Baal

In the early '80s, as a theater student, I did an entire semester on Bertholdt Brecht. We focused on better known works such as MOTHER COURAGE and CAUCASIAN CHALK CIRCLE, and spent a lot of time discussing how Brecht believed that audiences should not be pulled into sympathy or empathy for the characters, but to almost react to what he depicted in a "detached observer" manner. It was all interesting and very academic. One week, we spent two class sessions on BAAL. While some of the Brechtian characteristics were there already, it was different enough from everything else that we sort of put it aside. It was a difficult piece (so much poetry and so little plot) and I was happy enough to move on.

Now, decades later, Criterion releases the Blu Ray of this vaguely remembered play and I thought it would be a great chance to experience BAAL and also see a bit of Rainer Werner Fassbinder as an actor. Well, I got what I wished for. By now stretch of the imagination was this an enjoyable film to watch in any traditional sense. Essentially no plot. Just a focus on an "artistic genius" who used his notoriety to mis-treat everyone around him, particularly the women who inexplicably loved him. He scorns all who would embrace him. He abuses food and drink. He, frankly, is given no opportunity to show the viewer that he is anything other than a complete, dangerous pig. Fassbinder, hardly the epitome of a "leading man", throws himself into this depiction with frightening commitment...it's one of those performances where you wonder if the actor is really just playing himself or not. It's told in an episodic fashion, and while seemingly linear, it doesn't really have a plot. Just one encounter after another between Baal and the world & people around him. At no time is he sympathetic. He is a human interested in living like an animal...amoral, concerned only with his needs, and seeing other creatures only in how they can serve him.

Sound good? It gets better...director Volker Schlondorff films it all with handheld 16mm cameras, mostly out in fields and forests and often along the side of some random road. It feels SO homemade. At 84 minutes, it sometimes feels like it will never end. This movie absolutely should not work.

And yet. And yet. First of all, the character of Baal is pure and true. He never veers from the way he thinks life should be led. He has no regrets. He shows no love. Yet, as with an animal, he is very, very aware of nature around him. He speaks in metaphors that utilize images of the sky, the earth, the trees. And in the end, he finds that the squalor and deprivation of his life (compared to the way most of us would want to live) is beautiful. It's rare to encounter a character so lacking in compromise. He never violates his own code of ethics. They may be repugnant, but they certainly are steadfastly followed. And some of the dialogue is, literally, poetry and it has a kind of power only poetry possesses. And in the end, the film seems to be asking...was Baal really so bad, or was he just another kind of person altogether. Uncompromised and true to itself.

Fassbinder was magnetic. Gross, yes...but magnetic. And the rest of the cast, particularly the women, were very committed to their roles. The music, although very much of its time, is remarkably effective.

Then, on top of all this, Criterion has done a bang up job with it's "extras." There are supplements that talk about Baal & Brecht, and then their are segments that really delve into German New Wave cinema, and how the convergence of Fassbinder & Schlondorff & actor Hanna Schygulla (and even Brecht) all amounted to BAAL being a critical moment. It's all fascinating stuff for film buffs, including some excellent interviews with Schlondorff and others. Even the essay in the booklet is very worthwhile. I'd suggest planning to spend 3 hours with BAAL. See the movie, but then dive into the extras. It's a worthwhile, intellectually satisfying endeavor.

Rainer Werner Fassbinder abuses everyone and everything, including himself. Beautiful women adore him.

Dealing with the works of Bertolt Brecht is largely an issue of whether you agree with him before the show starts, or not. If you do, you'll like it.... most of the time. If not, then never, because Brecht held that there should be nothing in the work to rouse the observer's sympathy. Certainly writer-director Volker Schlöndorff and star Fassbender do what they can to honor that dictum in their translation of Brecht's seldom-performed work to the screen. Indeed, I will say that they have succeeded, but am left wondering whether it's an effort that should have been made. It's true that the new German cinema of the 1970s and 1980s looked upon humanity, and Western Civilization, as a blight upon the universe, but few of the practitioners save Herzog seem to me have managed more than an exercise in self-loathing.

Very well, you have convinced me you're loathsome. Now shut up and go away.

Perhaps that is why Brecht's widow stopped exhibition of this movie in any form. The ban was lifted in 2011 by Brecht's grand daughter. Perhaps she recognized the artistic value of this version, or perhaps she wanted the extra royalties it would bring.

When you think that saw everything about bad pictures suddenly you bump into another rubbish production increasing the long list doomed to oblivion whereby they deserve stay there forever at trash can of cinema industry, stay tuned for forthcoming entries still buried that in near future like it or not will see the light, it's specifically the case of the outrageous "BAAL" that hurts the viewers in plenty way as never seen before.

Technically Baal never was released properly, just exposed by small audience in several private sessions aiming for be assessed by them, aftermaths the baffled watchers warned the producers forget the project otherwise it will be rejected by large majority would be became a huge flop, so just recently the filmmaker Volker Schlondorff has a nerve to recover it to release in a thematic box as really happened intitled at "New German Cinema".

A nasty leading cast Rainer Werner Fassbinder labeled a genius poet gone wild against the system becoming bitter and sleazy behavior, a sort of irreversible self-destruction process among it enters an unaware viewers that quickly perceive an unorthodoxy setting as art movie, we delve into an everlasting nightmare praying to reach at final, a kind of countdown where every single minute count, a true endurance test to the audience without any reward.

Thanks for reading.

Resume:

First watch: 2025 / How many: 1 / Source: DVD / Rating: 1.

To me, Schlöndiorff's "Baal" is the greatest film of both S. as director and Fassbinder as actor. Also, an astonishingly accurate film version of Brecht's early play. What does it say, and what does it mean? I'm not at all ready to judge. Apparently Brecht's widow opposed the release for about 50 years ... which is as inexplicble as Berg's widow opposing that of the magnificent third act of "Lulu". Thank you all so much.

After about six minutes I felt the overwhelming urge to take a long, hot shower. Small wonder since after about five minutes of this crashingly dull, ugly, film I felt as if Bertolt Brecht, Volker Schlondorff and Rainer Werner Fassbinder had jumped through the TV screen, into my living room and collectively barfed all over me. I suppose I should have been honored, rather than repelled, to be in the cinematic presence of such poetic "genius" as that possessed by the title character. But I confess I was too busy being bored as hell by Baal's verbal effusions to register such feelings. Give it a generous D plus, mostly for Margarethe von Trotta's impressive bod.