Rating: 4.5/5
And I turned and saw the injustice of everything that took place beneath the sun
Betlin, 1928
Franz Biberkopf served four years in prison for murdering his girlfriend. Now, he is in a loud city where he feels he doesn’t belong. He will try and give an honest go at it for once in his life.
The story unfolds from there but also unwinds, slackening at the edges — what would be a single scene in a movie or show becomes an entire episode of soliloquy and discursion, a disassociating narrator who feels like he’s watching a different part of the show
In this restored version — the original was a dark garbled mess that pissed off German audiences — the lighting and coloring read like historical melodrama. And it is that, but it also isn’t that? All I can say is that Fassbinder manages to fuck with the story and still tell the story
The cinematography often lives in extended single takes that are only “cut” by the camera moving to another position — perfect for the stage play-like speeches that play throughout the show.
Our hero rapes, beats and bloodies, lies, cheats, sells Nazi propaganda, kills animals, laughs at a man killing his wife and three kids, and worst of all, rejects Communism (Joking!)
The endless drunken evenings, lovers coming and going, friends who instantly turn to adversaries — no lasting relief, just life, and its casual punishments.
But it has an impact — the cruelty that Franz gives and receives breaks my heart.
About halfway through the show, it actually becomes a crime story — Franz gives up the honest pursuit and takes the work that will make him money to live, but the cost is higher than he could imagine.
Franz is archetypal and totally foreign to me — somewhere between Ignatius J. Reilly and Tony Soprano, with a dash of Job from the Christian bible — a child who only thinks the honest are fooling him.
Franz’s relationship with Reinhold is a love I can only compare to Hannibal and Will Graham in the Hannibal TV show: it is selfish, demands its own way, and lingers in suffering.
Love Has Its Price
The epilogue is probably what most people remember. It contains two extended fantasy sequences that seem to exist in Franz’s mind. It’s a film that requires the entire story up to this point to mean anything and contains some of the most memorable imagery of the show.
The pacing in this show makes Twin Peaks: The Return look taut. Both exercise patience and expectation, but from almost opposite angles — Twin Peaks creates a surrealist hyperreality, while this creates a hyperreal banality.
Also, both are boring until they aren’t. Or maybe both of them fucked with my perception of time. It’s one of those experiences where the series teaches you how to watch it.
A genuinely singular experience
There is a reaper whose name is Death. And he arrives on hatchets and knives, blowing a little flute. Then he opens wide his jaws, and he takes out his trumpet. Will he blow the trumpet? Will he beat the drum? Will the terrible black battering ram come? Ever so softly.