The fluffy husband and the firebomb

Just coincidentally, following my last post which included a clip from Werner Herzog's Antarctica documentary, I ran across an interesting interview with Herzog about his most recent film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams (via A&L Daily).

Discussion turns, almost inevitably, to Klaus Kinski:

In the documentary that Herzog made about Kinski after his death, My Best Fiend, he alludes in passing to one other time when he sincerely entertained murderous thoughts toward his leading man, when he planned to firebomb Kinski's house until deterred by Kinski's dog. I'd like to know more.

"We had plans to kill each other, strangely enough, at exactly the same time," Herzog begins, a little hesitantly. "But you have to see it as these beautiful plots, like in a detective story, and those were mostly plots, I would say, in sheer fantasy. But at some moment it got closer than just a pure fantasy."

What were you going to do?

[pause] "Well, as I said, I plotted to kill him."

Did you actually have the firebomb?

[long pause] "I can't answer that. I only can answer that he had this very vigilant shepherd dog, and the presence of the shepherd dog dissuaded me."

Herzog insists, though, that he's mellowed since then:

"But let me say one more thing. Those were the times decades back. In a way I have matured. And I'm a very fluffy...at least a fluffy husband. You have to ask my wife."

"Existential thirst is the engine that drives the holiday machine"

A satirical take on Christmas from the perspective of 'Werner Herzog':



(Via Io9)

Baader Meinhof, Complex

Although it came out more than a year ago to much fanfare here in Germany, it wasn't until a couple of months ago that I finally got around to watching Der Baader Meinhof Komplex, one of the glossier and more internationally successful German films of recent years.

The film had an intensely mixed reception here (as, I think, do most films and books about Germany's past), and I think I was at the time put off the notion of seeing it by the suggestions that it romanticised its subject (a highly condensed and dramatised history of the Red Army Faction), which only seemed confirmed by the trailers, which seemed to presage a film heavy on retro-glamour and action and light on historical context, psychological complexity and moral judgement.

When I finally got around to seeing it, however, I was pleased to discover a far better film than the one I'd expected. Quite apart from its excellent production values and many strong performances, I thought that the film ultimately--and effectively--condemned its urban-guerrilla protagonists, despite (or perhaps because of) the many opportunities it gave them for grandiose political posturing.

On this note, Terry Glavin today points us to a recent Vanity Fair essay by Christopher Hitchens on the film, which expresses many of the things that occurred to me while watching it, only clearer than I probably could have myself. (And Terry's embedding of the godawful American trailer for the film might help to explain my initial reluctance...if anything, it's even more glamourising than the, in comparative retrospect, much more ambiguous German one.)

Among the film's strengths, I think, are its unflinching attention to the bloody consequences of the RAF's violence and its emphasis on the (often twisted) dynamics in the group members' psychology.

As Hitchens notes:

It doesn’t take long for the sinister ramifications of the “complex” to become plain. Consumerism is equated with Fascism so that the firebombing of department stores can be justified. Ecstatic violence and “action” become ends in themselves. One can perhaps picture Ulrike Meinhof as a “Red” resister of Nazism in the 1930s, but if the analogy to that decade is allowed, then it is very much easier to envisage her brutally handsome pal Andreas Baader as an enthusiastic member of the Brownshirts. (The gang bought its first consignment of weapons from a member of Germany’s neo-Nazi underworld: no need to be choosy when you are so obviously in the right.) There is, as with all such movements, an uneasy relationship between sexuality and cruelty, and between casual or cynical attitudes to both. As if curtain-raising a drama of brutality that has long since eclipsed their own, the young but hedonistic West German toughs take themselves off to the Middle East in search of the real thing and the real training camps, and discover to their dismay that their Arab hosts are somewhat … puritanical.

Later:

Researching this in the late 1970s in Germany, I became convinced that the Baader Meinhof phenomenon actually was a form of psychosis. One of the main recruiting grounds for the gang was an institution at the University of Heidelberg called the Sozialistisches Patienten Kollektiv, or Socialist Patients Collective, an outfit that sought to persuade the pitifully insane that they needed no treatment save social revolution. (Such a reading of the work of R. D. Laing and others was one of the major “disorders” of the 1960s.) Among the star pupils of this cuckoo’s nest was Ralf Reinders, who was arrested after several violent “actions” and who had once planned to destroy the Jewish House in Berlin—a restoration of the one gutted by the Brownshirts—“in order to get rid of this thing about the Jews that we’ve all had to have since the Nazi time.” Yes, “had to have” is very good. Perhaps such a liberating act, had he brought it off, would have made some of the noises in his head go away.

I recommend that you read the whole thing.

And its maybe an opportunity to reiterate the comments of our friend Andrew on the same topic:

The RAF itself is, as a subject of study, unedifying. Having spent some time researching them for a project, I came away feeling nothing but vague contempt for it, and complete mystification at the attention it still receives. Active RAF members fell, as near as I can tell, into two general groups: ruthless monomaniacs or deluded dupes. What united both camps was their second-rateness and insufferable pomposity. Their "manifestos" are dull and turgid; their personalities one-dimensional and unappealing. Once they began their RAF careers -- at the very latest -- most RAF cadres morphed into Godzillas of screechy self-righteous bitterness.

And more comments from Andrew on RAF-related topics are here.

More film-related thoughts

The great revival of Hildegard von Bingen began when I was in my late teens. All of a sudden people of a certain spiritual bent (like me, at the time) began herb-growing, spelt-chewing and parting their hair in the middle, hoping to emulate a woman whom a certain type of feminist claimed as a medieval Alice Schwarzer. After all, didn't she found a quasi-lesbian commune and stand up to the patriarchal power of the church?

For fans with a more materialist mind-set (like me, too, at the time, though I wasn't aware of this as yet), Hildegard was above all a great dieting role model healer and epitome of alternative medicine. In those days before the Atkins diet, slimming was still associated with asceticism rather than gluttony and nut-roasts were all the rage. Small wonder that Hildegard cookbooks shot up like mushrooms. For a short while, German supermarkets sold packet soups based on Hildegard's recipes (the irony!) which I sometimes bought, being quite obsessed with my weight health myself (and a lousy cook at the same time).

Little did I know in them days that one day I would live where old Hildy had once haunted the happy hills above the Nahe river. Had I moved here then I might have gone the whole Hildegard hog and turned to dancing naked in the moonlight. Now that I've mellowed and read plenty of popular cognitive science, I've changed my mind about Hildegard. Today, I'm inclined to think that our local saint in all likelihood was either an annoyingly precocious brat, an egocentric nut case or an epileptic.

Whatever the cause of Hildegard's famous visions, they (or the artwork based on them) document that she was thoroughly indoctrinated by the medieval church's hatred of the body, sexuality and women. Here is Hildegard's version of the "vagina dentata" (complete with Arab strap):

I don't know whether Margarete von Trotta, she of the epic feminist biopic, is interested in her heroine's fearful frigidity in her Hildegard-movie Vision. And I probably won't ever know, because the trailer is too abysmal to invite the waste of 10 Euros or so (let alone two hours of precious life time) on the whole film:

What can I say? The movie has Heino Ferch in it (aka "The Actor Who Don't Look So Intelligent"), which is always a bad sign. I really think the German film board should introduce a Heino Ferch-rating, so that the discerning viewer can give products that feature the man a wide berth.

More promising, by contrast, is this grittily realistic piece of TV nostalgia, also set in and around here:

The touristy bit begins at around 9:07. In part 2 a body is fished out of the Rhine in what the voice-over claims to be Trechtingshausen, but which actually is the harbour in Bingen. Clearly visible in the background is the Niederwalddenkmal in Rüdesheim, which is directly opposite from Bingen, on the other side of the Rhine.

NB: You cannot see the Niederwalddenkmal from Trechtingshausen.

This not only proves that mundus vult decipi is a fundamental principle of film narrative. It also goes to show that Bingen has far more to offer than Hildegard and her biscuits - though some things might be better for tourism (and one's general health) than others.

Wessen Welt ist die Welt?

It being the first of May and all (which doesn't mean much in the UK, where Labour Day was turned into a pragmatic May bank holiday in, I believe, 1871, let alone in the USA, where all public holidays are corrupted into bloody sales days anyway), I thought I'd post something appropriate.

Here is Hans Eisler's "Lied von der Solidarität" in a scene from the 1932 film - scripted by Bertolt Brecht - Kuhle Wampe:



It is a very wonderful tune, that - and a great frame. It reminds me of a passage in Walter Greenwood's Love on the Dole (1933), in which one of the characters, the (as yet) naive Harry Hardcastle, contemplates the workers at Marlowe's, the local factory, whom he yearns to join. There's a similar sense of distance, of a world removed from the eyes of the beholder:

In a moment this silence would be shattered. Shattered by the influx of the vast concourse of men congregated outside the walls. Before six o'clock the twelve thousand of them would pass through the gates. They crammed the wide thoroughfare, a black mass of restlessness; crammed, saving a strip of roadway kept clear for the frequently arriving, bell-clanging tramcars full of more overalled men. The air stank of oily clothes, reeked with it and tobacco smoke, and buzzed with conversation, with week-end support.

How easily, negligently, these men wore their supreme importance; how infinitely, ineffably superior these gods of the machine and forge were to mere pushers of pens!

Spoiler warning: Harry will, in the course of the novel, be disabused of his idealisation of factory work. Of course.

This version of the song, sung by Ernst Busch, is even better than the one above:

Friday film blogging, or "Du jetzt hol' aber mal Sekt"

At the end of what turned out to be another week from hell, here's a little comic relief: a scene from one of my favourite films ever, Helmut Käutner's Die Zürcher Verlobung (1954) - and a poignant one at that.

It is poignant, first of all, because of the many chairs with spindly legs and the exotic ear furnishings.

Secondly, it is remarkable for all the metareferential "blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality" stuff that is going on in the first part. Very postmodern.

But finally, the scene is educationally significant. Towards the end, the little chubby boy ("Pips") with his poodle ("Püppi") has to be coaxed away from his science project (dismantling the Volksempfänger radio) and up the wooden hill.

With what? A Play Station? A portfolio of blue-chip shares? A reefer?

No: This marvellous little brat only desires a banana or two!

Oh ye pitiable contemporary producers of greedy discerning, brand-conscious and peer-group-pressured baby consumers, those were the days!