From: Mark Allen
To: Tc (Tim Cook)
Subject: I finally got to the end
Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 8:59 PM
Tim -- I made it to the end of Berlin Alexanderplatz just now. And at this point, that in itself is the greatest thing about it.
From: Tc
To: Mark Allen
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Jan 19, 2009 9:05 PM
Whoa, you did it! Eva! Mieze! Meck! Rhinehold! Bruno! Pums! The Angels! Franz! Franz' stump! The Epilogue!
What Andrew Sarris claimed in what used to be called The Village Voice: "The Mt. Everest of World Cinema"! You did it all! Congrats, Mark! So... what did you think? How do you feel?
From: Mark Allen
To: Tc
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Jan 19, 2009 at 9:08 PM
Numb.
From: Tc
To: Mark Allen
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Jan 19, 2009 9:10 PM
Wanna join Pums' gang? Sell newspapers? Slaughter cattle? Listen to Kraftwerk's "Radioactivity"? Walk around unshaven with slobber on your face?
From: Tc
To: Mark Allen
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Jan 19, 2009 9:57 PM
How about get involved with politics? Go on an alcoholic binge? Fall in love with your cell mate? Testify to Rhinehold's good character? Lapse into a ceaseless hallucination loop?
From: Mark Allen
To: Tc
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 10:12 PM
No.
From: Tc
To: Mark Allen
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Jan 19, 2009 10:28 PM
Have you considered taking a tour of the alley of prostitution where the pimp quotes scripture? Speak exclusively in shout-form? Get fitted for a new suit? Fly into a violent rage at the slightest misperception of provocation? Especially women? Babble onward into infinity?
From: Mark Allen
To: Tc
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 11:05 PM
Get covered in glitter! Order fruit and cream at an outdoor cafe with a bloody, bruised face! Place my fake rubber arm under the moving wheel of an old fashion-y car! Or become a Rock'em-Sock'em Robots game come to life!
From: Mark Allen
To: Tc
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Mon, Jan 19, 2009 at 11:21 PM
How about some really loud birds in a cage? Ditzy domestic broads, anyone? Shoestrings? For sale! We got lots and lots of shoestrings! Butter sticks? How about a butter stick? It's only slightly bloody because I murdered my girlfriend with it IN ONLY 2,000 GODDAMN FLASHBACKS!!! Anyone? Slightly...okay, over-used! Repetitive butter stick...for sale! Anyone? Do you think Fassbinder is laughing in his grave? Not with us, but at us?
From: Tc
To: Mark Allen
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Jan 19, 2009 11:32 PM
So, then, your all time fave?
From: Tc
To: Mark Allen
Subject: Re: I finally got to the end
Date: Jan 20, 2009 12:15 AM
I'll tell you later...I've got to go to bed tonight. I definitely have an opinion on it though...especially as a Fassbinder fan. More later...
From: Mark Allen
To: Tc
Subject: What I thought of "Berlin Alexanderplatz"
Date: Jan 20, 2009 10:21 PM
I love Sarris' comparison to reaching the end of Berlin Alexanderplatz as climbing the Mt. Everest of world cinema. As so many people say about mountain climbing: Why do I want to climb it? Because it's there.
As someone who has become a really big fan of Fassbinder's films mostly in the last few years...I'm glad I saw it more than I liked it. I'm sure I'm the last person to declare: it was overlong (you think?) I suppose it's length was an experiment, and I know if you don't like something of that nature you can always claim it's trial was unnecessary.
It had several strikes going against it for me, right out of the gate:
1) I'm not a huge fan of period pieces.
2) Gunter Lamprecht just happens to be one of those screen actors that's face makes me shudder, and he also just happens to be the star of a 16-hour film I just watched. Uuuugghhh....I think "pity" was part of the audience motivation for him (I'll get to that later)...still it was particularly excruciating in places for me just to be looking at him.
3) The color scheme and setting were a total drag. I was cheering when they finally left that sepia-toned apartment/street/bar/subway vortex they were trapped in during the first four episodes.
As a newly minted fan of Fassbinder's work (I'm a huge, huge, huge fan of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, The Third Generation, In a Year of 13 Moons, Fear of Fear, Lola, ...I even love the much-hated Querelle!) as I said I'm very glad I saw this, and now I have no excuse to not see everything else of his that I have not. I loved spotting some of his regular actors in the roles. The first Fassbinder regular I ever became a fan of is Barbara Valentin...I loved her as the voluptuously lumpy, dour-faced, peroxided, temptress bar maid in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. But I didn't even realize she played Ida in Berlin Alexanderplatz until about the 17th flashback because there was so much goddamn Vaseline on the lens! (butter?) I also think it was witty that he gave Udo Kier a one measly scene to appear in (intentional?)
The thing I like about Fassbinder, besides having a great eye for brash, gritty, colorful style...is that he's actually able to create believable characters within his style, by using very little dialogue and lots of general kookiness. They're believable people! Even when they're wearing new wave bee costumes and firing machine guns! You're rooting for them! Or you despise them! I mean, in films like Ali: Fear Eats the Soul and Lola and In a Year of 13 Moons (and of course the very Cassavetes-like Why Does Herr. R. Run Amok?) I'm actually feeling the character's value by film's end...maybe even a little teary eyed! Even blown away! Despite all the snazz, Fassbinder's shows a real economical talent using film to tell a story (okay, The Third Generation and Querelle are indeed filled with very 2-D characters that never really inflate...but they're a BLAST to watch!), and at times the character development in his films seems almost accidental...but it all somehow works in those shorter films. In Berlin Alexanderplatz, a story about a character(s) going through excruciating situations...he had 16 hours to make me feel these people. I just didn't (except for Reinhold, whom I genuinely wanted to see ruined). It somehow wasn't working, and I think it's the length that destroyed that energy. I mean, you can only "reveal" a character so many times in a typical film (even if you're just using style or visuals) and in a shorter film I guess you're forced to edit your "reveals," giving them real punch within the capacity of the mood you're creating...to make them leap off the screen. But with 16 hours it's like he had no idea what to do with all the time. You can only unfold a piece of paper so many times until you've just got a flat piece of paper! (and 15 hours left to go) I remember when Reinhold finally murdered Mieze I was just staring at the screen blankly like (flat tone) "Oh, look he strangled her. Look at that mist in the background." I just didn't care. Plus, in the epilogue, it's like it was finally time for resolution and it was all one long Fellini dream sequence. Convenient! I know it was made for television. But, I mean...compare Berlin Alexanderplatz to a hours-long cable TV series like Six Feet Under or something older like Tales of the City, Another Country...or even Dallas or Dynasty! Really...which runs deeper? And I'm far more interested in anything Fassbinder does than Six Feet Under...but still it's interesting to ponder.
I love that I watched this (and proud that I resisted the temptation to fast forward or skip through parts). And I love Fassbinder's work, and will continue to explore his films with enthusiasm. But I'm afraid all I've taken from Berlin Alexanderplatz is that I'm happy that I can now brag that I've watched the whole thing to the end...the bottom-line cliche of pretension. I think Fassbinder's greatest accomplishment in the 16-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz has been giving his most hard core fans something to debate.
-- Mark
From: Tc
To: Mark Allen
Subject: What I thought of "Berlin Alexanderplatz"
Date: Feb 1, 2009 11:42 PM
Mark -- SORRY about the delay in getting back to you RE: Fassbinder's epic. I had an almost entirely opposite reaction; even tho' agree with yr point about the diminishing returns of repetitious character revelation (i.e., notably, Twin Peaks), but my disbelief stayed on the sidelines most often, and I found myself, y'know, immersed in it. I disagree with you about lead actor Gunter Lamprecht, howevs; I was pretty amazed at his constantly overdriven, paint-peeling delivery. Fassbinder's regular ensemble, and especially Hanna Schygulla (Eva) and Gottfried John (Reinhold), represent well here in general, I think. Funny you don't like period pieces, as I have never considered that to be a single genre as such, tho' I s'pose it could be. Me, I'm not so much a fan of COSTUME DRAMA, which has some overlap. But I don't consider Berlin Alexanderplatz chiefly as a period piece, it's too weird and mean-spirited for that. It's also more modern in style with all the kitchen sink melodramatic incoherence Fassbinder serves up (a misc hodgepodge of ambiguity, homosexuality, apocalyptic visions, an unchecked rise of the National Socialists party, filth, garbage, repeated beating of women, walking around with slobber on your face, and much other creepiness).
I think Fassbinder's work, or the "best known" fraction I've seen, to be rooted in the period piece, overcoming some kind of personal or cultural post-Wiemar/Nazi-era guilt, blended with an often indecipherable and contradictory sexual agenda played out in the characters he champions and vilifies, and say whatever you want about Berlin Alexanderplatz, its got all of the above in spades. I agree that the flashback sequences were repetitious, but I wonder if it would have seemed as conspicuous or annoying if you had watched this in segments over several weeks, as it was originally presented (and perhaps intended to be seen), instead of as a marathon/weekend/force-feeding (is that how you watched it?)
And then there's the end of Berlin Alexandplatz: "My Dream of the Dream of Franz Biberkopf by Alfred Döblin, An Epilogue"... to me, is a far more impressive display of FREAKING OUT than anything, say, David Lynch has committed to film (my apologies to Eraserhead fans). In many ways it seemed like the first 13 hours of Berlin Alexanderplatz simply served as a launching point to this epic melting down of all prior elements. ...but what on Earth was Leonard Cohen doing on the soundtrack?
Apparently WDR, the West German television channel that commissioned Berlin Alexanderplatz (now named WDR Fernsehen; famous to me for the long running, often great Musikladen), yanked the program mid-run for public complaints about content and, apparently, the dim image (brightened significantly in the new restoration, but you still kinda hated), running the remaining episodes only in a late-night banishment. I think that the doomed heroism of the intent, execution and subsequent successful negative reaction elevate this work in my eyes to a certain level of greatness. It is interesting to me that Fassbinder followed Berlin Alexanderplatz with two very polished/mainstream films Lola and Veronika Voss (then followed by Querelle[!], at the end of his life, ending an inhuman run of 42 feature films in 12 years!).
-- XO, TC
You're better men than I. I think I would rather watch Fox & His Friends 10.6 times.
Posted by: WmMBerger | February 02, 2009 at 03:11 PM
1. It's a damn mini-series. I think The Wire is great art, but wouldn't sit through an entire season in one sitting.
2. German actors don't do naturalism, which makes it difficult to "feel these people" in anything. Text and the ideas behind an entire production are valued way above character, which is why the crisis in German screenwriting in the last ten or fifteen years has amounted to a crisis in German cinema. You certainly can't judge "great German acting" by the same criteria that make, for example, Robert DeNiro a great actor.
Posted by: Goyim in the AM | February 02, 2009 at 05:14 PM
Hey Mark, we're having a Hole in the Wall Fox Tivo marathon this weekend if you want to come down.
Posted by: BrianTurner | February 02, 2009 at 05:15 PM
You're having a marathon watching of the hole in the wall where your Tivo used to be? Oh, I'm so there! If I can sit through "Berlin Alexanderplatz" I can sit through anything!
...oh, you mean that Fox game show with the hole in the wall. Oh...well I'll still come, but only if I can sit on you guys' new mattress!
Posted by: Mark Allen | February 02, 2009 at 05:26 PM
I once saw an exhibition here in Berlin, in Fassbinder, showing all the episodes, in "booths" looped over and over again. This allowed me to get an "overview" of the series in a short period of time. Intense, dark depressing, amazing and that was over 2 hours at most.
Who in God's name should subject themselves to anymore than 2 hours in one sitting?
You people are insane!
Posted by: krebstar | February 03, 2009 at 04:21 AM
Really, nothing beat seeing this on one weekend with the Museum of Modern Art's interactive audience in '97. "Shut up!" "No, YOU shut up!" Then Gunter Lamprecht and Gottfried John appeared in front of the screen at the end, which we all badly needed after that epilogue.
Posted by: Bill Weber | February 03, 2009 at 12:55 PM
A Berlin Alexanderplatz marathon is like injecting a mixture of sleeping pills and cocaine.
Oh shit I'm sorry -- that's how Fassbinder died.
I dare you to take on SATANTANGO and look forward to the resulting e-mail correspondence.
Posted by: SatanTango Challenge | February 03, 2009 at 10:46 PM
What's next? Hans Jurgen Syberberg or Jacques Rivette's Out One?
Posted by: Brian in Austin | February 06, 2009 at 11:21 AM