Films/DVD Asylum

Posted by tinear (A) on January 08, 2008 at 13:30:35

of Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
This is a sixteen-hour film made for German television in 1980 but don't be deceived by that: it looks as expensive as any film.
Based on Doblin's novel, it is the story of petty criminal Franz Biberkopf who is being released, as the story begins, after serving a four-year prison sentence for beating his girlfriend to death.
The film portrays life in Berlin as the Nazis began to strangle German government but the story isn't a vehicle with which to make social or political criticism. In fact, Biberkopf is the most convincingly drawn character I ever have encountered in film and Gunter Lamprecht turns in a performance by which I'll now judge all others.
His nemesis, fellow low-life criminal Reinhold, played by Gottfried John, also brilliantly is depicted and acted.
Hanna Schygulla, a regular part of the Fassbinder troupe, portrays the madame that so often comes to Biberkopf's assistance, though she must overcome dark thoughts about him. Lastly, Barbara Sukowa portrays Biberkopf's love interest, the "innocent" hooker that overlooks his violence and unpredictability.
It's hard to discuss this film because it's unlike any other cinematic experience: the "narrator" assumes three or four different personas, parts of the novel are read, and the use of music (not in the Hollywood sense of leading a scene but as an undercurrent) makes the film seem like an operetta.
The last several hours truly are bizarre as Fassbinder takes us on a horror-filled trip through a troubled human mind's descent into insanity not unlike what a Fellini on LSD would have concocted.
It is impossible to criticize such a mammoth human achievement.
Fassbinder's name belongs aside that of Stravinsky, Corbusier, Matisse, Borges, and a few other mega-geniuses in the art world of the 20th century: he not only created a major artwork, he did so while completely breaking with the past.
Don't enter into this film with expectations of being entertained but rather expect to be challenged, disturbed, upset, and awestruck. What is to be made of a society, Fassbind seems to be saying, that maintains order through an efficient system of laws and enforcement while that "protected" society evolves into a monstrous one wherein its citizens lead the world into war which leads to tens of millions of deaths and which callously torture and murder 4-million Jewish civilians?