548 - Berlin Alexanderplatz, Part 9, Germany, 1980. Dir. Werner Rainer Fassbinder.

Thursday, December 20, 2018

548 - Berlin Alexanderplatz, Part 9, Germany, 1980.  Dir. Werner Rainer Fassbinder.

About the Eternities Between the Many and the Few.

Eva explains to Franz why Mieze has chosen to go to work for him.  She wants her own career.  She wants to contribute to the relationship.  Franz is missing an arm, and there is little he can do.  She wants to lighten his burden.

Franz agrees with Eva.  He buys flowers for Mieze and takes them to her.  He finds her at work.  Out working.  Out on the street.

She sees him.  She crosses the street.  She runs to him, thrilled by the flowers.  Thrilled to see him.  They embrace.

Franz has an idea.  He tells Mieze he will see her that night.  He starts off as if on a mission.

Franz goes through the Red Light District and lets the man pitch him his story one more time.  The one about the Whore of Babylon.  Franz remains unmoved and counters with his own story.  He goes on his way.

Franz arrives at Reinhold's house.  Surprise.  What leads him there?  Reinhold is suspicious.  He is as surprised as we are.  Reinhold holds a gun on Franz.  But Franz insists he has not come to hurt Reinhold.  He convinces Reinhold.  Reinhold puts down his gun.

During the scene Reinhold expresses the opinion held by the National Socialists, that cripples are useless to society.  And may as well be eliminated.  The seeds of the coming Nazis are within him.

Reinhold wants Franz to stop appearing to be missing an arm.  He gets Franz to stop tucking in his right sleeve, and he tries stuffing Franz's sleeve.  Since it looks bad, he tells Franz to go have a professional do it.

In this episode Fassbinder twice shows the flashback of Franz and Ida, once with a voice-over narrator reading headlines from the news, the other with a voice-over dramatization of Abraham's taking of Isaac up Mount Moriah to sacrifice him.

One senses the influence of Soren Kierkegaard's Fear and Trembling (1843).

Franz attends a Socialist meeting but daydreams of Mieze.  Fassbinder cuts back and forth between the images of his daydream and his sitting in the seat of the meeting, manifesting his daydream in his face.

At the end of the meeting he argues with a man against Socialism.  Back with Herbert and Eva he argues in favor of Socialism.  He does not seem to understand fully what he is saying but repeats abstract ideas that he has heard as they roll around inside him.

Franz does not master complex theoretical political ideals.  He is a man of the flesh, living in his own world, attending to the people around him and to his own needs.

He observes, "I think it strange. . . . That it's possible to talk and think for and against the same thing at the same time."

"Yes, well, that's life."