“I Only Want You To Love Me” (1976)
Shot for television and wearing the mark of limited funds and scope, Fassbinder’s docudrama centering on one man’s search for approval is no less effective than some of his strongest work. Peter is a young man desperate to provide for his wife and child, while also living up to the expectations of his parents, but, in a consistent streak of cruel irony, luck keeps leaving his side, as mounting debts and endless favors place him in one hole after another. Through it all, Peter repeats the title mantra, as a way of getting through the day, soon oblivious as to whom he’s actually speaking. The delicate balance of Peter’s everyday life naturally unravels through a spiral of bad decisions that prove fatal, all couched in an interview-framing device that puts a blackly humorous cap on his own existence. Though toned down from his usual work, Fassbinder is working in familiar territory, and the list of indignities allows for several bleak, eye-catching tableaux to be caught on film, in the service of a story about a man who can simply never find approval. [A-]
“In A Year Of 13 Moons” (1978)
Fassbinder must have loved Armin Meier dearly, because few directors would dare make a film that boils down to personal exorcism. A year with 13 moons spells trouble for protagonist Elvira (Volker Spengler), road tripping to reunite with Anton Saitz (Gottfried John). Anton funded Elvira’s sex change (she was once a butcher named Erwin, an intentional callback to Meier’s profession), but doesn’t want to accept the newly christened woman as anything other than Erwin. “In a Year of 13 Moons” is an endurance test, with several standout sequences, one set in a slaughterhouse and another an out-of-left-field dance sequence. Spengler is also compelling, expressing Elvira’s personal purgatory in which she is accepted by none of the people she desires and finds no peace from her struggles, just strife and hate. Whatever feelings Fassbinder had mixed in with his grief after Meier’s suicide, they are embedded in this film, notable for the director’s continued mastery over camera placement and perhaps an over-reliance on allegory. Like the best Fassbinder films, this one rewards the patient viewer and has gathered quite a loving cult 30 plus years after its inception. [B]
“The Marriage of Maria Braun” (1979)
The first in Fassbinder’s BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland) Trilogy, which deals with three different women making their way in a post-WWII Germany, the script went through several hands and drafts from Fassbinder’s original unrealized TV project “The Marriage of our Parents”. Fassbinder was already working on the script for the epic “Berlin Alexanderplatz” when shooting began on “The Marriage of Maria Braun” and he continued to shoot during the day and work all night on the script for his next project. Rumour has it to sustain this work schedule Fassbinder consumed large quantities of cocaine, and this was the main reason the film went over budget — Fassbinder’s biggest but still under a million USD. Of course this caused problems with his financiers, producers and crew, causing rifts in many of his long-term creative partnerships including those with cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and producer Michael Fengler. Making “The Marriage of Maria Braun” was probably not the greatest period in Fassbinder’s life, but the film turned out to be one of his most successful and fulfilled his desire to make a German equivalent of a Hollywood movie. Starring Hanna Schygulla as Maria (she won the Silver Bear for Best Actress in 1979), a woman whose relationship with her husband, Hermann is constantly thwarted by circumstance – or rather desire, pride and greed which inevitably leads to violence, cruelty and destruction. Fassbinder paints a picture of an insatiable and unfeeling Germany, its inhabitants (the survivors) are damaged goods, both morally and emotionally warped from their experiences. Like any good Hollywood film it ends with a big explosion – like any good Fassbinder film the meanings and motives behind it are open-ended. [A]
“Berlin Alexanderplatz” (1980)
Yes, we’ve seen it. Yes, all of it. Yes, it’s glacially slow in places, and admittedly hard work. And yes, it’s absolutely worth doing at some point in your life. Fassbinder’s 14-part, 930 minute made-for-TV (but theatrically released in the U.S.) epic has a fearsome reputation, entirely deserved (particularly the impenetrable, fitfully brilliant, occasionally eye-rolling epilogue), mostly because it’s arguably as close to a novel as cinema’s ever gotten. A straight translation of the plot would have been far shorter, but Fassbinder, a rabid fan of the 1929 source material (by Alfred Doblin), digresses and dwells, stretching and repeating tiny, intimate moments, with trademark long, unbroken takes, in a way that slowly brings you into the psyche of protagonist Franz Biberkopf (an astonishing performance by Gunter Lampretcht), and indeed, the psyche of a nation in turmoil (hindsight obviously gives Fassbinder permission to use Biberkopf as a metaphor for interwar Germany, adding up to arguably one of his most political films. And of course, it always feels like a Fassbinder film, particularly in his tinkering with his hero’s relationship with Reinhold (Gottfried John), which gains all kinds of homo-erotic undertones absent from the novel. More than anything, however, it’s a tragedy; an ex-convict, desperate to go straight, just can’t escape. An old story, to be sure, but one that’s never been told with as much detail. There are amazing moments throughout, and awful ones, none more so than in that epilogue, which sees Fassbinder essentially deconstruct (aided by Lou Reed and Kraftwerk tracks) the thirteen hours you’ve just sat through. It’s both infuriating and intoxicating, and a fitting capper to the whole whopping saga. File it with “War and Peace” and “Infinite Jest” as something to catch up on during a long holiday or prison sentence: you’ll certainly not regret it. [B]