Friday, May 26, 2006
TRIFECTA
We finished up the Fassbinder BRD* Trilogy today with
This one has us look at Nazi decadence after ten years of the BRD 'economic miracle'.
Voss was an actress favorite of Goebbels who hasn't had much of the miracle happen to her. With the end of the War, it has been all downhill. Now, she has a sizable morphine habit.
She is the victim of a Doctor who specializes in hooking rich people on the drug and taking their entire net worth in return.
This is all side by side with radio sounds with 50s music (all American, largely C&W) and news from the Adenauer government. More Fassbinder irony.
In the other two films, we saw one woman who had ridden the money wagon and emptied herself out (Braun). In the other, we saw an amoral woman who empties everyone else out (Lola).
Not a lot of enthusiasm here for the great economic recovery.
This one is black and white. It begins with Voss watching one of her pictures (featuring drug addiction) and a lot of this movie is filmed that way in the luxe style of the period. Some of the cinematography is stunning.
There are flashbacks that glitter with lights.
There is the grittiness of a newsroom where Voss' life is turned over and over as a news item or not. One reporter gets hooked on the woman and almost crosses over into fantasy land with her.
There are many of the Fassbinder stock company in the cast.
It is all very good and, unlike the other two, almost totally disturbing with virtually no humor of any kind.
Someone said it was like Mildred Pierce but it feels more like Sunset Boulevard.
And a feat of enormous accomplishment, despite the cold ironies throughout, there is not one second of 'camp' here.
What else?
I liked it. My fellow watcher did not.
I will give it a 5 out of Netflix5.
*Bundesrepublik Deutchsland
