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.