The killer

I hate terms like revisionist western and neo noir. Annoying. The American Soldier (1970, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) takes a mood we’re familiar with and updates it. That of the post war Hollywood movies where a soldier returns from the war and finds life is now different. That’s an effective ingredient cinematically—a part of our brains respond to that pathway premise priming us to feel alienated, doomed in fact.

     The American Soldier is one of those films each viewer should through intuition take away their own meaning. Not to be dissected. But I defy convention. So here’s my take. The American was born in Germany and went to serve in Vietnam fighting in the United States Army, so he’s not really American. His name is Ricky Di Rezzori, played by Karl Scheydt. Also known as THE KILLER. The protagonist. Unlike the veterans returning home from WWII, The Killer doesn’t feel alienated upon returning to his hometown, in this case Munich. But I think conveniently the film wants us to think he does. Yet he his doomed for another reason.

     The antagonist is a cop named JAN. Jan doesn’t kill. He contracts The Killer to carry out hits. Jan embodies a repressed sexuality. He represents the mainstream commercial film industry along with aspects of society at large as well. Guilt eats the soul. There’s also a hypocrisy aspect to his witch hunt. The broad beats of the plot are as follows: Assignment 1 Jan has The Killer eliminate the gypsy TONY EL QUITANO, Assignment 2 Jan has The Killer eliminate MAGDALENA FULLER, and Assignment 3 Jan has The Killer eliminate ROSA VON PRAUHEIM.
      Fassbinder always identifies with and portrays the outsider as having the courage and integrity to be themselves, which results in them being doomed to suffer the crushing close minded intolerance of the status quo. First Tony El Quitano must die because he’s gay. There’s something so sad about the way The Killer executes that poor weak defenseless creature. Jan’s a cop. His chief asks him to bring El Quitano in for questioning, but part of Jan’s secret plans are to kill El Quitano, why? Jan’s either closet or homophobic. 

     But before El Quitano dies he says The Killer doesn’t have long to live. And when The Killer and FRANZ WALSCH visit their old housing complex, MRS. LANG has this look in her stare when they leave telegraphing to us they’re doomed. So we must ask ourselves what links The Killer with the outsider? Another question to ask is why does Jan send his girl Rosa to the hotel when The Killer orders a whore? Jan’s cleaning house and nothing more. He’s threatened by what he deems immoral sex acts. And covering his tracks.
 
Yet it would be oversimplifying to think of Jan as the moral police. The opening scene is telling. Has there ever been a more fitting image of Fassbinder’s objective thematic style than pornographic playing cards? I keep saying. People need money and what they have to do for it; people need love and what they have to do for it. Sex is currency, money is currency. But when Jan wins the pot the other cop says “you’ll ruin me with that sort of thing,” Jan replies “You didn’t have to play.” 
     The third act we get some hint of backstory about The Killer’s character. The way he goes in for a kiss on the mouth of the woman who’s referred to as his mother. And the passion jealousy anger the Kurt Raab gay character projects, supposedly The Killer’s brother. Finally, that line The Killer lets float “My father lives in a different world. It wasn’t my scene.” It turns out The American Solider is a poker game of immoral sexual appetites. 
     What I said earlier about Jan representing the mainstream commercial film industry along with aspects of society at large I base on the final shootout in the underground train station. Fassbinder himself plays Franz, is gay, and comes to The Killer’s rescue, which can be read as The Killer isn’t necessarily gay but he’s friends with Franz because they grew up together and he has nothing to hide. (Yet he also takes from women what he wants physically then discards them. We must ask ourselves again is that immoral or an objective way of life? Much less the weird thing with his mother and brother?) Franz saves The Killer from death by Jan. Almost. That Jan wins is conservative values maintaining their brand of normalcy.
     We know they’re hypocrites though. They’re at the poker table playing with the same stakes. But for them winning is preserving their private life. Think about that one quick scene when the three cops are leaving the chief’s office and there’s that random woman in anguish yelling at the precinct cop she’s pregnant with his baby while he shrugs off any sense of moral responsibility. 
     So many people in this Munich walk away destitute from the poker tables. How many random characters are just passed out drunk somewhere? The chambermaid who commits hara-kiri because Pierre left her. The American Soldier is another powerful allegory about human need that Fassbinder expressionistically refracts through the crime genre. No one walks away happy this time. No one survives except the antagonist. And Fassbinder is really pushing the boundaries of what's deemed acceptable if he expects us to sympathize with The Killer.

    The crucial plot point to ultimately understand The American Soldier is that The Killer says he has to get rid of Rosa because in his line he can't afford to have any witnesses. So what's he hiding? The tragedy of the film isn't that Jan used The Killer to carry out his evil schemes. It's that The Killer learned to kill by America. The Killer represents tough. That's why Fassbinder befriends him, because Fassbinder makes movies about brutality. Jan coerces The Killer because he's too weak to go after all those he despises. Jan is fear. Jan is threatened by the outsider. The outsider belongs to Fassbinder, and he learned tough from American cinema. The saddest thing is the tough American hero after Vietnam is nothing more than a mercenary pawn.That final shot of the queer brother (melodrama incarnate) dryhumping his dead body convulsing in a tantrum breakdown for 5 minutes without cutting is the end of an era.

Life is very precious even right now

Gods of the Plague (1970, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) doesn’t glamorize crime, but instead uses that genre as a setting because it allows Fassbinder to populate the narrative with characters who either can’t find ways to make money or don’t know how to. Its theme could be people need money and what they have to do for it.

     Moreover, the criminal underworld here serves as an expressionist depiction of love; a way to communicate all the emotions that come with it. People are constantly buying and selling the whereabouts of others. People are constantly canvassing the streets looking for someone like lovesick obsessives. Being in hiding is like guarding yourself against heartbreak, walling off your emotions so you can’t get hurt again. And betrayal proves fatal. 
     Because this is a Fassbinder movie, the central protagonist FRANZ WALSCH (Harry Bär) is a mopey sad lethargic puddle of a man. The stock genre trope of one last job that will inevitably go wrong is used to translate the feeling of Franz falling in love with MARGARETHE (Margarete von Trotta). It doesn’t matter who or what the cops are after. First it’s some guy, then it’s known associates, then it’s the murder of Marian, then it’s the Gorilla, then it’s the supermarket job. What’s important is JOHANNA REIHER (Hanna Schygulla) is having sex with the investigating detective so she can get him to shoot Franz because she’s jealous she can’t have him and he left her for Margarethe. When the detective tells Johanna he wants her she brushes him off telling him he can’t have her, laughing because she’s too expensive—that’s a key phrasing, it merges love and money.
     When I said the theme of Gods of the Plague is people need money and what they have to do for it, what I really meant is people need love and what they have to do for it. But in the case of this film, both hold true. Notice Franz doesn’t say a thing when Margarethe says that because of him she was let go of her job for missing work, took out a loan that they’ve spent all of, but when she offers to prostitute herself as a means for them to get more cash he slaps the crap out of her.
     In Fassbinder’s films I often get the sense of a moral code. Like all of the characters are degenerates except there’s usually a couple that don’t belong there but become engulfed by this fated doom after it’s already too late. Obviously here it’s Franz and Margarethe. But the really intriguing character is that CARLA AULAULU who sells out the supermarket robbery, but also peddles hardcore pornography and it’s maybe suggested in a scene that she’s trafficking that girl who looks suspiciously young. And at one point the cop even says something about her like she knows everything. Love, sex, human desire is all the same to her. She’s gotta make money too. She’s exemplary of Fassbinder’s ongoing themes of exploitation. Someone else will exploit you in order for them to survive. Either your body, your emotions, your life, it’s all the same so long as it’s you not them.
 
A departure from his previous films, Gods of the Plague moves the camera in almost every setup. The black and white cinematography is high key, high contrast, photogenic surfaces like stone, brick, the textured glass backdrop, smoke in a back room. The Peer Raben score gets into the mix. And we get the first taste of R&B jukebox vibe Fassbinder.

Somehow you just listen I can't say why

My go to philosophy about human nature is our most basic innate thirst is for 2 opposing sides in conflict. Unless we can recognize it as stupid and avoid it. The Niklashausen Journey (1970, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Michael Fengler) is a fun punk agitprop painting of a film that pits capitalism against communism; church vs state; spirit vs carnal; panthers vs pigs; and the US army vs hippies. 

     The Virgin Mary speaks to HANS and he tends a literal flock of sheep before embarking on his titular journey calling to arms for a communist revolution. Does Fassbinder actually believe all this crap? Should we? It turns into a comedy when you put all of these ideologies side by side and realize how seriously people hold their values. Everybody seems to think Hans is beautiful, and he’s got rizz. From the 15th century until now not much has changed—this dude is your flavor of the month social media sensation by today’s standards. 
     The Niklashausen Journey taps into what we hold dear. Another thing relatable that holds just as true today as this film made over 50 years ago agitates is a call to do something about police brutality, citing the 1969 murders of Fred Hampton and Mark Clark where of the 100 bullets retrieved from the crime scene 99 were from police and 1 from the Panthers. That’s how long this has been going on? The whole innocent black dude shot by cops protests? It’s horrible yes but I think there’s comedy there. The problems in our society don’t go away. They’re just there. What has protesting in the last 50 years done? Where’s the revolution everyone’s been talking about all this time?
 
Because the eighteenth century BISHOP (Kurt Raab) and his harem of young shirtless boys in addition to the way he’s played as a total coward, along with Margit Carstensen’s character stabbing her invalid husband in the back on the steps of their estate falling over his slain body, I suspect The Niklashausen Journey takes a side in all this bickering between political views. I don’t. I think they’re all stupid. But I love that this is what makes life so interesting. What makes life life.
     And Fassbinder’s place in all this, even more anachronistic in appearance, with his strategies and efforts to spin the angle in the most profitable direction to me gives the film a sense of an interrogation into how revolution functions as commercial endeavor. Will people ever think for themselves? Or has the whole concept of revolution become just another something else to post to your social media to get more likes? Political views just another easy target to make hate jokes about as a mindless means to bring social groups closer together with each other while more spiteful toward their opps?
 
There are some really amazing shots in this film. The grass blowing through the field while they walk through it. Is that a reference to that “The wind bloweth where it listeth” verse from the Gospels? The manipulation of the Virgin Mary and later the Crucifixion imagery are cautionary satirical criticism at the exploitation of Christianity to gain popular support of the masses. Tell them what they want to hear. After the messiah fails, when Fassbinder attempts to send in Schygulla as the Virgin Mary that's making fun of Catholics. Christ was the living word, salvation, the gospels. Why pray to Mary? Because it's mindless and easy (and pointless). And the crucifixion is at a junk yard, one of the most important aspects of Christian faith thrown out as junk because people don't wanna hear it anymore. They want stuff that'll make them feel inclusive, happy, or hate. In that case it’s no different than the Black Panthers slogans because each claim the ultimate goal is to incite violence. The point of Christ dying for the sins of humanity is so we could be reborn and become better people, like the kind of political revolution that's fundamentally doomed because people are too lazy to affect change themselves, change within themself first. People don't want to work on making anything better because it's easier to complain about what's wrong.
     Is there room for peace? Not if you take the Army massacring that hippie commune as any indicator. Fassbinder makes movies about brutality. This film is another of his bleak little masterpieces that tells us there’s no hope for humanity. But apparently it’s always been like that. So that’s good news. Also who’s that fat dude with the beard and the big black hat Fassbinder’s always hanging with? Is he brutality?

Heart of darkness

If you would think Rio das Mortes (1970, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) is this optimistic sweet outlier in Fassbinder’s filmography where for once the characters aren’t in anguish due to some out of reach object of desire, instead a light fairytale with a happy ending, I’d say you’re wrong. Because the protagonist isn’t MICHEL and GÜNTHER, it’s HANNA.

     That’s why the film opens with Hanna (Hanna Schygulla) looking cool as fuck in black lingerie and thigh highs smoking a cigarette and listening to records. And ends with her lowering her weapon and stroking that fox stole before reapplying her lipstick. It’s her movie. She’s the quintessential Fassbinder central protagonist. Michel and Günther are the counterweight to Fassbinder’s sense of dramaturgy—unrealistically idealistic naïves fixated on a fairytale because they lack life experience.
     Not to be wholly discounted, Michel and Günther have this cute little buddy coming of age adventure—Hollywood drivel. A youth picture. Michel is bored at his tiler job with Harry Baer. In that male pornographic fantasy sequence when the Carla Aulaulu character seduces him in her sheer blouse doing a Marilyn Monroe number, he’s oblivious. Michel doesn’t care about sex, he just wants to move to Peru with his best friend Günther. And when Michel beats up Günther for joining the military it’s in defiance of growing up. The sad scene where Michel sells his car connects because it’s him fighting society to break away and be free to go off on his dream Peru adventure instead of accepting his adult responsibilities. 
     So toward the end of the final act Michel and Günther are in a bar and overhear something about some random philanthropist then cold visit her home and show her a childlike treasure map of Peru and she gives them $30,000. I don’t seriously think anyone is meant to buy this. I think it’s like an expressionist tacked on bit of fun Fassbinder’s having with the audience.
 
Rio das Morts if anything has got to be appreciated for its one truly sublime scene, when Hanna dances with Fassbinder to “Jailhouse Rock” in that bar. This takes us out of the fairytale and up into ascension of heightened real life. The tangible emotion is felt as we recognize Fassbinder smoking cigarettes, drinking and listening to Elvis in a bar, being nagged by some girl he belligerently assaults—his famous line sometimes happiness isn’t always fun. This is Fassbinder. This is Hanna.
     Hanna is either pregnant or thinking about having a child. She’s grown up. My fantasy reading is that early scene when Michel spills the salt and there’s that stinger then we cut tight to an insert and close-ups is a curse to the film that sends him out of Fassbinder’s anguished world and into an artificial fairytale away from the truth. Fassbinder embraces brutality, but condemns fear. Michel is afraid of growing up.
     That cruel coda when Michel’s landlady assumes Hanna is his wife and asks for the rent is Hanna being stuck with having to pay for his escape. Fassbinder’s characters are slaves to their desires. Hanna even hatches a few schemes to get Michel to Peru that don’t work because it’s a pipe dream, until KATRIN HANNA’S FRIEND actually gets her researcher husband JOACHIM to fund the expedition. But Michel is a baby and doesn’t want to go on his child adventure with those lame-o’s. Hanna wants Michel so bad she even tries to sleep with Günther to get him to take her to Peru either instead of Michel or along with both of them so she can be with Michel. The heart is unreasonable. 
     If there is an exception to Rio das Mortes it seems like Hanna is pretty okay about losing her most cherished love here. And not in a heartless disillusioned Fassbinder way. She’s resilient. She proves a stronger woman than the manchild. And like how the film supposedly about a trip to Peru never gets around to it until the very last minute, Hanna shows us a character who exists apart from getting what she wants. Right before he drafts his fantasy map Michel even says “You can’t do what you really want,” but it’s Hanna who embodies this. And that’s the most romantic thing about Fassbinder.

The Coffee Shop

If you were to examine the morality in Das Kaffeehaus (1970, Rainer Werner Fassbinder) what would you get? Among its ensemble, characters can be grouped into either those in anguish, or those who accept the status quo as is. Yet who is it that suffers the most?

     Hans Hirschmüller as TRAPPOLO the servant and married couple Günther Kaufmann as FLAMINIO ARDENTI, his wife Ingrid Caven as PLACIDA face tragic fates, and as is typical in Fassbinder’s films, they’re outsiders. In Trappolo’s case, he’s stuck in the past, how different his time spent in the New World was, discovering gold in Arizona. But not here. Not anymore. Venice is a crooked game where (to repeat myself yet again) Fassbinder lays out an infrastructure based on sex, love, and money as the necessary objects people need and will do anything to get; along the way this can include borrowing, lending, stealing, and swindling. Trappolo invests his life savings in the stock market and loses it to the broker before he even gets the chance to play.
     Flaminio Ardenti is in hiding under the alias COUNT LEANDER and initially under this false identity is doing pretty good for himself here in Venice. That is until his wife, who’s “on his tail like the devil” catches up with him. In Fassbinder it’s the anguish that sticks with me. Their fate is powerful. They’re staged like buried corpses. Screaming their devotion to one another feels like marriage is decay, being buried alive, which ironically is something along what Leander accuses the whore LISAURA (Hanna Schygulla) of.
     But through all the backstabbing and maneuvering Lisaura lands on her feet, happy to go back to DON MARZIO (Kurt Raab), and he happy to get his old whore back, which is what he wanted more than anything this entire time. Das Kaffeehaus has its focus on institutions. The dude who owns the coffee shop and the dude who owns the gambling house call the shots. But the twist is the gambling house is rigged, except because the proprietor RIDOLFO (Wilhelm Rabenbauer) is in debt to the city of Venice they publicly admit they won’t arrest him until he pays off what he owes them. This stuff is rich. Fassbinder sees the worst in society. And life is a free market where the currency is human desire.
     EUGENIO (Harry Bär) seems like the central protagonist. Is this one of the only times we see a happy ending in Fassbinder? In the opening of the play Don Marzio mentions to Eugenio, who has a severe gambling problem, that he might get his wife to work as a hostess in the gambling hall for extra cash, to which Eugenio defiantly opposes. But what happened between then and the end where he pimps his wife VITTORIA (Margit Carstensen) to PANDOLFO, owner of the gambling house? Eugenio and Vittoria walk away gleefully truly happy living off the hopes that with the money they’re making from her having sex with the old dude one day they might have enough to buy the casino. Oh wait I guess the real tragedy is that they think that could actually happen. This one is tricky though. Because for the moment and foreseeable future all three of them are happy. It’s the morality of de Sade’s Justine. The wicked are rewarded and the virtuous are punished.
 
The dialogue in Das Kaffeehaus is delivered at a constant pace, unlike in Fassbinder’s films. Because there are no sets and characters never leave the stage, there are even times when different scenes nearly overlap. Or cross cut (in the same shot) at the very least. It makes me miss his weird long pauses slow delivery style. Lucky for me there’s plenty more of that to come.

     There's also this comedic device that never gets old where anytime money is mentioned someone nearby converts the dollar figure into marks. And every time it's instantaneous. And every character gets a turn. They all do it deadpan. Just emphasizes the importance of money in a very funny way.

The Birds

With a career that spanned five decades and a personal vision that always remained uncompromising and experimental, Robert Altman, more than any other American filmmaker, requires time when one attempts to warm up to his talent. Most of the time I've spent has been laborious, tedious, and sometimes disappointing. But so has my search for great films in general. Now that isn't to say the payoff wasn't exceedingly worthwhile on numerous occasions. Yesterday downtown at a movie theater here in Austin I was lulled into a sublime hypnotic trance by Brewster McCloud (1970, Robert Altman).

For someone who considers themselves a fan of Independent American cinema Altman's is one of the most revered of reputations. However it was only after seeing Magnolia (1999, Paul Thomas Anderson) that led me to Short Cuts (1993, Altman), which I thoroughly and profoundly connected with, due to its vast array of troubled, struggling, funny, romantic, believable characters. Short Cuts is serious Altman at his finest.

Later I found 3 Women (1977, Altman) to be indecipherable, frustrating, and bewildering. But also funny, captivating, poetic, and a real treasure. Again, as has he always been reputed for, the ensemble casting, namely Shelley Duvall and Sissy Spacek, are revelatory. 3 Women is surreal Altman at his finest.

And finally the most impressive of all Altman's work, which I'd seen only recently is his made for television opus Tanner '88 (1988, Altman). It is his most serendipitous, inventive, and enjoyable narrative, in the guise of a political satire.

If the aforementioned three titles are his crowning achievements--and I realize McCabe & Mrs. Miller might belong there but I haven't seen it and I demand the opportunity to watch it projected in a theater--then their other, their counterparts, their vital components are Altman's rebellious comedy satires. For me those have been O.C. & Stiggs (1984, Altman), The Player (1992, Altman) and now Brewster McCloud.

Not quite having to structure my thoughts here as either a movie review or film criticism, the Reviewiera platform is my medium for expressing the bliss of truly, sincerely, and without pretense, enjoying the hell out of a movie.

All I'd ever heard about Brewster McCloud can be seen in its poster. Bud Cort plays the title role, lives in the Astrodome, and builds wings to fly with. As great as MASH (1970, Altman) is, and an admirable beginning to Altman's canon, that he followed it up with Brewster McCloud really makes me appreciate his reach.

Hearing that a movie was a flop, panned, alienated audiences, or was weird often makes my mouth water, and Brewster McCloud was known for all of those things. But what a payoff. It opens showing the MGM studio card without sound and as the lion roars we hear "I forgot the opening line." It's unbelievable that MGM distributed Brewster McCloud and the only one other Altman film, O.C. & Stiggs. O.C. & Stiggs also plays with the MGM opening logo card. There are several similarities between both of these MGM Altman comedies: rampant drug use, offensive racist slurs, misogynist jokes, adolescent male protagonists, contemporary pop soundtracks, non-sequitor gags, car chases, violence, and satirizing American culture. Yet they were both commercial flops, though destined for cult status.

Brewster McCloud is full of references to birds. His name sounds like rooster and his surname is a nod to the clouds. And parallel with the entire film is an inexplicable completely set apart classroom lecture by a character played by Rene Auberjonois, who is evolving into a bird before our eyes. Altman's got imagination.

There's also Michael Murphy playing a Bullitt spoof pursuing a string of homicides where there's bird shit at every crime scene. (The Murphy gags about his obsession with personal appearance and his turtlenecks is killer.) All of the cars have license plates that refer to a type of bird. The Road Runner driven by Suzanne (Shelley Duvall) has the license plate DUV 222.

The movie also has some marijuana humor that feels a lot like Cheech and Chong. Coincidentally Brewster McCloud was produced by Lou Adler (that tall skinny dude with the white beard and pink shades who always sits next to Jack courtside at the Lakers games), who managed Cheech and Chong and would go on to produce and direct Up In Smoke in 1978.

More references to flight include Sally Kellerman as Brewster's guardian angel (who in yet another bird reference plays a scene bathing nude in a fountain that also recalls her exposed shower prank in MASH), Brewster's construction of his own wings, and the name Astrodome itself alluding to a celestial monument. There's also some remnant of the Icarus myth, but Brewster McCloud becomes its own fable. It's not for me to question why Brewster is pursued as an object of physical desire by the women characters, but it adds to the anti-Hollywood feel of this comedy. Like the character Hope wrapped in a blanket masturbating while wrapped in a quilt as she bounces on Brewster's inflatable raft, how do you explain that to a producer? There's so much different stuff going on in Brewster McCloud that I'm just glad made it into the cut.

And what a debut for Shelley Duvall, more than ever I honed in on her naive nuances as the virtuous ingenue with a hint of worldliness. I'd just happen to rent Thieves Like Us (1974, Altman) a couple of weeks ago and began realizing more than ever before what she brings to a performance. Furthermore she is like the Altman actress.

A refreshing break from my usual high art preferences and mainstream interludes, Brewster McCloud won me over with its sumptous 2.35:1 canvas, Houston streets, whip zooms, long lense work, and deserves its own special place with my appreciation, due to succeeding while being unlike anything I've ever seen.

--Dregs