Fassbinder marriage doesn’t work melodrama. Martha (1974, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is a gothic black comedy infused satire in which a young woman marries a tall dark stranger who grooms her into his ideal tradwife. To everyone’s horror.
Straightforward looking at Martha you could see it as this thriller about the contrast between how a marriage looks from the outside against the emotional reality of its interior private goings on. But then there’s also another way of looking at it like a metaphor for how there’s two kinds of movies: art and industry. Art is European. Industry is Hollywood. Martha is an art film. Helmut is commercial product popcorn movies. Bombastic as that camera move when they first meet a 360° around the two as each of them rotate on their own axes for maximum gratuitous Hollywood desperate ploy attention grab film grammar. Helmut is a control freak. He asserts his will over the weak. The narrative becomes that which is of Helmut’s nature: oppressive. Nothing more than sex and violence to sell box office. External conflict. But the money to live in mansions and vacation in exotic locales.
Helmut is a sex maniac who gets turned on by violence. When Martha’s mom o.d.’s he’s ready to fuck. When Martha asks him to rub suntan lotion on her he forbids it so he can later have rough lobster sunburn sex with her. No doubt killing her black cat Blackie’s also aphrodisiac.
But there’s yet another dimension to the subject matter that’s as a way for the working class to indulge their disdain for the rich and those people who place to much emphasis on conforming to an ideal society prizes above all else—superficial material surface prominence. After their honeymoon Helmut ignores Martha wanting to live in her parents’ old house and buys this huge mansion that Martha remarks asking wasn’t there a murder there. This isn’t foreshadowing as much as it’s a way of saying the last people who could afford that house committed a murder because they can and will do it again.
Another dirty little joke is when Helmut’s away to punish Martha with his absence and she walks around in a slip with her hair greasy tangled and dark circles under her eyes she’s heroin chic looking like a junkie as parallel to what an abusive relationship is like. But like a drug addict do you ever wonder why doesn’t she ever just leave Helmut? I’ve always loved the idea of comparing relationships to substance abuse. Could this be the first time a movie did so?
This film is the most conventional narrative Fassbinder has dabbled in. Which is what leads me to suspect most of its significance is below its surface. When Martha winds up in a wheelchair do you feel like she’s victim to a tragic fate at Helmut’s hands? I don’t. I think she belongs in that wheelchair. And I think she believes she does too. Yet I don’t see anything wrong with that. The heart wants what it wants.
Straightforward looking at Martha you could see it as this thriller about the contrast between how a marriage looks from the outside against the emotional reality of its interior private goings on. But then there’s also another way of looking at it like a metaphor for how there’s two kinds of movies: art and industry. Art is European. Industry is Hollywood. Martha is an art film. Helmut is commercial product popcorn movies. Bombastic as that camera move when they first meet a 360° around the two as each of them rotate on their own axes for maximum gratuitous Hollywood desperate ploy attention grab film grammar. Helmut is a control freak. He asserts his will over the weak. The narrative becomes that which is of Helmut’s nature: oppressive. Nothing more than sex and violence to sell box office. External conflict. But the money to live in mansions and vacation in exotic locales.
Helmut is a sex maniac who gets turned on by violence. When Martha’s mom o.d.’s he’s ready to fuck. When Martha asks him to rub suntan lotion on her he forbids it so he can later have rough lobster sunburn sex with her. No doubt killing her black cat Blackie’s also aphrodisiac.
But there’s yet another dimension to the subject matter that’s as a way for the working class to indulge their disdain for the rich and those people who place to much emphasis on conforming to an ideal society prizes above all else—superficial material surface prominence. After their honeymoon Helmut ignores Martha wanting to live in her parents’ old house and buys this huge mansion that Martha remarks asking wasn’t there a murder there. This isn’t foreshadowing as much as it’s a way of saying the last people who could afford that house committed a murder because they can and will do it again.
Another dirty little joke is when Helmut’s away to punish Martha with his absence and she walks around in a slip with her hair greasy tangled and dark circles under her eyes she’s heroin chic looking like a junkie as parallel to what an abusive relationship is like. But like a drug addict do you ever wonder why doesn’t she ever just leave Helmut? I’ve always loved the idea of comparing relationships to substance abuse. Could this be the first time a movie did so?
This film is the most conventional narrative Fassbinder has dabbled in. Which is what leads me to suspect most of its significance is below its surface. When Martha winds up in a wheelchair do you feel like she’s victim to a tragic fate at Helmut’s hands? I don’t. I think she belongs in that wheelchair. And I think she believes she does too. Yet I don’t see anything wrong with that. The heart wants what it wants.
MARTHA (Carstensen) is on a vacation in Rome with her father who chides her for being too emotionally needy-clingy. Later her mom calls her a revolting horrible old spinster. And when HELMUT (Karlheinz Böhm) picks her up she’s a virgin who looks like she has bad b.o. Society tells young women they’re nothing. But getting married will change all that. There’re two things I can say about this couple as characters. One no matter how psycho Helmut gets and no matter how violent he gets Martha accepts him. Two Helmut doesn’t have any character development.
No comments:
Post a Comment