytime I come back to Berlin Alexanderplatz its singular aesthetic character tone feel and vibe are so wellworn familiar instantly recognizable worthwhile magnificent it feels like I just got out of prison and have returned home to déjà vu all over again. Its ochre patina glistening like a glass of beer throughout the burnt umber drab shabby ratholes pubs and posh Berlin habitations exist in our minds because they’ve been swathed with so much care as to transcend reality. That pink blinking light through the window in Franz's flat. The 80s cross filter that causes the highlights to twinkle (and sometimes even Mieze’s eye) remains endearing. The low angle fixed POV looking heavenward above the tall building tops of Franz's newly appreciative inquisitive surveilling of his surroundings translates his wonder to our wonder. 
 
Franz sometimes comes off as simple. Touched in the head after his release. Overwhelmed. Ready at any second to crack under the culture shock pressure of life on the outside. Other times he’s a little kid. Others verbose. Poetic. Philosophical. Berlin Alexanderplatz is full of biblical references to ponder. The Sodom and Gomorrah red light district alley with the bald barker endlessly reciting his star attraction the Whore of Babylon mother of all abominations and atrocities drunk off the blood of the saints. Franz’s ultimate low after his first betrayal bender binge where he suffers as Job until Satan finally kicks him out and tells him he’s ready to go back out onto the streets after recovering. Livestock. Slaughter. Sacrifice. The old man slicing open the lamb’s throat in that dark room who looks like he’s of ancient times we are shown why? Oh no reason.
     Peddlers of smut pornography fruit vendors Communists gangsters and Nazis all eager to give Franz a shot at work in the vastly growing multitudes amidst Berlin’s unemployed. And the repetition of the scene of Franz murdering Ida hour after hour shown to us again and again along the way begging us to consider this aspect of Franz’s psyche so deep rooted as to relentlessly haunt us as it must haunt him for the rest of his days. 
     But okay anyway Meize is adorable. And the most earthly grounded universal relevance I still can’t quite shake. Rationalization of a cuck. The serpent tempting Franz and him letting himself be tempted. Mieze’s going to bring home the money because she loves her man. He asks if she’s going off with the rich married man without telling him for days at a time to prostitute herself what’s left? She tells him she loves him and he accepts and believes her. Heck I bought it.
     In the forest when Reinhold lures away Mieze is haunting chilling scrares me. There is a reaper whose name is Death with power from Almighty God. The serpent in the heart of the serpent. You don’t know him Franz. Reinhold is no good. Why is Mieze enticed by the serpent? Why does Franz let himself be tempted to go against what he said he knew better than to? Max tells him. Herbert tells him. He’s going to kill her and end up right back in prison. When Reinhold attempts to seduce Mieze is the most visceral scene to inflict emotional damage through art. He almost beats Mieze to death. Just as Franz did Ida. Just as Franz did Mieze. Like Franz Mieze is gullible trusting naïve. Mieze is lamb to the slaughter. Her doubt confusion reluctance lust desire revulsion repulsion masochism yearning to escape yearning to fall into the abyss trapped yet free good yet fooled into wickedness. Her paradox is that of Franz. That of mankind.
 
Lest I get off point none of that can prepare us for the ending. Fassbinder 14. There is a reaper whose name is Death with power from Almighty God. No cause for despair. The end of Fassbinder’s breadth of cinema. 14 is a maximalist expressionist how did anyone ever finance or and approve this colossal nightmare transcendent passage. 
     Franz has been arrested wanted along with Reinhold for the murder of Mieze. In prison he runs into Reinhold who's stolen someone else’s identity causing Franz to go into a catatonic stupor. 14 is a hundred minutes of Franz’s subconscious odyssey. With two angels as his guide. This freeform cinemascape is too vast to cover at length. But the Christian imagery and Salvation interludes are significant. When Franz is eating his own vomit off the floor covered in live rats is symbolic of him returning to his old ways. Hence the rats breaking through the brick wall where Franz finds Mieze riding Reinhold. Did this ever really happen? What’s important is he fears this in his soul and whether it did or didn’t is the murky place he chose to dwell in by pimping and getting passed out drunk all the time after he said he never would again. Mieze isn’t his salvation though he acted like she was. When Reinhold is wearing a crown of thorns and asking Franz how could you be blind and not see me this whole time is Jesus Christ reaching him. Next we see what could easily be mistaken for blasphemy but I don’t think is Mary and Joseph with Franz child and Franz crucified on the cross I take to be Christ dying for him as he sees in his mind. Because after it’s over the narrator (Fassbinder himself the whole time) says Franz is dead and in his bed is the body of another man entirely. Franz wakes back to life. The courts free him. If that isn’t blatantly referring to being born again through Christ I don’t know what else to tell ya. 
     Yet I also wouldn’t risk coming off like any of this is simple or at all easy to interpret. This obviously goes without saying is my take. But it’s complex. Fassbinder in 14 switches the actors so frequently it leads to asking myriad questions as to what it means. Who’s guilty innocent good evil? The most harrowing scream ever heard in a movie when Franz nearly beat Mieze to death in 14 is her's and is heard again but the angels say it’s Franz’s scream. We feel through Franz’ accountability that Christ has caused him to admit his weakness. His guilt. His sin. Franz couldn’t just go straight because he’s decent. That’s why Reinhold threw him out of the truck and the car ripped his arm off. Franz was haughty. Franz very well may have killed Ida. And complicity in a remote way Mieze. But 14 sees him repentant atoning for his sins. Franz is a new man. And walks out free. In real life Fassbinder would die not too long after finishing this. In 14 there’s a shot where for no reason explained Fassbinder is there in the shadows with the angels watching Franz’s being held accountable. Nothing more to say here.

One battle after another

Art film espionage thriller spoof. The Third Generation (1979, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) takes aim at a terrorist cell whose members are bourgeois pseudointellectuals with nothing better to do with their lives. It thoroughly builds a sociopolitical power dynamic causal web connecting how each of its ensemble are connected and affected by this stupid little game. Its tone is deadly serious. It’s mode of ridicule is calculated controlled sparse. 

     The consolidation of power rules the world. AUGUST (Volker Spengler) runs the terrorist group. PJ LURZ (Eddie Constantine) runs big business. At the highest level of secrecy is the conspiracy these two have schemed up. A sinister for profit mutually beneficial partnership. Their motive: terrorism as ploy to get the government to provide greater security measures for transnational conglomerates. Fun and games man. On the surface Fassbinder takes all of this very serious. 
 
The first signs something’s off begin with some contempt for Jean-Luc Godard. So you know how there’s that line from Le petit soldat (1963, Godard) “cinema is truth twenty-four times per second?” In The Third Generation Lurz blathers that dialogue “Movies consist of twenty-five lies a second, and because everything is a lie, it’s also the truth. And the fact that the truth is also a lie that becomes clear with every movie you watch. But in movies, ideas mask the lies and suggest they are truth.” And the way in The Third Generation its Godard style chapter headings are all filthy depraved lewd or xenophobic bigotry quotes claiming to have been transcribed from scrawlings found in men’s rooms in public toilets suggests a beef. Or playful subversion. Your pick.
     Additionally when HILDE (Bulle Ogier) teaches that political class and the student challenges her confronting her lesson plan on the 1848 revolution and her curriculum with his own interpretation as fomenting another Third Reich she shuts him down. Meaning the point of all this seems to be Fassbinder showing how what all of this posturing has in common is that it’s so convoluted as to be pointless. Yet its adherents take it all so very seriously. High stakes. Life or death. And not just their own but innocent bystanders caught in the crossfire as well.
     That’s what the junkie means to me. No one cares about her but they all complain she’s jeopardizing their cover. Particularly telling is that line one of them says “she’ll probably leave soon anyway,” you know they really mean od. But because the one character who truly cares about her is Günther Kaufmann as FRANZ WALSCH (a very important name in a Fassbinder movie) there is a possibility that substance abuse severe drug problem is likened to terrorism albeit in contrast depicting what terrorism does to a large group drug dependency does to the individual. Hard drugs illegal narcotics increase spending in government and private sectors healthcare and law enforcement (increasing profits for those who stand to gain). Racketeering. Fun and games man. Her oding also is what deadens Franz to caring about his own life and enables him to be enlisted by the terrorist cell. The spread of disaffection death. Right? See? Okay now we’re in Fassbinder territory proper. 
 
The white knuckle thriller tone of The Third Generation crescendos until the final act when it becomes a melodrama. Okay the other big tipoff as to how to interpret all this is the disguises the terrorist cell use. First there’s that bank robbery and Franz goes full on blackface. Then when they subsequently are forced into hiding they get increasingly ridiculous. August as a woman. That couple with the baby is gut punch riot hilarious. Especially because they play it deadpan against type. Like where did they get a baby? For a prop disguise to take into hiding? There’s no mention of where the baby even came from. Too much. I love it.
     And the only thing to rival the baby is how the one character BERNHARD VON STEIN who actually decides something has to be done about the group becomes entangled in a police investigation and as he’s cooperating for no reason has this insane Sergio Leone shot falling from great heights down a stairwell. There’s your spoof proof. 
     We know August is manipulating these misguided gullible marks yet the world they live in has its allure. Hipster crashpad. Like what is it they say about cults? The people who end up in them are those with no life empty looking for anything to believe in. A new direction for Fassbinder. Another stand-alone masterpiece in alienation disillusionment trajectory.

The mistake people make is to love one person the rest of their lives

Never really cared for The Marriage of Maria Braun (1979, Rainer Werner Fassbinder). Sure it’s the long awaited look you’d expect once Fassbinder made it to the big time. Lavish eleagantly realized production value bombed out postwar Berlin rubble. Period romance? Don’t listen to me I’m biased. I crave the Fassbinder anguished longing miserable disillusionment trajectory this film sorely lacks. Neither the plot specifically nor the characterizations work for me.

     The film opens so so. The subjective POV (yes I realize that term is redundant) handheld roaming through the massive crowd exterior trainyard scene of Maria looking for her missing husband is great. Aforementioned rubble. The solider tossing a loosie dogpile for it superb. Blackmarket resourcefulness. GI hookup out of necessity convenience. When Hermann gets out is when the story has legs.
     But no. Hermann is cold and distant. There’s nothing there. And it works but. After he goes to prison for his (justified) crime of passion you think we’d resent Maria just a little. But no. Full on feminist (not that there’s anything wrong with that) epic follows Maria for the rest of the running time as an obnoxiously Mary Sue who just happens to quickly pick up perfect English from an American soldier she’s had sex with a few times; finds a job with some CEO where she’s all of a sudden completely competent translator distinguished in the finest of nuances in the language; and a shrewd business-political negotiator formidable girlboss who becomes rich and all powerful. She’s also a perfect friend/daughter/wife.
     See the thing is this is obviously a tradrole gender reversal. Everything I just mentioned if Maria were a man no one would think twice about. But the dynamic between the plot involving Maria and Hernann’s marriage always comes off as a cold and stubborn stalemate that never resolves itself. And okay I get that’s probably the point. It’s supposed to be that way because I think they even say it somewhere the postwar years in West Germany “were no time for feelings.” I think Maria says it while Hermann’s in prison “It’s not a good time for feelings.” 
     By the end I almost enjoy Maria’s arch from loyal wife to cruel little tyrant mogul. When that receptionist tries to make a lunch date with Oswald and Maria makes her cry then laughs at her is too harsh. And I almost think I’m gonna feel bad for her. But you know the ending. Not that in a million years would I expect anyone to take my idea of the ending seriously but I think leaving that gas burner on is the movie gods’ revenge on us having to have been expected to buy the Senkenberg reading of Oswald's will ending.

The Battle of Baktan Cross

That was the best movie I’ve ever seen in my entire life. Felt like it anyway. Back when I was still a teenager chronologically replacing Tarantino my favorite director became PTA mainly due to seeing Magnolia (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson) five times in the theater. Although his last three films all took time for me to warm up to. Especially Licorice Pizza. But I just saw Licorice Pizza again a few days ago in 70mm blowup at my neighborhood theater and I got a lot more out of it. Particularly the way these two young people are trying so hard to be older or more sophisticated or confident or accomplished in competition with each other. The way their flaws aggravate each other. His newest film took me back to that sense of instant recognition of greatness.

     Coincidentally both Tarantino and Anderson remain two of the few directors who have held out and continue to shoot on film. They're also two of the only directors in the world who have written all of their own screenplays and make big budget Hollywood studio pictures. Both have made roughly the same amount of films (9-10). Most of the movies they've both made have been set in L.A. And the same actor has starred in each of their last films: Leonardo DiCaprio.

As One Battle After Another (2025, Anderson) began (man I love getting to see a film play in a theater with no ads or trailers) I was enraptured shocked amazed that it was so unbelievably good. For the first ninety minutes I lost all sense of time. First the political content. Zeitgeist as fuck. Okay not really anything to do with politics. Except the stuff that incites people to passionate outrage—which let’s be honest that’s all most Americans really care about am I right? The immigration issue. Raids. Mexicans. White supremacist secret societies fighting for racial purity. Undisclosed locations. 

     It’s the kinetic energy PTA designs that figuratively and literally keep everyone on the run. And the threat of danger is palpable. It taps into that real life paranoia of the possibility of secret government agendas targeting you. Or cops. Or you know like they could be capable of. Also my entire life I feel like I’ve only ever encountered that former revolutionary trope countless of times like the Dude being boomer burnouts who claim to have been involved in all these radical groups in the 60s but you kind of take it as tall tales or even completely exaggerated ineffectual fraud. In One Battle After Another by updating the former revolutionary thing to a more contemporary setting and showing how serious about it they all really were is part of how the film deals with such real stakes. What happened to revolutionaries? My hunch is we stopped using that word ever since 9/11 because President George W. Bush replaced it with terrorist.
     Another trope so overused (I realize that’s redundant) is going after a man’s daughter being the center of the conflict in a huge action movie. But this time around PTA makes it work. Fresh enough spin. Heartfelt. Pathos. I was on the edge of my seat feeling like I’d never seen a movie this good and how does PTA know how to write an action movie this well since he’s never made one before until around the ninety minute mark it popped into my head that okay this is finally after all just a dad getting his daughter back plot. And you know there’s no way in this film anything will prevent that. But alas? I could hardly hold that against it or say it in anyway diminishes its grandeur.
     Seems like it’s also catering to a modern (youth) audience with its potsmoking black women loving not too bright hero played by an A lister icon like Leo. Good for us. The car chases are maybe the best part of the movie. After suffering from Marvel fight choreography rot I had recently been thinking how they may have ruined fights but I still love a good car chase. Heck I even rewatched Transformers Age of Extinction (2014, Michael Bay) just last week just for the car chase scenes. And I won’t bother to lookup the special ops government guy who interrogates characters trying to find Bob Ferguson and his daughter but his dialogue and casting also felt like a fresh take on something we’ve seen so many times before. Probably best movie of the year.
 
9/24/2025 Plaza Theatre
Atlanta, GA
70mm

Meat is beautiful

The most painful movie ever made. Fassbinder the expert on human suffering. Elevated melodrama. In a Year of 13 Moons (1978, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a quiet film. Because loneliness is quiet. And finally so is death.

     The film is Fassbinder in conversation with the audience. Asking why are you here? ELVIRA WEISHAUPT (Volker Spengler) loses everything. But not in the typical melodramatic sense. More in a contemplative figurative onscreen martyrdom patron saint of suffering kind of way. As a result of gender reassignment he can no longer return to his trade. Working the killing floor.
     When we see the graphic footage of the cows in the slaughterhouse going on for as long as it does this is Fassbinder confronting us with questions we are to ask ourselves: Do you realize you like watching this? Even though it’s disturbing? And most people either wouldn’t or wouldn’t admit to it? Because Elvira mentions how it doesn’t bother him. (Although it does bother ANTON SAITZ. Especially the smell of the animals right before they die. The next day he never ate meat again.) But Elvira (and us) like the smell. Or we wouldn’t be here. Elvira even goes with his argument that’s in favor of animals being happy to die so they can be eaten by man. Pro meat ethos. You get the sense Fassbinder has got to be taunting us just a little.
     Although it’s never clearly referred to as a sex change Elvira’s Casablanca trip is said to have involved him “having everything cut off down there.” As in castrating a bull. And as a result of that park hooligan unwittingly feeling what’s going on down there later in the arcade threatens him: “Keep staring at me and I’ll carve you to pieces you stupid cow.” So the analogies are overt. You keep watching be warned you’re in the slaughterhouse. 
     Yet this film isn’t for the depraved bunch. It’s for the people drawn to those who have no one else. It even mocks the content of commercial cinema. The violence as entertainment business. When Elvira goes to Anton’s highrise that scene where he looks down from above and sees a shootout occur it’s made meager by for one the omniscient they look like ants angle. And secondly after the machineguns have ceasedfire the corpses get up. Reanimated to articulate the phoniness of it all.
 
The atmosphere vibe of In a Year of 13 Moons is engrossingly realized. CHRISTOPHE (Karl Scheydt) and Elvira’s cluttered hoarder house with its erupting bookcases gains this combination of squalor and lived in verisimilitude that draws us in. The mundane wasting our lives away dread the video arcade and endless channel surfing later by RED ZORA (Ingrid Caven) lullaby sadness blanket us into oblivion. 
     Elvira’s dying final cries for help along with his elegiac final interview for the porno rag is a new low in the tortured soul miserable existence canon. And there are real stakes. Skin in the game. Because of Christophe. That’s what hurts. Elvira found love. He and Christophe were happy together. That’s more than a lot can say. Begging Christophe not to leave despite his cruel words. Jumping on the car. And when Elvira was Elvin he had a true friend in IRENE and they had a beautiful loving daughter in MARIE-ANN. A life fully lived. 
 
But I don’t know man. In a Year with 13 Moons is so much dialogue it’s often weighed down. I’m not even gonna try to make any excuses for that. Each of its scenes just go on and on with a character talking.
     And the ending doesn’t work for me. Why does Anton Saitz go over to Elvira’s place? Or more importantly why does he give him cash and ask if this covers the cake? And how can Red Zora seriously hook up with him in her best friend’s house? With him there? After knowing what he means to him? And the Günther Kaufmann bodyguard checking everyone even the nun for weapons is too silly. 
     Anyways yes I love this movie. When Elvira cuts off all his hair and dresses in a suit and tie and goes to Irene and Marie-Ann and expresses how he wishes he could go back but it’s too late says it all. Confusion. Regret. Making a mess of one’s life is the slaughter we had coming this whole time.

Make Germany Great Again

Confounding and very fun masterpiece. Impossible. Playful. Full of contradictions. Locks and keys. Set in Berlin right before the Nazis Despair (1978, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a murder mystery where we know who did it and why by the time we get to the murder. But there are plenty of other questions for us to ask.

     I’ll begin with the contradiction this is a film probably best left up to individual interpretation and now go on to explain what I think it means. Or some of it. Or try to. So when is the first time we see the doppelgänger everyone’s always talking about? When HERMANN HERMANN (Dirk Bogarde yeah for real Dirk Bogarde) is making love with his wife LYDIA and there’s this awkward beat we see another Hermann in the same apartment outside across from them through their window staring and Lydia tells Hermann¹ “I’d like to know what’s going on inside your head,” he tells her to shut up. 
     Soon after Hermann¹ runs into an insurance salesman he wants to be a psychoanalyst and brings up disassociation. The man who stands outside himself. This sets up the double motif. (Great joke Hermann¹ says “I thought about writing a book about it. Or two.” There’s gonna be a ton of double stuff.) So the earlier scene with Hermann¹ and Lydia is Hermann¹ in philosophical terms is the object. Therefore viewing him from the other flat Hermann² is the subject. But back to the restaurant with the introduction of the insurance salesman-therapist. There’s a mural on the wall that foreshadows the end of the movie Swiss villa where the cops bring Hermann¹ in for charges of murder. This film has a ton of doubles and a ton of foreshadowing.
     Next we get the most important key to understanding Despair, which is the Keystone Kops one-reeler. Everything in this short foreshadows the film we’re watching. There’s twin brothers with moustaches (moustaches are also no joke a big detail to follow) who have this lifelong feud confrontation and we cut to an exterior where one walks out having killed the other. The cops realize the evil brother switched places with the good one and shoot him down too. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the evil brother’s name was brown.
     Hermann¹ goes to buy out another chocolate factory in Düsseldorf. He tells Lydia he’s going on a business trip to do a merger but clearly says “murder.” And when he gets there negotiating with the other owner there’s a deliberate scene where these assembly-line chocolate doll figurines are being quality checked by someone discarding the duds into a crate that is explicitly a reference to the Holocaust. Images and the meaning we project onto them. So I think the color brown as a figurative image system is something like Hermann¹ wants to get out of owning a chocolate factory because as the other owner says the answer to get out of the nation’s financial troubles after the stockmarket crash and subsequent unemployment is again “murder.” And the SA Nazis were called “brown shirts.”
     But also chocolate has this connotation of [pardon me] women eating while sitting on their fat asses. I think the chocolate can represent commercial movies. And if Fassbinder could be seen as a designer chocolate maker it fits that everyone else tells him his chocolate is “too bitter.” Nevertheless the Düsseldorf owner tells Hermann¹ he can keep his fucking chocolates (which very much sounds like he says “shackles”). I don’t know how to segue out of this it gets absurd Hermann¹ did tell the other owner that he's a Rothchild and his mothers’ dowry was her weight in gold coins that turned out to be chocolate. His father died of grief and his mother died of diabetes.
 
I also kinda really wanna say there’s this idea of something like an alternate reality. Or ideal projection Hermann¹ conceives of. And it’s jarring when he crosses over. And back. And maybe we’re not sure where and how the boundary that separates these two realms is divided.
     So you know how when ARDALION (Volker Spengler) shows Hermann¹ that painting with the swastika on back of it and says the innkeeper’s son painted it, that’s his idea of politics? When Hermann¹ goes into that hotel to get FELIX (Klaus Löwitsch) to agree to the deal whereby based on the Keystone Kops plotline Felix will be his double—more on that later Hermann¹ goes into serious shock when he sees that painting on the wall. And he demands that guy tell him “how long has this painting been here?” “It’s always been here.” But when Hermann¹ returns to ask Ardalion if he still has the painting with “the two roses and the briar pipe painting,” and goes rummaging through the studio to find it he doesn’t say anything about it but we see that it’s not the same painting. This one is of two apples and a cage. I know this probably sounds lame but I think with the moustache Hermann¹ is entering his ideal projected dissociative reality and the painting reminds him of the swastika and troubles him because the whole point was to block any of that existence far from his mind.
     Also that same guy he asks how long the painting’s been there tells Hermann¹ not to forget his key and then gives it to him. And in the last scene when Hermann¹ leaves the hotel hideaway he’s holed up in and goes to that other one (notice the Ingrid Caven double even) the girl at the other hotel in some ominous way I can’t put my finger on tells him to take his key and not go up the stairwell he looks at but go around outside “your room is the first one on the left.” And these are the only two times in the film Hermann¹ says he’s a film actor.
     Even though Ardalion tells the police that he’s in the room and their weapons are aimed in its direction when Hermann¹ tells them they have to let him leave they still all look the other way. As if while all went according to plan even though it ends with him being shot dead as an actor he can avoid the fate of the character. Confusing? What does it all mean? I think it’s like the second hotel clerk tells Hermann¹ “there was a movie shooting here last week. We all had parts.” If Hermann¹ is object he’s viewed by the subject. So if Hermann² is the subject so too is the audience the subject. And Dirk Bogarde is the object. Or if Hermann¹ tried to escape his diegesis by creating a projected secondary reality so too can he remove himself from the laws of that reality. Or am I way too overthinking this? Like I said Despair is confounding and very fun.

Who wears the pants here?

Pussy pitfall epic. Marriage doesn’t work Third Reich period melodrama. Bolweiser (1977, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a power struggle that lasts a lifetime that centers its conflict on who wears the pants?

     Most of the narrative of Bolweiser is Xaver (Raab) getting into trouble. If you think about how it’s set up: Xaver has this sweet post as part of the board of directors in the Reich running a train station and has a hot wife whom he loves with a rich father after all that what do you think could go wrong? Exactly. When it comes to his disillusionment trajectory and limerence voracious sexual desire Fassbinder crafts an entire infrastructure of tension apprehension fear paranoia jealousy doubt humiliation and complete loss of control around it. Continuously. Unease. Thriller. 
     Xaver attends this court case where a woman LIESL is on the stand accusing her employer of something she says like “I’ll marry you when the old woman is gone.” Xaver goes out and gets wasted with TREUBERGER (I always love Peter Kern in a Fassbinder movie) on those huge steins and on the train ride home pukes out the window with Leisl’s words swirling around in his conscious like a tempest. (I always wondered how Germans could hold so much beer I like how this scene shows sometimes they can’t.) This foreshadowing establishes a vibe: cheating on your spouse + trying to negotiate some deal to get away with it long-term = on court trial busted for it. 
     Also on this little trip Treuberger blackmails Xaver because he found some fancy undergarments and smellgood soap in his attaché. Xaver’s wife HANNI is already distraught now about the soap so Xaver has to beg her to believe he didn’t have an affair. This is important because again it foreshadows the tragedy that’s eventually gonna go down. Because it leads to Hanni’s first infidelity. Hanni has this brief fling with MERKL the butcher and yes this film stoops to lines like she’s stepping out because she wants to go get some meat. But as the board boys quickly make the butcher affair public and Xaver the laughingstock we get the first match in the messy bout between the married couple.
     The psychology here is achingly confoundingly true while completely beyond comprehension. In other words human. Because as soon as Xaver questions Hanni she becomes hostile and a master of blameshifting, which causes Xaver to plead with her excessively that he’s not jealous or suspicious and loves her so pathetic so desperate. And soon after he’s lost the power he calls himself a steer. Yep. She’s cut his nuts off. (Later you can notice when he’s trying to reclaim his virility in that whorehouse he calls himself a bull again.) 
     It’s also interesting the way Hanni breaking it off with Merkl is depicted. Once she’s decided to end it there’s that scene where she closes the door and um well looks to be struggling with the conflict of her carnal lust. She wants him. But she ends their hooking up because she says people are finding out. Conflicted characters are compelling characters. She takes up with this hairdresser SCHAFFTALER played by Udo Kier next. Then at home looking at herself in the mirror she spits. End of part 1.
 
Compounding the impact of her forcefulness when Xaver catches Hanni in a lie stepping out with the hairdresser she turns it on him with the famous what were you spying on me accusation. “Do I have to tell you my every move?” But the best is she ends it with I forgot where I was that night. Not even trying to come up with a believable cover up anymore. Is Bolweiser long? Yeah like three and a half hours. But It earns it to feel just how long a codependent relationship like this can go on.
     Their lives are pure miserable. The film is pure miserable (which makes it sublime). There is a lot of sex in this movie. And some business loose ends. But I’ll sum it up with the ultimate twist of fate. Another snitch goes to the Reich and Xaver gets arrested and convicted on trial because it is discovered that in an earlier trial against his wife cheating he provided a false alibi so now he has to do a four year stretch. Going to prison because your wife cheated on you. Ouch. 
     There’s this coda that’s almost unintentionally too funny where Xaver is out of prison wandering the countryside and finds this cabin in the woods where some dude with a Lincoln-Ahab beard tells him Hanni’s married the hairdresser and Xaver ends up living there for the rest of his life. He buries Lincoln Ahab. Grows his own beard. Takes up canoeing. The end.
     Okay the sheer magnitude of the epic is how tortured Bolweiser is over his devotion attraction to Hanni. And her dalliance with the butcher is over so quick. Frivolous. Then she’s onto the hairdresser and that’s that. She’s unfaithful. Nothing can change that. But Xaver so intensely wants to possess her that he’s often willing to sacrifice his composure dignity sanity livelihood reputation and drink himself into a stupor or blow his wad with a team of prosties and champagne showers just to cope. It’s like Lincoln Ahab said in a marriage one eventually gets wilder and the other one colder. Don’t do it.

A woman's best protection is her own money

Marriage doesn’t work silver lining period melodrama woman’s picture. Tradwife vs independence discourse. If MARY HAINES isn’t a survivor strong woman inspiration glaringly optimistic for a Fassbinder heroine then I’m the Duchess of Windsor. 

     In terms of plot structure there’s a bookending effect that evokes something like doomed perpetual repetition vicious cycle territory when CRYSTAL ALLEN (Barbara Sukowa Fassbinder debut) becomes the second Mrs. Haines. Because opportunistic busybody gossipmonger SYLVIA (Carstensen) desperately tries to solicit access as Crystal’s new bestie, inheriting it from the woman who previously held the title (Mary). When Women in New York (1977, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) begins it’s Crystal who’s the other woman; stealing Stephen Haines away from Mary. At the end she assumes the role of the former: her true love is taken away from her. And as a result she’ll lose ol moneybags.
     There’s a scene where Mary first hears of her cheating husband while MIRIAM (Irm Hermann) is giving her a manicure, narrating the entire story of the woman being cheated on the entire time unbeknownst to her that Mary Haines is the woman to whom she’s telling the story. I’ve always been immensely fascinated by the properties of storytelling inherent in being able to hear someone talk about you without knowing it’s you so you get to hear what you sound like in the third person as a character in a story.
     Another aspect to the framing of the narrative is Mary has a daughter who’s always spying that when we first meet says women talk too much and they’re stupid. She doesn’t want to be a woman. We probably shouldn’t use the word androgynous anymore but she (or maybe they) appear uncomfortable with conforming to a feminine look. For a film about women with no men in the cast this little touch is innovative. 
 
Dialogue in Women in New York is rapid-fire rare for a Fassbinder. But it’s set in the early 1930s so. This thing is full of gossip, pregnancies, cheating, divorces, beauty standards, money, aging, family, career. A maximalist woman’s picture. The scene with what's her name the Eva Mattes character smoking a cigarette in bed while nursing her newborn and she gets ashes in the baby's eyes yet oblivious is cringe funny goodness. 
     The final act is in Reno where several of the women steal away for a quickie divorce and coincidentally all happen to have done so the same weekend. Miriam steals Sylvia’s husband and there’s a pretty wild all out brawl that ensues. This thing is a constantly in progress series of proceedings revolving around which woman is stealing which’s husband. It’s cynical yet Fassbinder’s and our own interest in its subject matter mean we love these women. They get dragged through the muck though. There was a line that was something like “My therapist says the problem with modern women is they never really please their men and they’re not good mothers.” I feel like the film is trying to redefine the tradwife vs independence societal pressures and say why not both? Go after what you want and what’s the difference?

That nasty little cripple

Human nature at its ugliest. Wild take: Chinese Roulette (1976, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a horror movie. Traunitz Manor is a haunted house. What’s one of the most popular subgenres in horror? Evil children. 

     The ghosts who inhabit Traunitz Manor walk among the living yet unbeknownst to us their souls have perished. And like a contagious plague they want to enact revenge on those they bear grudges against by causing the soul death of them as well. ANGELA is the evil youngster in Chinese Roulette. But her true nature creeps up on you. As the film begins she has a supernatural premonition that her parents are lying to her about their weekend plans; all the better to lure them into her demonic trap. 
     After all the guests have assembled and Angela shows up in the night there’s this shot of her governess TRAUNITZ retrieving all of Angela’s dolls from the boot of the Porsche that hint at the little girl’s greedy grubby possessive bent. At first we could never consider the handicapped little girl whom her mother hates as being someone we ourselves could despise. That’s because the little shit Fassbinder is playing us. He starts by deceiving us into feeling sorry for Angela. Like when she asks her brother GABRIEL if he would ever sleep with a cripple. And how she links each of her parents respective affairs with her own ailing health.
     Fassbinder loves to contrast surface appearances with something more sinister. The little girl we felt sorry for turns out to be a monster. Even her and her brother’s names have an angelic quality. (Volker Spengler playing Gabriel has even bleached his hair blonde for this role.) And there are a couple of shots right around the point early on when we may be asking ourselves if Angela is mean-spirited for opening the doors unannounced on each of her adulterous parents outside: a sculpture of Christ crucified followed by a goat’s head rotting infested with maggots. Chaos reigns.
 
Further appearances that prove deceptive involve Angela’s governess. Traunitz not only suggestively winks and makes these come hither gestures to the child, but also Gabriel walks in on that number in the studio where the little kid has a boombox just chillin blasting synth rock as Traunitz does an uninhibited dance with her crutches-braces. Oh and Gabriel has scenes with Traunitz where we discover they’ve been having an illicit affair of their own.
     The two foes at battle are revealed to be mother and daughter. Which is kind of what we’ve been expecting. The climax when Angela’s mom ARIANE (Carstensen) shoots her governess is preceded by Ariane aiming at Angela first. Because for soulless Ariane to extinguish her daughter’s lifeforce by way of exacting revenge in kind she must take what she loves from her; spiritual death. Chain reaction. Human nature hurting others how they themselves have been hurt: Angela confronts her brother for being a hoax writer. That ruins him. Cycle complete. Except I won’t spoilt the final twist.
     I’m gonna go out on a limb here and take a stab at what Fassbinder’s attacking here. I don’t think it’s what we’d assume. His usual. The institution of marriage. I think this time it’s cheating. And the lying that comes with it. But more so harboring resentment over long term against family, loved ones. Like the Ali ben Basset tease. Third Reich war crimes. The aftermath. The toll it takes. Or something.

No Celebration for the Führer’s Dog

Fassbinder’s only comedy. Satan’s Brew (1976, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) could perhaps very loosely be thought of as a roman à clef that derives its humor from poking fun at Fassbinder’s creative persona. Although in the spirit of laughs it plays against type. Which of course could be said for the genre itself; Fassbinder doesn’t make comedies.

     One thing I’ve never mentioned here (because others have already mentioned it so often) is that a big thematic aspect to Fassbinder’s films throughout is the idea of there being two kinds of people: strong and weak. WALTER KRANZ (Raab) makes it a point to outline his artistic ethos and right off explains that he fundamentally sees being one of the strong as justification to exploit ANDRÉE (Carstensen). He also has fans who are devout followers of his artistic style embodying how he puts it “Death is the finest thing in life.” This bit about the death trajectory has got to be an exaggerated riff on how some view Fassbinder’s work.
     There’s also this wealthy woman VON WITZLEBEN who’s Walter’s patron/mistress whom he goes over to have sex with but opens a drawer full of dildoes in her bedroom and finds a gun in then shoots her. Why? There’s no explanation. My guess is that Fassbinder is making fun of gratuitous inciting incidents. Because her murder at least sets up a police investigation. At the very end we find out the gun he shot her with had blanks in it so she’s not really dead. After all the heavy bleak Fassbinder I’ve watched thus far this whole silly light playful way of ending the movie is the kind of break I needed.
     But Walter’s wife LOISE dies. And he mourns her. And his fanboys turn against him because he always preached that death and decay are the goal of life. This not long after Walter stalks his daily prostitute to demand money only to later have the shit beat out of him by her pimp, which caused Andrée to similarly disavow her loyalty to him. Because he really is weak. Faking the whole time. All this points to don’t take the man behind the artist too seriously. At this point I feel like I may have been headed toward being guilty of this myself.
 
Another reach but I think all the stuff about Stefan George is loosely an allusion to Fassbinder channeling Douglas Sirk. Then there’s the rest of the aspects of Walter that are very much the opposite of Fassbinder.
     Like his publisher’s desperate to see something from Walter, frustrated cutting him off because they’ve already floated him so many advances already. Fassbinder made four movies a year. So definitely not like anything about him in real life. Then there’s the gay plotline. When that random casting agent tells Walter (in his Stefan George phase) he’s obviously gay even though he never knew it and he goes cruising a public toilet the punchline we’ll find so hilariously let's just say is against type once again. 
     For all the women Walter is constantly every chance he gets everyday having sex with (everyone except his wife who is angry because it’s been sixteen days since they last did) they all openly admit to him not being that great. This voracious appetite however I do think has something to do with Fassbinder’s public persona. Oh and that line Walter says: “In every act of coitus is there not an element of rape?” surely plays into the little tyrant rep thrown at Fassbinder.
     Even though Satan’s Brew is a comedy unfortunately I don’t feel like I’d wanna rewatch it anytime soon. It can be tedious. There’s pratfalls and a lot of bizarre weirdos. The unhinged performances and that Fassbinder was able to get this out of his system were pretty enjoyable though.

Everybody has worries

Stand-alone masterpiece. Fassbinder working-class downer. I Only Want You to Love Me (1976, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is an outlier that presents us with a protagonist whose behavior, motives, and psychology’s meanings are withheld from us. And for having a narrative that shifts ahead then flashbacks into intercutting including yet another brief flashback that’s almost hard to discern when it begins. Nor does Fassbinder attack the institution of marriage here. I probably can’t think of another single instance where the humanity that comes across through this couple felt more authentic. These characters don’t feel written. Their internal conflict, their feelings, their reactions, what they chase are profoundly compulsive.

     What is up with this dude and his dad? The main character is excessively peculiar yet simultaneously seems to fit in and function in society, be accepted, and even for the most part well liked. It can be maddening. You always sense something is just slightly off with him but can’t ever quite put your finger on it. At times he seems like a manchild or slightly touched. Simple. In his dungarees and bomber jacket with his daddy issues he always seems like he’s about to go postal. Oh and there’s the fact that the film opens with him committed in some institution that okay it’s prison. The film chooses early on to splice in a couple of jarring quick cuts of the scene of the crime: the guy has bludgeoned his father with a telephone and his mother looks on in the background.
     The narrative is a bit challenging. Those of us accustomed to putting our thinking caps on begin to wonder why the guy is constantly lying to save face yet we glimpse brief instances occurring where he has like a mischievous little kid grin when he runs out of cash and has to call his dad for more money; usually his wife is privy to these. It can be frustrating. The flashback that sneaks up on you well into the film is after the wife tells the guy she’s pregnant we are suddenly in some night exterior on their first date where he’s manic and it turns into him having a tantrum like a little bitch because she won’t sleep with him. His volatility grows into hostility.
     Worth mentioning is one of the best sex scenes ever filmed. Mundane to a tee. Clinical. Cold. They take of their clothes. And in the same frame we see both, one reflected in a mirror, like mannequins. Both standing still. Notice the direction each face. This takes us into a cut that jumps all the way forward after the baby’s born. What else is there to say really? Will we ever know why the guy puts so much pressure on himself to keep buying stuff for his wife to the point they’re always broke and he has to keep working more and more overtime? Or why he disguises a begging trip back to the Bavarian forest to his parents as a legit vacation then doesn’t ask? There is one other way to read this movie.
 
I think the father is meant to represent God the Father. The first hint I got of this was at the end when the guy is in prison being interviewed and he says: “If only I would have called and asked my father for help everything would have been alright. But I wanted to do it all on my own.” That’s what I Only Want You to Love Me is really about. That’s its hidden meaning. If you go back and look at it it all makes sense. But really quick lets backtrack for just a second. There are a couple of intertitles in the film. The first one is “After building the house his parents loved him for exactly two weeks.” (This one is repeated at the end as well.) And also later in the film when he calls to ask his father for money: “The money arrived the next day without a greeting, almost like an insult.” On the surface everyone who watches this will take it as oh no the guy kills his father and tries so hard to earn his parents’ admiration because they never showed him enough love. That’s such a problem in society. Bullshit. 
     It’s the two biggest problems with Christians. With the carnal mind. He thinks he can earn his salvation with works alone. And (this includes non-believers as well) he blames God for ignoring him. Also I haven’t mentioned it until now but what’s the guy’s name? The protagonist? PETER. As in the first apostle chosen by Christ. The film is secretly a tragedy about losing one’s faith in God. Everything that happens to Peter centers on his reluctance then refusal literally to call his father. 
     What’s the first conflict or obstacle that Peter faces? Out of pride he moves to Munich impulsively with a new wife and no job. Some might think his dad is a jerk for selling Peter’s parents’ flat instead of letting his son and daughter in law move in there. But that’s missing something of greater significance: the father offers Peter and ERIKA a place in their new home Peter built—salvation. Then there’s this whole business with doppelgängers. At that party when Peter sees a man he believes is his father he lights up and when it turns out it’s just some stranger Peter gets distraught. Even offended that his wife Erika laughs at him for it. This could be someone shaming someone for believing in God. But the next instance is the man who works in Erika’s grandma’s building. When Peter goes to get that beer from him he becomes frightened. As though the Holy Spirit is manifested and he wants nothing to do with it any longer. This shopkeep doppelgänger is credited as WIRT (or landlord in English).
     The climax of the film and big reveal is that it wasn’t Peter’s father he killed but the landlord. The landlord who Peter mistakes for his father. (The film played a trick on us by having Peter’s mother at the scene of the murder in the flashbacks but in actuality turns out to be some random woman.) Peter wants to call his father but can’t. When the landlord asks him why Peter says he can’t remember the number. Even the landlord admits this is preposterous. This is way before the days of smartphones. As in how do you forget your home telephone number?
     The manslaughter set piece is orchestrated with a few more things we can discern. Like the landlord telling Peter about the rich Jew. We think this triggers a subconscious link to Peter’s resentment of his own Father having too much wealth compared to how Peter thinks he himself doesn’t have enough. Next is the makeout couple in the bar who the landlord says are too old to be going on like that. We think this triggers a subconscious link to Peter’s resentment of his mother outing his father having a sidebitch. Or (now this might be reaching) we might not trust what the mother said entirely. The mother mentions an expensive whore to which the father replies that’s what bothers her so much, that she’s not a whore could be a Christ-Mary Magdelene reference. Finally in walks yet another doppelgänger, this time of Peter himself. 
     The landlord and Peter’s double get into a violent argument that escalates into the landlord yelling at the stranger his kind are worthless and can’t help themselves, which then causes Peter to bludgeon the landlord from behind, killing him. As in we wrestle not against flesh and blood. Remember this isn’t the father, this is a man Peter mistakes to be his father. These words are indicative of the ultimate moral-spiritual paradox that God wants the best for his children. Wants them to be good. And they hate him, criticize, dismiss, blame him for it. 
 
Peter’s final words again include “I thought I could do it all myself.” The most cinematic sequence in the film is when, for reasons not explained, Peter decides to stop going to work. As in he thought he could do it all himself but now cannot. This is an internal dilemma better we’re not given his reasons. The camera from far away shooting him through the train windows underground is existentially haunting. Haunting because the film is telling us he really can’t do it all by himself. And maybe some of us know this to be true for ourselves as well.

Who says there's anything wrong with Margot?

A stand-alone masterpiece. An excursion away from Fassbinder’s marriage doesn’t work melodramas, working-class downers, everyone out for themselves feeding frenzies, and satires of revolutionaries. Fear of Fear (1975, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) has a vibe. It’s light as air and has a propulsion that creates a hypnotically alluring effect of being the perfect type of foreign movie you stumble across late one night and best viewed in the dark alone dead silence. It’s also an understated triumph: his most cinematic work.

     Fear of Fear is a formally experimental woman’s picture tradwife psychological thriller chamber piece with an unreliable narrative. Its subject is identity. The self. Its subject is subjective. Its protagonist is MARGOT (a blonde Carstensen), a woman whom everyone around her constantly tries to figure out what’s wrong with. If you think you know the answer you’re as bad as them. Because it defeats the purpose. I know how she feels. She’s bored out of her mind. She’s desperate to feel anything. Desperate to know what’s wrong with her. And why does everyone else think they know? As in real life. Why is everyone prone to supply a diagnosis that explains everything? Where’s the mystery? It’s in cinema. Through art we have the chance to vicariously travel along a narrative that’s constructed so we may appreciate the unease. Call it mental illness or any other variety of pre-packaged explanation labels you will. I see it as our own personal emotions as interface to our place in our own lives while confronting our own delicately fragile unstable identity. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with Margot. Yet everyone else does. And that’s all I meant by formally experimental. The narrative construction. 
     But yeah technically, visually it’s also experimental. Or at the very least innovatively accomplished. Is it even worth mentioning? Sure there’s all the opticals. The shimmering subjective cascade wall surrounding Margot accompanied by chime percussion leitmotifs or romantic swells. And there are the zooms that after a brief infatuation with although seemingly having died away Fassbinder rediscovers with an undaunted fervor that actually fits this thing like a glass slipper. And all the mirrors. Seriously have you ever seen so many mirrors? I’ve always had a notion that the most used shot since the history of movies is a woman looking at herself in the mirror. If anything else this is a film whose figurative theme very well could be a woman looking at herself in the mirror. Since my younger days I’d long fancied kandy kolored Xaver Schwarzenberger works; and the contrasty shadowy burnt hue mixed color temperature Ballhaus after that. But in Fear of Fear Jürgen Jürges achieves this singularly spellbinding palette that feels diffused like watercolor. And what’s up with all those quick right before a fade out dissolves into monochrome? 
     Normally weird unexplainable crap is obnoxious. But never for a second in Fear of Fear. How does it only work here? The subjective shots of Margot seemingly seeing a pov of herself then even sometimes entering the very same pov are motivated and legitimately employed to evoke her sense of being confronted with or delving into the nature of her own identity. And I have a hunch I’m wrong about this but I don’t think the layout of her neighborhood as seen from outside her windows entirely conforms to a spatial continuity. What’s across the street? Dr. Merck’s pharmacy or Mr. Bauer’s flat? Kurt Raab as MR. BAUER is what wins me over unequivocally adore this narrative. He’s this menacing shadowy figure stalking Margot (at one point her daughter sees so we may assume he’s not imaginary) yet also kinda harmless who keeps popping up until the very last scene of the film his corpse is loaded into a hearse out front of his place. I know I know by now this probably sounds pretentious, but I swear it works. He represents something. You feel it. It’s on the tip of your brain. Liminal. You might think he represents Margot having overcome some debilitating mental illness, but you’d be wrong? Because that last frame shimmers.
 
I am so tempted to use the term surreal but alas I’m gonna restrain myself. The logic this thing operates on. Or lack thereof. Like when Margot has visited the pharmacy with DR. MERCK (Adrian Hoven) back home Bibi is putting on her mother’s red nail polish and she doesn’t get mad is maybe code that Margot’s horny. Followed by the attic scene where Margot’s hanging wet clothes to dry and is alternately fascinated and terrified by her own handshadows until she’s distracted by the pharmacy down on the street viewed through the window, the pov she enters mentioned earlier. 
     Margot is trying to break free of a stifling claustrophobic cagey averseness to motherhood and tradwife obligations. First valium. Then adultery sex. Then cognac. Then rock and roll. When Bibi gets hurt at school and is brought home but Margot is locked inside with headphones on jamming out to the Stones all pilled out and wasted we get it. Been there. She just needs to unwind and let off some tension. But in Fear of Fear it’s unfit mother time to commit her consequences. Chill. 
     Again I love and hope that the point of this film is not what’s wrong with Margot. First it’s schizophrenia. Then misdiagnosed. Then depression. More pills are prescribed. And maybe get a job. Find some activities to distract you. Maybe she’s just a woman dealing with some stuff. She’s not suicidal she wants attention. She doesn’t want to get well she wants more pills. She’s just trying to navigate adjust and figure out who she really is to herself. The most astounding part is Fassbinder made a film that shows it.