547 - Berlin Alexanderplatz, Part 8, Germany, 1980. Dir. Werner Rainer Fassbinder.

Wednesday, December 19, 2018

547 - Berlin Alexanderplatz, Part 8, Germany, 1980.  Dir. Werner Rainer Fassbinder.

The Sun Warms the Skin, but It Burns Sometimes Too.

With this episode Fassbinder gives us two extremes of Franz Bieberkopf, extremes that are so apart from one another that they hardly seem to be the same person.

He has been doing this all along, but this one pushes it to its limits.

We already know the Franz who has the capacity to be a pimp, to mistreat women, to have killed one of them, to have raped another, to have sold pornography and Nazi propaganda to make a living, and to have consorted with violent thieves.  He has paid the price for it, gone to jail for four years, lost his right arm, struggled to find employment, and wrestled with hallucinations and mental illness.

We have also met the Franz who is a great pal, who takes life as it comes, who loves life, lives a big life, loves laughter, refuses to snitch on others, who wants to work, who refuses to allow another woman to work for him, and who seeks with all his might to go straight and to live a good and decent life now.

(If only he had paid a little more attention at that Salvation Army meeting.)

Now we will watch Franz on the one hand turn back to a life of crime and laugh at the misfortunes of others while on the other hand fall in love and become like a little child--an almost innocent one.

How can these two men be the same man?

Franz returns to his bar, the one with the sparkling lights, and the bartender is happy to see him.  Except that when Franz reads a news article about a tragic story--a man whose wife commits suicide and who himself drowns his three children--he laughs.  He finds it amusing.  The bartender is horrified.  We are horrified.  Who is this man with such a hard heart, and why are we still being asked to pull for him?  Why must we be subject to having such a person as our protagonist?  What is wrong with this world and this film and this man?

When the bartender protests, Franz doubles down.  He claims the man understood the truth about the world, and good for him.  Have we ever seen such cynicism in film?  When the bartender replies that the man is now locked up in jail, without his family and without his freedom, Franz asserts that he now has a roof over his head and better meals to eat than he had outside.  And we remember that this film began with Franz's being released from prison and not wanting to leave.  He had found security in the order and stability that prison provided him, and he was terrified of the uncertainty of the world outside.  He seems to think that this man is lucky for getting locked up and having order and stability thrust upon him.

And now here come Eva and Herbert, Franz's unusual family, with Mrs. Brast the landlady letting them in.  Frankly, she is a part of his strange family as well, as she has always stood by him and still does.  She held his apartment for him during the four years he was away, even after having walked in on him while he was in the midst of killing his own girlfriend.  And she supports him through the parade of all his paramours in the days after his release.  Such loyalty.

And here Eva, who used to date Franz and work for him, and who still loves him, and Herbert, whom she now dates and for whom she now works.  Eva has found someone for Franz, and she has brought her to him.  Eva loves Franz so much that she will find him a girlfriend.  She has her waiting outside, and one wave of the arm out the window will bring her up to the apartment.

Eva gives Franz a couple of opportunities to say Yes but then waves her up anyway before he decides.

Her real name is Emilie but she goes by Sonja.  He renames her Marie but he calls her Mieze.

What's in a name?

Fassbinder then takes us into a whole new world.

The locations change.  We leave the city and go to the countryside.  The color palette changes.  We leave the sepia-drenched earthtones and open up to more colors, and brightness, and white.  The music changes.  Becomes Romantic.  Nurtures our wistfulness.  The narrator describes Mieze's tenderness, her gentleness, her kindness, her decency, her love.  And then we see it played out before us.  Oh, to have someone like that in our lives.  Someone to love us.  Someone to love.  So that we are no longer alone.

Franz becomes childlike in her presence.  He takes her out in a rowboat, rowing for her with only one arm, switching oars back and forth with his left arm, his weak arm.  They play hide-and-seek in the woods.  She runs to him when he falls.  They listen to music together.  She buys him a canary.

If you have a short enough memory and forget all that Franz has ever done before, and if you focus on these scenes alone, you will find yourself watching a sweet man in love with a sweet girl, the two of them swept up in romantic bliss.  All the problems of the world have disappeared into some other place, and all they know is the happiness and joy of being together.  Have we been transported into a Charlie Chaplin climax?  Have we gone Hollywood?  Oh, please stay here, Franz.  Please stay with her.  Do not ever go back to the city, to the Alexanderplatz, to the underworld.  Stay here in this Eden garden with this idyllic Eve.

It is in these moments that Fassbinder seeks to lull you into falling for Franz's charm.  Like so many others in the movie itself.  The women--Mrs. Bast, Eva, Ida, Minna, Lina, Cilly, not Trude though she would have if he had tried, and Mieze.  The men--Nahum, Meck, Reinhold, Herbert, Bruno, not Pums as he is above all that, and Willy.

Wait.  Who is Willy?

Well, then, that is the problem, now, is it not?

We ended the last episode with Willy, and here he is again.  Please go away, Willy.  Please leave Franz alone.  Let him go straight.  Let him love and be loved and become a good person.

In the last episode Franz called Willy over.  Franz needed work.  It is hard to find a job when you are missing an arm.  Especially your dominant arm.  Your right arm when you are right-handed.  Leaving your left arm when you are not left-handed.  Can you find some work for me?

Maybe Willy can.

Frankly, Franz can function as a fence.  A surreptitious seller of stolen spoils.

Franz accepts.  After all, how many of his jobs have been on the up-and-up anyway?  More often than not, they have been on the up, up, and away.

It is just that in all of his romantic reverie he forgot to show up to work next day.

So Willy comes to call.

Franz is playing with his new canary.  His pet bird.  A living thing trapped in a cage as he was for four years in Tegel prison.  As he is now in life.  And as he ever will be, we presume, from watching him and from following the logic of the plotline and his character choices.

Can I count on you?

Franz is hardly paying attention to Willy.  He is too enraptured with his bird, which is an expression of how much Mieze loves him and how much he loves her.  O sing, sweet canary!

Yeah, yeah.  Sure, sure.  You can count on me.

Why did he not say, No?  I am sorry, Willy.  You cannot count on me.  I have found a new love in my life.  I am living this life of love.  I am leaving this life of crime.  You can trust me.  I will never snitch on you.  I never have--on anybody--and I never will.

No.  Franz does not say that.  He says, Yes.  Yes, Willy.  You can count on me.  I will be there tomorrow.

How much would you like to bet that tomorrow, in our next episode tomorrow, he will not be there.  He will be with Mieze.  Forgetting his appointment with crime.  As he should.  And standing up Willy.  Again.  And making Willy just a little bit angry.

Something in us predicts that things are not going to go the way Franz wants them to.

But before tomorrow, there is still today.  And today Mieze gets a love letter in the mail.  Delivered by Mrs. Bast.  Always reliable.

Franz opens it.

And reads it.

And rages.

Over what he reads.

Mieze has a love letter?  Mieze has a lover?

Franz grows jealous.

But Franz is stupid.  He was a pimp.  His top employee still loves him.  She still works for another.  She has found him a girlfriend.  From where, do you think?  She told him she found her on the street.

Franz runs to Eva.  Can you believe this?  Mieze got a love letter.

Eva still loves Franz.  Herbert is out of town.  She wants . . . She . . . They . . . Well, you know.

All the while Franz is angry with Mieze.  Bless his heart.

The narrator tells a story--in deadpan monotone--of how Franz helped rescue a trapped horse and return it to its owner--something noble and good and for which he was received as a hero--while the images show a flashback to that moment, which is our third time to witness, when he lost his temper with Ida, and Mrs. Bast walked in on them, as he was doing things, that led to his incarceration.

Lord, have mercy.

Eva goes to Mieze to confront her about the letter.  Mieze laughs.  She says it means nothing.  He was a client.  She has no feelings for him.  Eva goes to Franz to explain it.  It is the first time he realizes Mieze is working.  Working for him.  Working for them.  To provide for them.  As if his fencing of  stolen goods is not enough.  Him in his new suit and his new apartment furnishings.

And if you have read it, you may remember The Jungle by Upton Sinclair, and what the wife did to provide money for her family.  Driven by desperation.  By practical necessity.  And in her mind, by love of family.  And how the husband responded to it when he found out.

Franz and Mieze are together.  But things are different between them.

And one senses that they will never be the same again.