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Not Rilke's sublime satellite but Rainer Werner Fassbinder's orbit of excruciation, the lunar limbo of squashed desire. "The only thing I did wrong was to yearn for someone to caress me and kiss me." Elvira, formerly Erwin, a beefy Frankfurt tragedienne, Volker Spengler's Oliver Reed jaw not quite hidden by a dainty black veil. Sometimes planets align for a cruel time, after cruising for a bruising she goes home to be dumped like "a superfluous lump of meat" by her beau (Karl Scheydt). Last days, search for love in a realm of rejection. Sang des bêtes, dripping carcasses and flayed souls in the abattoir, "life itself." A graveyard for friendships, a remembrance at the orphanage with Sister Gudrun (Lilo Pempeit). "And though man may be silenced by pain / A God gave me the power to say how much I suffer." Working as his own cinematographer and editor, Fassbinder gives direct filmic shape to an open wound, a ruthlessly lucid camera for the full disarray of existence. Channel-surfing with Ingrid Caven, fable of the boy turned into a mushroom and munched on by his sister. The switcheroo was precipitated by a crush's crack, now a real-estate kingpin (Gottfried John) who reenacts Hollywood musical numbers with a troupe of bodyguards. Magritte in the office hallway, "Bergen-Belsen" like "open sesame," rampant capitalism as "a brothel run on the lines of a concentration camp." Bread and wine with the suicidal philosopher, brunch with ex-wife (Elisabeth Trissenaar) and daughter (Eva Mattes). A constellation, cf. Resnais' Providence, Mahler and Goethe swirl within alongside throbs of Nino Rota and glimpses of Martin and Lewis. "I invent pains to find out what normal life is about." Fassbinder's harshest, tenderest canvas, the heroine's anguished declaration melting into his own: "I had to exist." Nonpareil, though Almodóvar gives it a valiant try with Bad Education. With Günther Kaufmann, Isolde Barth, Walter Bockmayer, Peter Kollek, and Gerhard Zwerenz.
--- Fernando F. Croce |