Memories are stories so you better come up with a good one

You want a film to burn into your cortex. You want to cry. You want to find meaning in it. Subtext. Something old said in a new way. Or something entirely its own new thing.
 

The Chronology of Water (2025, Kristen Stewart) is an edgy vital sexy personal kaleidoscopic stream of consciousness rough visceral expansive innovative reinvention of the language of cinema. It’s immediate. It lives for the moment. It’s a collage of memories. And after it’s over they stick with you.
     Shot on 16mm 4:3 without masking—the vignetting of the negative requisite for K Stew’s raw nothing to hide punk manifesto. Imogen Poots is out there. Her character drinking fucking puking fighting bleeding loving and swimming. The sound design free foraging through silence cacophony and sludge turn the work into what used to make MTV videos as exciting as they were in an ancient past cut up into fragments with the intimacy of home movie reels.
     Matching frames jump cutting from day to night. With a character disappearing and reappearing. Repetition advancing us into a scene before we get there and back again and there again. This is what I’ve been waiting for. Everything else seems so formal constrained status quo let’s be careful there’s not a single frame the audience might not know understand or comprehend exactly what’s happening every single second in service of a plot driven narrative with increasingly difficult obstacles story beats act breaks midpoint conflict and resolution automaton lifeless product.
     Forgoing story. Forgoing explanation. Forgoing plot. Imogen Poots at the pool bleeding is what you get instead. And if you care. If you process the feeling. The gut punch knock down drowning in empathy femininity bringing you back to life force of its content The Chronology of Water is at once intimate inspired impressive and inimitable. Seriously it pounds pulsates and postulates rage. 
     Everything from the source K Stew strips away is a choice. I think we get chapter breaks for I. II. and V. So yeah she leaves out chapters III. And IV. of Yuknavitch’s memoir and clues us in that there’s missing pieces which only emphasizes the film’s aesthetic—fragment formations. I’ve never walked out of a theater with such vivid memories. Instead of making a memorable film we get a film made up of memories. What a bold direct let’s cut to the heart choice. K Stew gets it.

     Except Kristen Stewart was an actress since she was a kid and she takes this filmmaker thing pretty seriously which makes me ask why would anyone cast Kim Gordon? Especially K Stew? Can't she discern? Ever since Last Days (2005, Gus Van Sant) I've thought she's the most wooden performance ever. The worst. I guess because she's cool in real life? So cool it doesn't matter that her acting is terrible? Oh and does the dad have to be so cliche serial killer looking? A bit obvious coding. I mean I get it it's whatever.

    
10/31/2025 Trustees Theater
Savannah, GA

Lifeless romanticism

Can you even begin to imagine if man were capable of bringing a rotting lifeless lump to life? I can’t either because Guillermo del Toro sure couldn’t. Frankenstein (2025, del Toro) is a remake no one asked for dull trite adaptation with yet another daddy issues backstory and adds new characters that add nothing to the story why? To pad its run time? To help modern audiences find one of the oldest most enduring classic easiest to read not even that long of a novel written by an eighteen year old girl’s story easier to comprehend? Because striving impossibly to please his dead father explains Victor Frankenstein better? 

     Around midway through the movie Victor goes to a battlefield to scavenge cadavers for his reanimation experiment when he remarks to his assistant to only be concerned with looking for taller specimens because “larger limbs are easier to work with.” Bigger is not always better. That sums up del Toro’s problem—throwing a lavish budget full of stupid CG effects two and a half hours long into a prestige pic unnecessarily on source material already brilliantly handled in 1990 by no less than Frank Henelotter and Tim Burton respectively. 
     But the worst is the moralizing. The Elordi Creature is this altruistic peaceful zen compassionate empath who befriends rats and even has a scene where he’s bonding with Bambi when some hunters show up and gun him down. That’s del Toro’s other problem. Queerbaiting. He paints evil heteronormative coded villains against other coded as The Elordi Creature says “the way of the world it will hunt you and kill you just for being the way you are” heroes. But it’s all so watered down generic one wonders at the mind that would think even a child needs to be taught it’s wrong to hate a sweet kind friendly generous charismatic innocent person for being themselves. Fomenting the cult of oppression. If it were woven into the subtext it’d be rad. Might even be beautiful. But not this way. Not as desperately contrived underdeveloped as it is here.
     Mia Goth plays a nun who’s been in a convent her whole life and is engaged to be married only a week after entering the outside world then encounters The Elordi Creature chained up in the basement unable to articulate any semblance of language and she instantly falls madly in love with him. Because del Toro’s trying to sell this star-crossed beautiful movie star teen romance between a virgin saint and a martyr who’s persecuted for being smartquotes different is too vague to mean anything. Del Toro doesn’t even bother to take the time to establish any chemistry between them. Nor that society can’t accept The Elordi Creature’s otherness. Just because some random hunters freaked out and shot at him doesn’t mean the world hates him and denies his right to exist. But that’s what this movie wants. What it expects us to believe. So sure. Why not?
     Also in del Toros’ version The Elordi Creature has superhero powers and saves everyone and doesn’t regret anything and goes on to fall in love and save the world because everyone deserves to be themselves and in doing so are humanity’s only hope. Okay yes reading identity politics into movies is annoying I promise not to do it anymore except this one time. The moral of the story then is probably I’m the real monster. 
 
10/24/2025 Landmark Midtown Art Cinema
Atlanta, GA

Emergency cinema

So me I’m a middle aged white male. A demographic that’s excluded from the our voices need to be heard or our stories must be told category of movies. I hate the whole notion of that. I’m more of a if you have what it takes make your movie. I decide what movies I’m going to like before I watch them. And it has nothing to do with the race sex gender or age of the person making it. 

     I don’t seek out queer black or female as subjects. But when I see a film that I get something out of and it also makes me feel like I’ve gained a newfound insight empathy affinity understanding shock surprise laugh scare tear or story from someone that just so happens to be because of an aspect signifier of their identity in a way I can access it means a little more because it’s not merely artifice. Truth is a slippery word to throw around when talking about film. I tend to avoid it. In life too. 
     Obviously there are films I’ve watched by people who check different boxes than myself that doesn’t have anything to do with the films they make. Sometimes they do sometimes they don’t. Cool. But it’s a balance. I can’t even think of that many off the top of my head. Films that are vital cinematically while also containing an element of representation that neither detracts from nor becomes the reason for its being. I could see how that might sound harshly selfish. Hey I go to the movies for the experience I get out of it not to be charitable.
     If that was all incomprehensible tedious garble what I’m trying to say is Mary Bronstein is a woman who makes movies about women and I enjoy love applaud stan worship her style of filmmaking. I’d seen Yeast (2008, Mary Bronstein) a few times and could’ve sworn or forgotten or given up the hope that we’d ever get to see a follow up by her. Until now.

 
If I Had Legs I’d Kick You (2025, Bronstein) is a Rose Byrne vehicle mumblecore thriller character delve of a narrative that sweeps you up you’re drowning in its brilliance never knowing where its taking you and if you can ever manage every once in a while to come up for air for a moment ceasing to be distracted by how amazing Rose Byrne’s performance is you might remember this is what offbeat indie filmmaking promised before you forgot about it. 
     It reminded me of why I once long ago became smitten enraptured embraced with the woman’s picture. Most men can only make films that express feelings like this is what it cost me to get what I wanted. But women can make films that you walk in their shoes and they show you make you feel this is what it’s like being me and it’s not easy and I’m trying and I’m vulnerable and I’m not perfect and I want someone to love me and someone to listen to me and someone to tell me what to do how to do what do I do mother wife therapist I need help you need help I want to help I do help I’ll do better I’m doing my best here I’ve given so much of my love and I’m failing I know but I won’t give up.
     Sorry things got a little cathartic in there. Mary Bronstein is a real one. She’s tough. Her characters provoke insight instigate castigate wreak havoc. Misanthropes. Gen-X ne’er-do-wells. Ah the beauty in such. It’s a character driven motor that speeds us along. And I hate movies that make you feel like they’re just trying to go as far as they can to put their protagonist through torture how much can they take but If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is not that. I never felt like it was more than I could take. It felt like LINDA’S (Byrne) stumbling was expressionistic. Stylized for emotional undertone not gratuitous substitute for dramatic structure. 
     Slightly not quite reality also achieved through this crisis culture. Therapy culture. The cool blue building calm offices with therapists treating therapists treating patients. Emergency culture. Everything’s an emergency. Notice how often that word is used. Especially followed by this isn’t an emergency. (In contrast to Linda’s daugher’s room at home red for aggravating.) A theme I’m whittling might be like society as a bunch of self-centered nuisances trying to live together although not really liking each other or wanting to so blaming but underneath it all just wanting to make it work. 
 
Cinematic flourish aptitude for Bronstein only depicting the daughter and husband as disembodied voices. And the daughter is in like the whole thing. God I love that kid. Her panicking. Her fear. Her hyper. Her desperate need for a hamster to love her so she can control it and make it do tricks for her.
     Also almost the whole entire movie is shot on a long lens. My guess is a 75mm. Close-ups of Rose Byrne literally ninety-nine percent of the film. Intense. Felt like I was watching a Cassavetes movie if I didn’t think Cassavetes’ movies were so lame. Also literally the first time I’ve seen Ivy Wolk in a movie where the quality of her personality style of attitude schtick wasn’t lost in translation. She’s rowdy perfect for Mary Bronstein. 
     There’s no way for me to know or care how much or if If I Had Legs I’d Kick You is autobiographical but I feel like the Linda character brought more life genuine effect of following a human being along a story that wasn’t manipulative uninspired calculated compromised lifeless dull Academy Award prediction Rose Byrne Actress in a Leading Role.
 
10/23/2025 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

The director's cut vibes so hard

The late works of Sir Ridley Scott mock the mass going movie public. Ridicule their lack of sophistication. Their incapability of possessing discerning taste. The result is a joy to behold. Taking my cue off the 205 minute director’s cut as an excuse to write a new piece about Napoleon (2023, Ridley Scott) it might be something like the most perfect film I’ve ever seen. It’s everything wrong with Hollywood. And it works so well.

     First of all historical subjects who took over the world are way more accessible to root for than comic book characters. Napoleon especially. And when I speak of men who took over the world I’m talkin big 3. We already got Oliver Stone’s polyamorous boy rockstar with long blond hair Alexander (2004, Stone). I’m a fan of the film. Mostly because of its scale. And its military scenes. Battle scenes. Testosterone hubris feuds. Napoleon’s in the middle. And the romantic epic nobody asked for about the life of Hitler ain’t gonna happen.
     Napoleon in terms of Goldilocks selection has a darker side than Alexander and not quite as evil as Hitler. He’s a nasty little tyrant. Hell they even named the Napoleon complex after him. Is that in the DSM? I’m not actually curious enough to research it. Anyway as far as antiheroes go I love this guy as played by Phoenix. If you’ll allow me to spoiler skip to the ending my refined reading of Napoleon ultimately rests on some of the scenes from the very end of the film. When he’s talking to children. First when the little boys are granting him audience and he says those lines of dialogue that he’s the first to admit when he makes a mistake but he never does; it’s simple geometry where he puts the [camera] is Ridley Scott breaking through. And finally when Napoleon’s teaching those two little girls to fence and he asks the one who burned Moscow and she doesn’t know he points to himself to say he did but the other says “I believe the Russians burned it sir. To get rid of the French,” Bonaparte cooly inquires “Who told you that?” “It’s common knowledge sir.” Napoleon having little regard for the facts of history is Ridley Scott not caring either. Screw accuracy. This isn’t a documentary. I whole heartedly applaud and support Scott’s reasoning. His reckoning with the material. If you want a detached from the action and drama of Hollywood spectacle documentary with a neutral robot faux British cultured educational narrator over instructive images get lost. 
 
Everybody knows the cinema feeds off of our salacious voracious appetites for sex and death (alt. violence). And that’s what Napoleon gives us instead of history. The violence is Scott’s talent. Large scaled battle. And he lives for it as does Bonaparte. When Napoleon returns from exile and asks his Fifth Army to join him they do because they love to fight. And miss it. Side note why does Gen. Wellington tell that conscript who asks if he can shoot Napoleon no and if he does it will be punishable by death later take his shot anyway? It doesn’t really make sense. But we get to see him miss and blow that hole through Napoleon’s hat. That’s what I get excited about. Emotion over logic. In this case specifically in the context of a war movie escapist entertaining cartoon genre film okay. There’s a time and a place for everything. 
     But the love story is its own beast. Josephine is one of the worst characters written for women ever made. Yet despite this I love her so. The forbidden fruit of archetypes. As in we're not supposed to write this kind of character as in we're not supposed to like this kind of character as in it's wrong to. She’s a slut whore who only exists to serve Napoleon’s objectification of her. The letters we hear through her voiceover are product of Napoleon’s obsessive delusion. She haunts him like she haunts me which effectively depicts the pain of memory. The peril of looking back. The allure of regret. Amorphous infatuation.
     Josephine is introduced as a prostitute Barras is involved with whom he procures for Napoleon. Politics. Josephine’s life is bleak. You know. She’s lost her husband her kids she’s in prison awaiting the guillotine having sex with men just because pregnant women aren’t executed until they have their child. So she’s only into Napoleon out of convenience. Necessity. Desperation. Vanessa Kirby in the sex scenes plays them so bored it’s sad tragic hilarious matter of fact definitive. But she finds her satisfaction with other men. The anachronistic language of the tabloid papers make headlines of her doing so. Okay I can’t prove that the papers weren’t in fact as depicted in the film. Either way I think they’re great. 
     But yeah I’m a man who would rather be known as a cuckold than a fool too. Not Napoleon. The vindictive spite she induces in him fuels his ambition. He’s such an infant. He only lives to take over the world and have sex with Josephine. The man knows his passions. Can I blame him? Josephine’s line “If you look down you’ll see a surprise and once you see it you’ll always want it” made the trailers. This goes to my heart. It’s the meaning of life. But what makes it so particularly compelling in Napoleon and for me is of the utmost romantic sentiment. She never wants him to leave her. My mind knows the fatal codependent relationship is toxic but my heart yearns for its survival. In movies anyway. Its passion lies in its resilience. 
 
This film takes the unashamedly pop repurposing of period French culture pioneered by Marie Antoinette (2006, Sofia Coppola) and gives it the Scott veneer of luxury goods. I prefer the baroque piano passages that sound like some inventions by Bach. I haven’t bothered to research which composers are attributed to which pieces and which are original yet but it’s one of the biggest factors contributing to my enjoyment of the large canvas of it all. 
    And like Coppola’s pop dessert Napoleon above all hones its anachronistic setting through its dialogue. Its attitude. Like right before the coup Lucien is talking mad shit and when Napoleon mentions those ladies in waiting lines about Sieyes and Ducos Lucien says something like “those fucking idiots can tend my balls. Tongue bath? Only for me to let them wipe my ass.” But I’ve probably got it wrong. Whatever he says it's funny baffles me. 
     The director’s cut indulges in Ridley Scott’s madcap riffing in the way House of Gucci (2021, Scott) allowed with Jared Leto. It’s shockingly questionable regarding taste. Like most of all Napoleon's bashful whimper mumble signal to Josephine another mounting invasion is imminent and her keen sense of deciphering it. What were they thinking? Finally. Ridley Scott has gone completely nuts and I think it’s the best thing to happen to his style. From House of Gucci through as of this writing Gladiator II (2024, Scott) gimme more. Rewatchability activated.

In memoriam Woody Allen

It began in my early 20s. Deciding who my favorite director was. Anticipating the question to come along throughout the rest of my life. I chose Woody Allen. And committed. Like a loyal sports fan never to waver. And I never have. Never will.

In the context of modern cinema I’d almost forgotten about Woody Allen. Accepted that we won’t see another film from him for the rest of our lives. That is until earlier this evening. After the Hunt (2025, Luca Guadagnino) doesn’t directly address the subject of either the life of nor the films of Woody Allen. Yet their presence underlies its subject matter.
     Set amongst the faculty and students of an Ivy League campus—it happened at Yale—wealthy people in affluent spaces adorned with intellectual dialogue After the Hunt opens with the unmistakable condensed Windsor typeface opening credits that Allen used for all of his films. But more importantly I see the film as an allegory of the #metoo witch hunt via a power struggle between that angry little mob of culture police it created and yeah the films of Woody Allen.
     Needless to say as a reminder the journalist credited for exposing Weinstein and starting the #metoo movement is Yale alumnus Ronan Farrow or uh Woody Allen’s son. Oh and as a bonus capper Amazon is distributing this as in the same Amazon that canceled Allen amidst a four picture deal they had with him during the height of #metoo.
 
Okay but seriously about the film itself. I feel like MAGGIE (Ayo Edebiri) is meant to get under our skin. And she’s perfect. Her youthful vibrancy. Her excruciating youthfulness. Her nervous awkward stubbornly accusatory shallow ambitious entitled setting of traps to persecute and ridicule culture writ large for her own confused haphazard meaningless agenda. The way we see through her phony impulsive convictions is to know the fear of the threat of its authenticity its power while being baited to also at the same time indulge our contempt of the vitriol which it bestows in kind. It’s cyclical. Mutually aggressive.
     ALMA (Julia Roberts) represents the films of the artist of the man of the idea of Woody Allen. I’m going to avoid spoilers. But I don’t really care to bother with this reading anyway because I doubt anyone will agree with me about it. But I can say After the Hunt digs into the topic of a person’s privacy and the conflicting standards within society attempting to morally judge aspects of compromising behaviors that not only are unable to have a clear resolution but also aren’t necessarily anyone else’s business; much less society as a whole; much less a matter for strangers to decide upon. But of course they do. And what of those affected most by this?
      I’m talking about themes in the film. What do I care about society’s morals? Like it matters. Like I give a shit. But in a dark theater yes I feel like that angry little mob are mocked for our own—or some of us—to deride as entertainment. Should I be ashamed or afraid to admit that? Because I am. Although in my own defense I feel like myself including everything I live for stand for if I can’t laugh at it. At them. Or at me. Something’s wrong. But think about how in After the Hunt direct reverses are used.
     When Alma is confronted by HANK (Andrew Garfield) and he looks into the lens he’s talking to society. Then when Alma confronts Maggie it’s another direct reverse shot. And Alma’s looking into the lens. She’s condemning society. This movie has a message. This movie has a voice. It takes sides. Why not? Above all the horror of it all really gets to me. And the unsettling piano cues underscoring deliberate scenes heightens it all the more. I think we all should know what’s right and wrong morally after it’s all said and done. There are tragic victims of assault. No one condones that. But what happens when allegations are unfounded? It’s a tough question. And it leads to worse. But I’ll leave that to your speculation imagination.
 
10/15/2025 AMC Phipps Plaza 14
Atlanta, GA

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.