Whew! I feel like I just climbed a mountain with this one! This is certainly one of Rainer Werner Fassbinder's seminal works. I think it's key to understanding his worldview, and to understanding the director as a human being. After all, years before he made this movie, he named another character Franz Biberkopf, the hero of Fox and His Friends. Of course, Fassbinder himself, in the biggest acting role of his career, played Biberkopf in that film. I assume he must have seen himself in Alfred Döblin's protagonist. Having now watched Berlin Alexanderplatz, I find that extremely sad. The challenge of Berlin Alexanderplatz is not exactly its length heck, I've watched 24 episodes of Lost in half the time it took me to watch this series. It's the unpleasantness of the characters, particularly Franz Biberkopf. At the opening of the series, he is being released from prison after four years for beating his girlfriend to death in a rage. It's a moment we relive via flashback about a dozen more times in the next 15 hours, including at least one episode where it plays out twice and another where nearly the same scenario is played out with another woman. Biberkopf says he wants to stay clean from now on, but it only takes a short while before he's involved again with criminals. The main brunt of the story concerns Biberkopf's dealings with his new friend Reinhold, a gigolo and a burglar. There was never a moment in the series when I was thinking that Franz Biberkopf was at heart a good guy. No, he's a coward. He's a jerk. He's a big fat baby. Fassdbinder asks us to feel for him almost constantly. Even if he was being ironic, and I don't think he was, I couldn't appreciate that. I knew from the start that things were going to end badly. Even worse, about halfway through the series, Franz's eternal protectress, Eva, throws him a bone in the form of a young innocent named Sonia. Immediately, Franz says, "You don't look like a Sonia. I'm going to rename you Mieze." And he treats women that shabbily throughout the film, though Mieze is the last one. As soon as such a sweet and innocent character enters the picture, I knew she was bound to end up dead. To add to these often painfully ugly characters, Fassbinder also likes to make the series purposefully annoying with grainy photography and a cacophonous musical score. There are far too many scenes of endless dialogue, often so esoteric that it becomes meaningless babble (this is supposedly part of the point of Döbin's novel, but I never felt the point was made that well in this series). In short, Fassbinder wants to make this series torture to sit through. And the two hour epilogue, which enters Biberkopf's dementia-ridden mind, feels so much different from the strict realism of the rest of the series that it feels like a miscalculation. So it's a difficult watch, to be sure. But I do think it's a good series overall. Like I said, it provides valuable insights into Fassbinder's character. The cinematic prowess of the director is also on full display most of the time. Best of all, if you're one who loves great acting, you very well might experience some bits of heaven amidst the ordeal. Günter Lamprecht leads the cast, and is simply amazing. Gottfried John is Reinhold, Barbara Sukowa is Mieze and Hannah Schygulla is Eva. Franz Buchreiser plays Meck, who begins the series as Franz's closest friend and then is shoved away, has the only moment in the series that made me feel deeply for any of the characters. This was one of my longest-awaited viewings. It was a disappointment, overall, but it was worth my time.
Review of Berlin Alexanderplatz
