552 - Berlin Alexanderplatz, Part 13, Germany, 1980. Dir. Werner Rainer Fassbinder.

Monday, December 24, 2018

552 - Berlin Alexanderplatz, Part 13, Germany, 1980.  Dir. Werner Rainer Fassbinder.

The Outside and the Inside and the Fear of the Secret.

Franz sits alone.

The aching man.

The sad clown.

He sits in his apartment in Mieze's stockings, in Mieze's lipstick, looking at his own sad face in the mirror.

He has searched for her.  Returned to their spot in the woods and called for her.  But has failed to find her.

His one great fear in life is that she would leave him.  This man can endure all manner of hardship.  The loss of his limb.  The betrayal of friends.  The instability of lovers and employment moving in and out of his life like rainwater.  Prison.  But this.  This one thing.  Is what will break him.

Not if she sleeps with other men.  He has adjusted to that.  Not if she goes with other men.  That one was more difficult to deal with, but he has adjusted to that as well.

No, the one thing he fears is that she will stop loving him and leave him.

He has the everlasting love of Eva.  The steadfast loyalty of Mrs. Bast.  The calm, quiet fidelity of his bartender Maxie.  And the occasional though unreliable friendship of a few men.

But nothing means the same to him as his need for the love of Mieze.  Without it, he is nothing.  With it, he is himself.  A man.  Alive.  As long as she loves him, he believes he will be okay.

He is not okay.  He sits.  Alone.  Afraid.  Confused.  Despondent.  Falling into the foreboding feeling that her love has left him lost.

He visits Reinhold.

Reinhold seems happy to see him.  It has been awhile.  Reinhold has been away.  He met a girl with "a lot of loot."  Why did you not send me a postcard?  Reinhold is not good at sending postcards.  He forgets to send them.  He forgets to whom to send them.  Implying that he forgot Franz.

Pums is there.  So are the others.  They are planning their next burglary.  Reinhold asks Franz to commit to vote with him before they enter the room.  Before Franz knows what they are rowing about.  Franz says, Sure.  Why not?  Always amenable.

They enter the room.  We stay with the dispute for awhile.  A Fassbinder frieze on the politics of economics, even among thieves.  Especially among thieves.  The scene reminds us of the scene between Eva and Mieze around the monkey cage, in that it is one that has been carefully choreographed with tight blocking among many men as well as the camera.

And in this scene the character Luders comes to the fore.  A bespectacled blonde who reeks of Aryan supremacy taking sides with Pums against the resistance.

Reinhold leads the charge in questioning Pums' authority.  Why is he in charge?  What is he hiding from us?  What is he getting out of our burglaries that we are not getting?

Pums has them burglarizing goods and not cash.  He owns businesses.  Fencing fronts.  Money laundering operations.  Maybe he is getting a cut from both ends.  From the stealing and the fencing.  How can this be fair?

Reinhold's complaints and his calls for "equal rights" hearken back to actor Gottfried John's role eight years before in Eight Hours Don't Make a Day (1972).  All along we have appreciated the range of John's acting.  He plays an earnest working family man in Eight Hours and the ruthless criminal Reinhold in Berlin.  Different characters.  Both convincing.  Both carrying the torch of Marxist leanings for Fassbinder.

With Franz's vote, the uprisers win the day and the next burglary occurs in the vault of a bank rather than at the fur factory as Pums has planned.  We watch the botched burglary as the men abandon the safe to the sound of sirens, trashing the place, setting it ablaze, and Meck burning his own hand with his blowtorch.

Meck comes to Franz to warn him.

Franz helps Meck bandage his hand as Meck explains.

Reinhold is not a good guy.  Reinhold is a bad guy.

Now I want to ask you something, dear reader, and please give me your answer.  If someone befriends you, and you find out later he did it to use you; if he then lures you into joining a criminal gang to put your life and freedom in jeopardy for his benefit; if he then tries to kill you by throwing you off a truck to be run over by a car; if he then plots to steal your wife and the great love of your life, do you need to be told that he is a bad guy?

Apparently, Franz needs to be told.

And even then, Franz does not listen.

"Meck, if there is one thing I cannot stand, it is people knocking Reinhold.  He is a good guy at heart, even if none of you can see it."

The narrator did tip us off a couple of episodes ago that Franz loves Reinhold.  Apparently the narrator was not joking.

Meck challenges Franz on who it is that cannot see.

"You are blind, Franz.  In both eyes."

Franz changes the subject.

Meck goes to Maxie alone in the bar, before the bar opens.  The chairs are stacked upside down on top of the tables.  Meck uses one hand to remove one chair and place it on the floor to sit on.  With his bandaged hand, Meck now functions like Franz, the one-handed man.

Meck has come to Maxie for advice.  Maxie has been the moral voice of the group from the beginning.  He says he is no lawyer, but he will do his best to help Meck.

Meck wants to know what to do if he, say, for example, helped a friend bury a body.  Not as an accessory but as a friend.  Say he just showed up and found his friend and the body, and the friend needed his assistance.  Say he knew nothing of it beforehand and had nothing to gain from helping do it.  And say he helped bury it not to help his friend escape the law but simply out of friendship.  Could he be held liable?

"I had nothing to do with it.  I did not stand to gain from it either."

Maxie thinks it through thoughtfully, logically.  He advises Meck to the best of his ability.

Meck decides to report it to the police.  And in movie world, he is not considered an accessory but a witness.

And we see who it is.  And how it was disposed.

Eva comes to see Franz.  Mrs. Bast lets her in.  She brings the newspaper.

The women do not know that Franz does not know.  Franz is on the cover.  He has made the headlines.

Prostitute Murdered in Freienwalde.

Eva hands the paper to Franz.  It takes him a very long time to process what he sees.  That Mieze is dead.  That Mieze has been murdered.  That Reinhold did it.  That the authorities suspect Franz of having done it.  That Franz is a suspect and may return to prison even though he knows nothing about it.

The knowledge slowly creeps over Franz.

And he understands just one thing from the news.

Mieze did not leave him.

The relief outweighs the grief.  At least in the beginning.

Mieze did not leave him.

Knowing that means he can live again.

The rest are details.

As we see Franz's realization that Mieze did not leave him, we also see Eva's and Mrs. Bast's realization that Franz was uninvolved in and unaware of Mieze's murder.

But just as we try to move into what relief this knowledge gives us in the midst of the grief, Franz, in his trance-like state, perhaps aware, perhaps not aware, takes the canary from the cage--the one that Mieze gave him when they first met, which made him so happy--and holds it in his hand, and starts to, and starts to, and starts to, and finally does, he crushes it.

Really, Franz?  Really, Fassbinder?  Does every moment have to be marred?

Apparently, for Fassbinder, for Franz, for Berlin Alexanderplatz, it does.

Herbert has arrived, and stupidly he tries to blame Franz for Mieze's death.  If only you had . . . etc.  But Franz is not biting.  He rejects Herbert's insinuations.

Herbert informs us that the police will have Reinhold captured within half an hour.

And Franz informs us of something else.

"Hands off him, Herbert.  He is not yours.  He belongs to me."

Franz stands behind the bird cage.  Caged.

And with that, the film closes.

"Franz Bieberkopf has reached the end of his mortal path.
The time has come to break him.
The man is finished."