Just a week or so ago I finally, finally completed Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s Berlin Alexanderplatz, a hulking, extravagant fifteen-hour television series. The short review: Brilliant, immersive, and bewildering. As for the long review (read: spiel), read on.
The first film adaptation of Berlin Alexanderplatz came into my home on June 6th, 2008. It was the 1931 version of Alfred Döblin’s classic modernist novel; the older film was included in its entirely as part of a Criterion release for Fassbinder’s 1980-released Berlin Alexanderplatz. Since the Fassbinder version was 14 episodes, clocking in at a total fifteen-and-a-half hours long, I decided to gradually wade into the concept by watching the much shorter 1931 adapation. The ‘31 adaptation was pretty good, more than enough to continue my interest.
About a month later, in late July or early August sometime, I picked up the full Berlin Alexander DVD set during a timely sale at Borders 01 just down the road. Shortly after the purchase I watched several of episodes and enjoyed myself but abandoned the series shortly after. Mid-summer was apparently not the time for Fassbinder’s swan song.
Skip ahead to mid-March, 2009: After several months of Netflix rentals and another grueling busy season at work, a witness would’ve found me in front of the television at 10 PM on a work night, watching the credit cards on the final episode flick in and out as a scene from episode twelve replayed itself in the background.
So what did I think of this monstrous, epic, immersive series of a rehabilitating German man in the mid 1920’s? A couple of things.
After watching director and writer Fassbinder’s The Marriage of Maria Braun and now Berlin Alexanderplatz, I can say that I’m a fan of his work. While only two pictures out of a catalogue of 35 films (made in a fifteen year period!) is a very slim cross-section, his framing, straddling of a narrative between neo-realism and cynical fiction, and eccentric, fearless, brilliant writing and actors has thoroughly been compelling and enthralling. Watching a Fassbinder production can also be a little devastating: Fassbinder’s worldview is cold and excruciatingly cynical, but his presentation is unique and inarguably high art. Kurosawa’s The Lower Depths has a similar frigid feel, but the two films are as different as the auteurs’ nationalities.
Which brings me to personal reflection two about Berlin Alexanderplatz, one that will likely stick in my craw for months: The series is clearly making a finer and more important point than the general scene-to-scene play, but I’ll be damned if I know what that importance and significance is.
Uh oh.
The signs of the undertow are obvious enough in the series — frequent repetitions of dialogue and shots in varied scenarios, largely — as is the hand and tools of a master filmmaker. But while I enjoyed the series for its terrific narrative and technical achievements, I unmistakably feel like an itch still needs to be scratched, that I could’ve brought more out of the experience that just a good time.
But I didn’t. There are a few possibilities for this lacking.
First, and most unlikely: Maybe the film isn’t really trying to say anything beneath the surface level and is truly just a connective sequence of excellent story and characters. I find this unlikely because the film is so carefully and obviously composed — a film with less to say wouldn’t have spent so nearly long with the camera pushed into the details and long scenes that Fassbinder’s epic investigates.
Second, maybe my appreciation and understanding was disrupted by splitting the sequential watching of the episodes in half by a months-long gap. Did the first half of the series provide necessary themes and ideas that glued together the more subtle and aloof second half of the series? I doubt it — the narrative and plot progression per episode was fairly consistent, as far as I remember.
Or third, and finally, maybe Berlin Alexanderplatz is just plain over my head.
Should I have watched another film or read a book on mid-20’s Germany to bring the bigger picture into focus and context? Kurosawa films, or any film made in a particular period, are like that. Take the scene at the beginning of Ikiru, for example, where the harried mothers are escorted to the desks of government public service after public service, passed along from one desk to another until they end up at the original desk. This opening sequence is very fun even without questioning its composition for motives, but the sequence becomes a lot more poignant when the film’s audio commentary (supplied by Criterion, of course) notes that the dim efficacy and efficiency the United State’s post-World War II occupation and influence was on the mind of Kurosawa during Ikiru’s conception. Ah ha — experience comes into play. Fassbinder has undoubtably used the same personal experiences for his own films.
But Criterion’s Berlin Alexanderplatz offers no commentary or minor crutch to help me along to the keener insight, besides a nicely-bound book that includes several essays (which I’ll undoubtably read soon).
No, this one I’ll have to dig and parse through myself, and that will take repeated viewings, repeated viewings of a very long series. At the rate I watch movies — very slowly — I could easily read the original book a few times — reading also takes me a while — and possibly learn the necessary German for an untranslated edition.
In the end, the journey of watching Berlin Alexanderplatz was worthwhile in full, love and confusion and all. I do not feel my time following the series was wasted: I was able to derive a meaning from Fassbinder’s opus, even if I feel Fassbinder’s ultimate thesis remains locked behind the series’ unrelenting fifteen hours of film.
To anyone interested in the series, I’d recommend skipping the original 1931 film adaptation and launching right into the first two-hour episode of the Fassbinder production, which is both more interesting and beautifully done than the entirety of the 1931 version.
Of course, anyone watching the full series might end up like me, scratching his head and earnestly delving for more clues about the deeper meaning (if one exists). But if I can convince someone else to watch Berlin Alexanderplatz, that means I’ll have someone else to discuss with, possibly someone who could draw back the curtain on the series’ bizarre and cynical brilliance.
[^1]: “Career” may not be apt here, but hey, I take my film and movie time extremely seriously.
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