Movie Review: I'm Your Man (2021)

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A tall, kind, supportive, handsome, dark-haired man with a British accent who looks at the woman that he's with with puppy dog levels of adoration, if Tom (Dan Stevens) seems like the perfect man, that's because he is…for the most part. Unfortunately, however, what he isn't is a man.

A humanoid robot designed to be one hundred percent compatible with Alma (Maren Eggert), a Pergamon Museum academic who has agreed to evaluate Tom for a three week period in order to fund and further her own research into ancient cuneiform writing, although their prospective relationship seems like a joke to the deeply uncomfortable Alma, Tom takes his romantic mission deadly seriously.

From being startled when she gives him his own bedroom instead of sharing a bed with him to being hurt when she's too busy to indulge in a romantic brunch he whipped up for her the next morning, just like we all learn and adapt to our own partners over the years, Tom does as well. Not allowed to tell others that he's a robot, an embarrassed Alma deposits him in a cafe by her work the next day and, just like the metaphorical puppy dog he resembles following his “master” around, Tom happily stands outside in the rain once the business closes and waits for her to return.



Humanistic and true, despite the fact that it deals in the artificiality of technology, acclaimed actress turned director Maria Schrader's German film “I'm Your Man” – which she co-wrote with Jan Schomburg, based on a short story by Emma Braslavsky – begins as a gentle comedy of manners and errors. But, aided immensely by the chemistry of our leads and the fact that the delightful Stevens never once slips and plays Tom with a wink instead of absolutely straight, the film soon modulates into a melancholic, timely meditation of the importance of human affection and connection and a study of loneliness in contemporary society.

Embodied extraordinarily well by Eggert (in a difficult balance of vulnerability and strength throughout), the more we learn about Alma, including the source of her pain and the reason why she's put up so many walls, the more we understand how hard it is for her to knock them down for someone – anyone – let alone a robot programmed to be her dream beau.

Choosing, as we all do, which people we're willing to let into our weird little worlds, Alma is a woman who's been burned in the past. Furthermore, the screenwriters' decision for the film's tech firm to bring to life a mate who, through no fault of “his” own, calls up the mental picture of someone Alma loved when her life was much simpler and everything was in front of her both professionally and personally, makes “I'm Your Man” resonate on a deeper, more universal level than one would assume going in.

While on the lighter side of philosophical, it nonetheless raises valid questions about how relationships build or disintegrate over time as our needs change and how we all walk around with different levels of trauma. Yet Schrader's movie has far less in common with other films about romantic robot surrogates like Steven Spielberg's Kubrickian “A.I. Artificial Intelligence,” than it does with either mythology or George Bernard Shaw's “Pygmalion” (and its musical counterpart “My Fair Lady”).

A critical hit overseas, especially in its native Germany where lead actress Maren Eggert won the first-ever gender-neutral Silver Bear acting prize at the Berlin International Film Festival, although the ending of “I'm Your Man” comes off as abrupt and a bit tonally dissonant with respect to the rest of the film's harmony, it's still a wholly impressive foreign import overall.

Befitting of the phrase “and now for something completely different,” while the tendency would be in America to play the whole thing for laughs, there's something far more refreshing and earnest about Schrader's approach. Following Tom's lead, as you view “I'm Your Man,” it gazes right back at you with interest, hoping that – if you look closely enough – you'll catch not only a flicker of recognition but your whole self reflected back at you as you watch.


Text ©2021, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Movie Review: Three Peaks (2017)

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You know how it goes. You meet someone and you get a crush. You start dating, you find out they have kids, and suddenly your attraction to them moves beyond all the superficial stuff. You see them together and get a glimpse at what real life with them might look like instead of the best behavior version of you both that you put on for dates.

You meet the kid(s) and hope they're as crazy about you as you are about them. You begin spending time at their house — it's easier, after all, for them — and maybe move in. Things go well at first. Every night's a slumber party until the power games start and then suddenly it's not. They take up residence in your bed and your relationship suffers as they test your limits in a mildly annoying way that could escalate if you lose your cool and handle it wrong. You're on icy terrain and you start to slip. It's harder for you if you fall; if it ends, you lose at least two and they're only out one.

And while for you it means a break-up, in Three Peaks, it could cost Aaron (Alexander Fehling) much more — a limb perhaps or maybe his life. Wanting to remedy this problem and find better footing before an avalanche, Aaron takes Lea (Bérénice Bejo), his beautiful girlfriend of two years and her eight-year-old son Tristan (Arian Montgomery) on vacation to the Italian Dolomites.

Patiently teaching Tristan to hold his breath and swim in an opening scene that comes full circle in Three Peaks later on, shortly after they journey up to a cabin nearer to the peaks, Aaron begins to feel like they've forged a stronger connection. However, when Tristan goes from calling Aaron dad — which in itself weirdly freaks out his mom — to talking to his actual dad nonstop on a cell phone he's given him in secret, we realize that Aaron's breakthrough with the boy is short lived.

Emotions ping-ponging all over the place, though the two have their moments, Tristan acts out, habitually sleeping in their bed to usurp his mom for himself (and kill any chance for romance) before seeing what happens when he grabs Aaron's hand saw and places it across the man's arm.

An unsettling and provocative domestic thriller — hot off the festival circuit — in cinematographer turned writer-director Jan Zabeil's sophomore feature film, he drops us right into the heart of the discomfort to make us an honorary member of this small makeshift family.

Empathizing the most with Aaron, it's through his eyes that we see most of the conversations between Lea and her son as well as Tristan's manipulation of his mother play out. In a critical scene that speaks volumes for its honesty no matter how much it might hurt, Aaron tells the woman he loves that there are moments when he feels so close to Tristan and others where he feels like the boy's suffocating Lea and wishes he that he wasn't there at all.

Needless to say, it's a two way street. And while this sentiment is undoubtedly shared by the boy too young to articulate it in any of the three languages that he speaks, Zabeil also lets it reverberate off of the awesome yet daunting landscape of the Dolomites that — much like a new member of the family — lets you get only so close to it before it pushes you away.

A favorite technique of the filmmaker, Jan Zabeil previously employed nature as a vital backdrop in his acclaimed 2011 debut effort, The River Used to Be a Man. Addressing this in a director's statement in the Peaks press notes, he reveals his love of using the external to symbolize internal emotions and shares his belief that "away from the securities of the civilized world, my characters become less deliberate, more emotionally truthful and are likely to lose control over their actions."

Making the metaphorical link to the environment a dangerously literal one in Peaks, this is precisely what happens in the film's third act when Zabeil moves what had thus far been a domestic drama firmly into nail-biting thriller territory. It's a gamble that works well initially but doesn't quite pay off. While the emotional build-up was always going to erupt, even after Three Peaks takes its first deadly turn (sans hand saw), Zabeil seems hesitant to go along, waiting until the desperate final minutes of the film to fully commit to the new, darkly suspenseful tone.

Nonetheless a highly compelling endeavor, Three Peaks boasts superb cinematography by talented lensman Axel Schneppat and knock-out turns by newcomer Montgomery as Tristan and Fehling as Aaron. Unfortunately, as her character hems and haws and changes her mind almost as much as her young son, it saddles the usually impressive Bérénice Bejo with an underdeveloped role.

Still mostly effective, the work is sure to keep you riveted . . . even if it might just scare you off the next potential mate you meet with kids as, no matter how many times you've lived the first part of this plotline before, trust me, when it comes to Three Peaks, you don't know how this story goes.


Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review: The Merchant of Four Seasons (1971)

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With the 1971 release of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder's career-changing satirical Sirkian soap The Merchant of Four Seasons, he achieved his cinematic goal "to make Hollywood films in Germany."

Yet whereas Douglas Sirk's most famous '50s tear-jerkers shone exceptionally bright thanks to Jack Cardiff's romantically lush color cinematography, in Fassbinder's tragic Merchant, lensed by Dietrich Lohmann, even traditionally vibrant, primarily colors like red and yellow look as muted as the overwhelmingly gray palette of a gritty black-and-white work of Depression era realism.

An aesthetic choice he would return to again and again in his enviably prolific career, while it could be considered pretentious in lesser hands, in The Merchant of Four Seasons, it's perfectly suited to the tone of the film, which zeroes in on the pervasive struggles of everyday life.

While simple and straightforward on the surface, once we begin peeling back the layers of Fassbinder's crossover hit, we're bound to appreciate the filmmaker’s rich attention to detail on display.

Grounded by classical framing and bursting with Hollywood homage, the watershed work plays like a filmic mixtape of the Fassbender's favorites.

Relishing the opportunity to champion his exceptional taste as well as the humanistic parallels he's drawing between the titles — regardless of medium and methodology — in addition to honoring Freud and Ozu, in Merchant of Four Seasons, the filmmaker pays special attention to the Bard.

Beyond the overt titular allusion to Shakespeare's Merchant of Venice, Fassbinder reminds us that, much like those tragicomic heroes and villains who can live for love or die of a broken heart, his characters too carry the weight of the world on their backs.

Less romantic than it is angry, Fassbinder's 1950s set Four Seasons centers on a restless veteran who's chronically dissatisfied by society and his surroundings.

Fired from his job as a police officer for succumbing to the temptations of a prostitute under his arrest, although Hans Epp (Hans Hirschmuller) used to make a living putting lawbreakers behind bars, the tables have since been turned as it's now Hans who feels imprisoned by his lot in life selling fruit in the streets on a pushcart.

Just one of a handful of women whom we as viewers realize that the misogynistic Hans feels are responsible for his downfall, starting first and (most appropriately Freudian) foremost with his headstrong mother, the frustrated fruit merchant finds himself unable to let go of past hopes, loves, tragedies, and regrets.

A master of self-sabotage, rather than accept any responsibility for the role he's played in his own misery, Hans takes his anger out on his wife instead, thus setting in motion his own downfall.

Though undeniably fascinated by the emotional lives of his own characters, throughout the film Rainer Werner Fassbinder keeps the viewer at an arm's length, never digging deeply enough into the storyline for us to truly empathize with the people populating Merchant's muted yet intriguing world.

And nowhere is this disconnect better epitomized than in a completely illogical sequence when we watch our "heroine" go from witnessing a heart attack to having an impulsive sexual fling.

Immediately questioning both Hans as well as the filmmaker's own misogyny, which intellectually pulls us out of the movie, not only is this scene completely incongruous to everything we'd seen earlier, it also makes us wonder if vital plot points had been left on the cutting room floor when Merchant was edited together nearly fifty years ago.

An erratic yet vital early effort from Fassbinder, aside from the hiccups in plot, Merchant nonetheless remains a topical and timeless early '70s import that, despite being set roughly twenty years earlier, taps right into the same antihero heavy American fare of the era.

Offering a new angle on the Vietnam era alienation of the 1970s as well as the existential yearning of its original post-WWII setting, the way that Fassbinder's Shakespearean tinged tragedy works well for numerous ages and time periods is one of the most beguiling things about Four Seasons.

Flawed yet fearless filmmaking which has been given a dynamic restoration by the Criterion Collection, the deceptively simple eighty-eight minute movie marked a pivotal change for the typically fast Fassbinder to slow things down and make a more methodical picture this time around.

Seemingly at war with himself to keep the work short while simultaneously squeezing in as much information as possible (perhaps subconsciously), Fassbinder seasons the script with observations by passersby and relatives who hint at plot points that might've enriched the film even further before vanishing from sight. Ultimately this keeps us from getting as emotionally invested in in The Merchant's plight as we could've been.

Yet unlike Hans, with the release of his masterpiece Ali: Fear Eats the Soul just three years later, Fassbinder proved he was able to learn from the past and make a vital change, crafting something beyond a "Hollywood film in Germany" and establishing instead the type of filmmaking that would become synonymous with his name.


Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement Movie Review: Styx (2018)

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When asked by Don Cheadle's Hotel Rwanda protagonist Paul Rusesabagina how people can "not intervene when they witness such atrocities," Joaquin Phoenix's cynical realist Jack gives it to him straight, telling him, "I think if people see this footage they'll say, 'oh my God that's horrible,' and then go on eating their dinners."

Exploring the phenomenon "of western indifference in the face of marginalized suffering," in what the press notes accurately describe as "a modern-day parable," Austrian born director Wolfgang Fischer fell back on the two subjects he'd studied before film school of psychology and painting for the urgent, topical, nerve jangling humanitarian thriller Styx.

Named after the river that separates the living from the dead in mythology and oozing with Darwinist references and symbolism, Fischer's feature about a German emergency room doctor who comes across a sinking fishing trawler overflowing with refugees on her voyage to Ascension Island is a damning indictment of moral apathy and hypocrisy.

Having taken a Hippocratic Oath to save lives, which she does on land back in Germany — running towards a car crash near the beginning of the movie — it's in Rieke's (a fierce Susanne Wolff) nature to do the same once again as she watches people abandon the slowly sinking vessel in shock.

Told by the coast guard to keep her distance in order to avoid putting herself at risk, Rieke fights the urge to disobey, which becomes that much stronger when a teenage boy makes his way across the Atlantic Ocean onto her small boat, the Asa Gray. Saving his life while waiting for someone — anyone — to intervene, the situation grows more dire with time.

Taking what in the hands of most filmmakers would've been a story about survival against the sharks, elements, and odds a la Jaws, Open Water, or even — its closest thematic relative — All is Lost, in Styx, Fischer dares to play against expectations. Embracing the internal existential horror that the villain and hero of the film is mankind itself, Rieke's call to action is a call to all of us to act as well.

Having developed what cinematographer Benedict Neuenfels describes as, "special equipment to maneuver and stabilize the camera," over years of preparation to make what is largely a silent film, the technically stunning work — shot near Malta with an eight person crew — is anchored by a decisive yet vulnerable turn by certified blue water sailor and actress Susanne Wolff.

A thinking person's survival drama, Styx plunges you right into the heart of a desperate situation alongside our lead. Yet while Fischer clearly loves symbolism both in terms of Reike's Darwinist journey and the film's use of subtle contrasts, there are times when alternating points-of-view or giving us a longer, earlier look at the trawler in distress might've strengthened the emotional core of the otherwise gripping narrative.

Clearly the type of film you'll want to discuss afterward, fresh off the festival circuit, this tense, terse award winner sails into theaters this week from Film Movement.

Text ©2019, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information in order to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

Film Movement Movie Review: Bye Bye Germany (2018)

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A film about storytelling and all the ways that fact and fiction have the ability to mingle together for justification, in jest, or just to help us all get by, Bye Bye Germany zeroes in on a group of German Jews at a 1946 US Displaced Persons Camp in Frankfurt.

Helping to establish its tone as halfway between darkly comedic and bittersweet, although it's based upon two novels by Michael Bergmann (which the author adapted alongside the picture’s director Sam Garbarski), Germany begins with a tongue-in-cheek Coen Brothers style disclaimer that the film “is a true story and what isn't entirely true is nevertheless correct.”

Much like the deliberate, rock-a-bye gait of the three-legged dog Motek – who seems to serve both as a motif and the first image we see – Germany's characters can't move fast enough to outrun the past.

Haunted by the horrors of the war with each step forward that they take, the film's main characters are eager to do whatever they can to get the hell out of not only the displaced persons camp but Germany in general.

And hoping to get his papers in order and save for his new life in America like his friends and neighbors, David Bermann (Run Lola Run's Moritz Bleibtreu) is stopped by US Army investigator Sara Simon (Man of Steel's Antje Traue) after she notices a number of irregularities in government documents concerning how frequently his name appears in SS files.

Joking that he was “always on time” to the concentration camp as one reason why, David quickly realizes that he can't joke his way out of this one. Determined to clear up any misconceptions that he was working against his own people as some sort of Nazi collaborator, David sits for a series of private interrogations with the attractive American official – spinning a colorful web that Sara Simon as well as the viewer aren't quite sure we can fully accept, no matter how beautifully entertaining it is.

Wildly charismatic, quick-witted, and a natural leader, while we don't want to believe the worst about Bleibtreu's David during the war, our familiarity with David after the war peddling linens to Germans along with a small group of friends he'd recruited in order to (at least) double their savings for the new world make us question his sincerity right from the start.

Relying on small time Paper Moon style cons to move as much linen as possible by telling each customer what they want to hear, soon enough David finds himself working overtime to keep his secrets hidden in order to prevent his friends from finding out about the investigation and vice versa.

David's plight becomes twice as dangerous when he gets involved in a revenge mission much riskier than just going after German citizens' wallets after he and the guys encounter a suspected SS officer hiding in plain sight.

Utilizing a powerful change of scenery to disrupt the static nature of flashback interrogations as David decides to show Sara an important piece of his past firsthand, Garbarski and Bergmann know precisely how much information to dole out to viewers and when.

One of the strongest Film Movement releases in recent memory along with In Between, this touching, surprisingly funny, and exceptionally humanistic feature is sure to appeal to fans of the Oscar winning foreign film, The Counterfeiters.

Effectively playing upon multiple emotions – sometimes numerous times within the same scene – Bye Bye Germany uses everything from clever motifs to gentle, compassionate humor to break through its moments of tragedy.

Whether Germany moves back or forth to make a verbal point in jest or a symbolic one just to get by, Garbarski’s thesis on the important role that stories play in our lives is more than justified.

Text ©2018, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Criterion Collection Blu-ray Review – Ali: Fear Eats the Soul (1974)

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What’s a Sirkian love story doing in a place like this? Based mostly on the plotline of All That Heaven Allows with additional allusions to characters and themes from director Douglas Sirk’s other successfully sudsy ‘50s melodramas (including the racial and sociological implications of Imitation of Life in particular), Ali's ingenious blend of old and new put its helmer Rainer Werner Fassbinder on the global cinema map.

However, the film marked a sharp turn from the much edgier Godard inspired political experimentation utilized in Fassbinder’s earlier fare which helped give rise to the New German Cinema ‘70s movement ushered in by the prolific filmmaker and his likeminded colleagues.

Adhering to Sirkian tradition, a lonely woman is at the heart of Fassbinder’s Ali – coming in out of the rain to take shelter in a bar populated by foreign workers of Arab descent who spend their evenings listening to the comforting sound of home epitomized by imported records blaring the songs they grew up with from an old-fashioned jukebox.

With a stormy night providing the right atmosphere for romance, Fassbinder fights against the natural tendencies to play up the rain for swoon-worthy temptation. No, intriguingly in Fassbinder’s film, it’s the woman who winds up serving the part of the human umbrella despite appearing onscreen in need of one in a gender role reversal that would never have been considered in Sirk’s pre-sexual revolution studio days of '50s Hollywood.

After a few of the bar’s regulars jokingly goad the handsome, hardworking titular character Ali (played by El Hedi ben Salem) to ask the "old woman" embodied by Brigitte Mira to dance, she eagerly – if cautiously – accepts.

And before long, the regulars realize that the true joke is on them as a simple dance flows into surprisingly easy conversation – the melodic rhythm of which takes over for the records spinning in the jukebox as it becomes the real-life soundtrack of two unlikely strangers falling in love.

After the Moroccan native does the gentlemanly thing and walks the much older widow home to her door, it’s Mira’s turn to give him shelter from the storm. Via a subtle segue that comes out so naturally it seems to even surprise herself, Mira's Emmi offers him first a drink and then impulsively a room for the night.

As the implications of the proposition begin to take shape romantically, Mira transforms from a pitiable prospect used for the amusement of strangers into the umbrella-like protector of the equally lonely man.

Yet what in Hollywood might have provided the makings of a My Man Godfrey like love story infused with laughter instead finds the two bonding from a humanistic place —seeing in one another a fellow outsider that’s been not only neglected but treated callously on levels that they might not be able to imagine but can definitely understand.

Dubbed "Ali" by racist German locals who just assume all foreigners have the same name – whereas the man’s been dehumanized by strangers, the elderly woman has been similarly mistreated by those she knows.

Ignored by her grown children unless there’s something they need, Mira’s characterization as a forgotten widow plays like something out of Ozu’s Tokyo Story – until that is – Fassbinder puts a sociological spin on his heroine as well.

Giving her a status as both a cleaning woman and wife of a now-deceased foreign husband who’d left her with his very Polish last name, Mira’s kindhearted, headstrong widow Emmi is looked down on as something non-Germanic by neighbors who view her with almost as much suspicion and disdain as they do her new live in Arab lover the very first time he walks down the hall.

Yet as much as it centers on Emmi, Fassbinder has a much tighter focus on the male character whom the filmmaker dares to follow into the most surprising of places as – after the second stage of boy gets girl finds the boy losing the girl – Fassbinder decides to bring us on a journey to the bed of another woman.

Hurt after too much conflict builds up between the two characters and blows sky high, Ali retreats from Emmi and finds solace in the arms of a metaphorically old (yet literally much younger than Emmi) flame.

Nonetheless trusting his audience to see the leads as fully complex people, Fassbinder’s risk pays off as we see both characters at their worst and best in order to better appreciate the moments of sunlight that exists in between the many storms – from the one that brought them together to the one that threatens to tear them apart.

Painting a daring canvas of an interracial multigenerational romance and the many double standards of gender inequities and hypocrisies that are woven within, although Ali could be set anywhere – in the post-WWII backdrop of Fassbinder’s portrait – we’re reminded through symbols, images, songs and all of the other elements at his disposal that people will always find a reason to hate what they fear.

And sure enough, those who inhabit Fear’s crowded frames find themselves pinned in a corner because they’re unable or unwilling to see – not the forest for the trees – but the individual people in their line of sight for the many labels they’ve applied to them.

Not understanding that the best answer to fear is love and finding someone you can wait out the storm with regardless of the weather, Fassbinder’s beautifully conflicted, existentially complicated yet elegantly simple humanistic search of his country’s Soul has been given a tremendously vibrant docudrama level transfer to Criterion Blu-ray.

Although it's infused with a variety of revealing bonus features that offer new insight into this contemporary classic including a BBC produced documentary about the New German Cinema movement, an interview with Mira as well as director Todd Haynes who paid homage to Sirk’s Heaven and Fassbinder’s Ali in his breathtaking Far From Heaven, one of the most fascinating extras is a mere two minutes long.

A clip from Fassbinder’s 1970 black and white film The American Soldier, the pivotal extra features actress and fellow New German filmmaker Margarethe von Trotta telling a story in character that would go onto inspire the melodramatic Ali.

While the fates of his characters deviate greatly between the two pictures, it shows writers what a difference just four years can make — particularly for someone with as voracious of an appetite for storytelling, art, and film as Fassbinder possessed.

Similar to the way that each new experience in art or life nourished his soul, he set out to do the same for his viewers by serving them a new variation of a Sirk staple the likes of which they hadn’t seen before.

And unlike the May/December relationships on display in the first rate American comedies The Graduate and Harold and Maude that played their material for laughs (while repeating that it’s better to be free than worried about you and me), Ali started where the thesis of those films stopped.

Employing greater extremes in everything from character to concept, he worked into his narrative questions of race, class, and gender which he presented while using an entirely different perspective and tone.

Daring to deviate from the modus operandi of the Me Decade, Fassbinder used a we mindset in Ali while asking us how free we (in fact) were to be you and me if culturally – instead of celebrating two together – we were being pushed apart and forced to choose between one or the other instead of the much more powerful and purposeful “we."

Text ©2014, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Movie Review: The Baader Meinhof Complex (2009)

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While I'll never be able to recall all of the bizarre information I crammed into my brain to try and ace tests in college, to this date there are still two distinct queries from academic exams that I know I will never forget. The questions were posed in two very different courses at two very different institutions of higher learning geographically located in opposite sides of the country from two very different instructors. Yet the most important thing that the inquiries had in common was that the answer necessitated us to create a seemingly impossible definition for two very different terms—namely the concepts of “normal” and “art.”

While it’s easy to throw around phrases like “that’s not normal” in judging another person's behavior or ridiculing objects in museums as the opposite of “art,” when you get right down to actually defining what both of those ideas mean, it’s nearly impossible to do so in a way that would go beyond the most basic dictionary terminology. Yet, both of these questions plague us on a daily basis as we go about our lives whether we face someone whose actions we’re unable to understand on the evening news or when assessing the moral and ethical implications surrounding art that we judge without even realizing it.

However, for audience members taking in Uli Edel’s Oscar nominated film The Baader Meinhof Complex as it opens in limited release on 8/21 before expanding nationwide—it’s precisely these two questions, either combined or separately that will haunt you both while the 150 minute work plays and after the final credits roll.

Obviously anytime a person takes the step from creating something to then sharing it with others (one possible definition of art), they open themselves up for the harshest of criticism and this is especially true for filmmakers. However, it’s all the more controversial if you’re making a historical work about terrorists from the point-of-view of the terrorists. And such is the case for Edel’s endlessly complicated, morally and ethically loaded, and naturally provocative Complex.

Edel’s movie was one of the five nominated global works that was selected for inclusion in the Academy Awards’ Best Foreign Film Category. And although Japan’s Departures ended up taking the statue—similar to the brave and politically charged yet superior Waltz With Bashir-- Germany’s startling and controversial submission uses subject matter that hasn’t been fully explored in the United States aside from Stefan Aust’s definitive nonfiction book which was used as the film’s source.

To be fair, however initially I felt that Edel’s film that chronicled a decade of tumultuous anarchic revolution by the group dubbed Red Army Faction from 1967 to what was deemed “The German Autumn” of 1977 was perhaps new terrain only to those of us who were part of Generation X or Y. Yet much to my surprise, when I shared the screener with a Baby Boomer, they too were completely blown away by the lack of coverage in the States about the events being depicted onscreen. Although, contrary to the popular image of flower power, Woodstock, astronauts, and disco, when you honestly do a reality check you become acutely aware that the whole world essentially went mad during the Vietnam era as several countries became politically unstable with revolutions, rallies, protests and assassinations including the United States.

And when you couple this with the fact that Red Army Faction was originally organized to combat our policy with in Vietnam as members felt that “American imperialism supported by the German establishment, many of whom have a Nazi past,” was “the new face of fascism,” understandably you get that it is a topic that is still explosive enough to send shock waves around the globe.

And while it’s extremely illuminating from a historical point-of-view, the biggest folly for Baader is in its grand ambition in trying to explain the history of RAF in one work. However, when the bloated film threatens to lose us via its sheer length and a presentation where too much guesswork is being done on our part when we long for facts, overall it’s buoyed by the strength of its leads as well as the attention paid to authenticity from every department.

Similarly the film works best when it centers on its main trio. Namely, this consists of the middle class, highly regarded journalist Ulrike Meinhof (Martina Gedeck) who leaves her unfaithful husband and later ultimately puts the cause before her children as well in joining up with the leftist group headed up by Andreas Baader (Moritz Bleibtreu) and his significant other Gudrun Ensslin (Johanna Wokalek).

Obviously, given the cause of their anger directed at Germany's alliance with America, it makes our country's interest in The Baader Meinhof Complex especially uncertain being that the picture is releasing during a time of dual wars and more debate over our dependence on foreign oil which is addressed in the movie. Additionally, although it’s a historically accurate film, the movie has also been frequently charged with not only confusing its viewers throughout but also to some extent in treating the terrorists as folk heroes.

And while it’s easy to jump to that conclusion because the terrorists have the most screen time, overall I don’t believe that it was the intention of the director to glorify the individuals represented. For, ultimately Edel succeeds in illustrating the futility of violence as the original ideas and motives of the group are cast aside in favor of horrific violence which led to the infamous RAF hijacking (along with Middle Eastern allies) of the Lufthansa airplane which no one can view as a positive or normal.

However, shockingly in the film we do learn that earlier on in their movement, one in four German citizens sympathized with the cause to the tune of 10,000 individuals being classified as such by the government. Although, watching it today in post-9/11 America, nothing presented in the movie can be seen as glamorous in my eyes since when ideas are replaced with bullets, all credibility is gone but then again that's another debate about what constitutes our ideas of art and normal behavior.

However, on the other hand I can definitely understand the charge being leveled at the picture. For, in the second half of the movie as the group moves from ideas into extremely violent territory with escalating crimes and murders, unfortunately most of the characters involved are simply painted in the broadest of strokes as the details become sketchy.

To this end, I wholeheartedly empathize with those who suffered from the experience including one widow who has filed suit against the movie because her husband’s murder is featured onscreen in a way she felt trivialized his death. Thus, again this brings the question of what is art back into the puzzle. And while this has to be a traumatic experience to relive regardless, I believe it’s even worse when murders presented in the film are merely used in a fast-paced action style wherein the deaths and killers are poorly defined.

Most likely the fault for our lack of understanding the reasoning behind the repetitions of violence and who the players were in the crimes is due to the screenplay. By trying to truncate a decade of material into one film and without the aid of perhaps inserting cards to state who is who or where we are-- ultimately we end up shortchanged and without the benefit of knowledge or understanding that will last-- much like a kid cramming for an exam.

While my reaction to it overall is mixed because the viewer is left in the dark far too often, it’s still a vital and valid offering to view a work that reveals yet another side of the ‘70s which I’d never experienced before. And likewise as a feature film, it’s one that’s all the more impressive since it’s so extremely well made by its talented cast and crew that it looks and sounds as though it was a lost German film from that particular era just resurfacing today.

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