¿Por qué corre amok el señor R?

Mr. R. (Kurt Raab) leads a convenient bourgeois life: he has a steady job with chances of promotion, a good-looking wife (Lilith Ungerer), a kid and many family friends. Still, a growing sense of disillusionment and alienation is gnawing Mr. R.'s mind... Is there anything he can do to cope with his mind-numbing life?

The film consists largely of lengthy conversations about the most mundane of things; work, vacations, the son's school, buying a romantic record in a music store... The whole picture is also presented exclusively with long takes and hand-held cameras. The improvised nature of the conversations further adds to the strictly realist documentary-like feel of the movie, as does the intentionally dull cinematography. With such undramatic direction, the only detail to suggest the advancement of Mr. R.'s emotional alienation is Kurt Raab's subtle performance: Mr. R. alternates between sullen observing and unrestrained blabbing, and when the camera occasionally focuses on his face instead of his chit-chatting friends, one can get a creepy feel of slowly escalating anxiety inside him. Lilith Ungerer as his wife also displays faint hints of similar emotions, but keeps them tightly hidden under her shell of excruciating normalcy.

When a film is titled like this one, some kind of dramatic ending or plot twist can be expected sooner or later. Here it only happens at the very end; until the last 10 minutes or so, the film is completely G-rated. The scene preceding the twist is the best one in the whole film and achieves a very distressing atmosphere, but still, the twist itself comes across as rather predictable and even lackluster. Perhaps it is just that modern audiences have become desensitized to such incidents, but more oomph would have been needed to justify the preceding 80 minutes of practically nothing, as Mr. R.'s boredom has also become ours by the end.

Even though there's not much to see besides the lead couple's performance, I have a taste for this type of uneventful, talky cinema. Ultimately Warum... was a curious novelty to me and kept me intrigued throughout, but I'm somewhat wary of recommending it to more casual film fans; something like Michael Haneke's 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance could be a more easily accessible take on the subject. Then again, if you know what to expect, Warum... may also be a rewarding experience in mundanity that many can surely identify with – you have to make up your own mind based on your tastes.

I kind of wish I didn't know before watching Why Does Herr R Run Amok? that there was the distinct possibility- pointed by a quote on IMDb's trivia by co-star Hanna Schygulla- that Rainer Werner Fassbinder may have had *nothing* to do with with this film, considered by some to be one of his best. It made me think, from time to time watching, it, if maybe this point was correct, considering a) Fassbinder usually doesn't do improvisation, as it would appear this film does to the point where one wonders if a script was even used (was this, in fact, one of the first "mumblecore" movies?) and b) why his usual cast agreed to do it if it was only run by Michael Fengler (who, in his defense, also collaborated on The Niklashausen Journey and may be a capable producer in his own right).

Because, frankly, this isn't like the Fassbinder you would be used to after seeing, for example, the BDR trilogy or Fear Eats the Soul. It's as if Fassbinder and/or Fengler contracted Al Maysles to follow an 'average' middle-class German family, the father and architect and the wife a, uh, house-wife I guess, with an 'average' child. The style of dialog is improvisation, and the camera-work reflects this with the "cienema verite" approach. Indeed there may be only about 30 actual shots in the whole film; it's a series of long takes as the DP, Dietrich Lohmann, goes around a room and zooms in or out based on a feeling here or there or something that may be of interest (such as the desperation Herr R tries his best to hide in most scenes).

What happens with this style, for better or worse, is that we get into the daily grind, the mundane conversations in a living room or in a car (i.e. car repairs), a trip to the school for a talk with the teacher about the kid, or a trip to the not-totally sympathetic doctor, or the embarrassing toast that Herr R makes in front of his co-workers and boss. There is the mundane, and its so much that one starts to get into this mood. There is a drawback if one isn't ready/willing/able to be in this style; not a lot "happens" in the film until, of course, the frighteningly sudden climax of the "Amok" part of the title. Indeed there's something to this that draws in the audience with the characters; there's a scene where Herr R, his wife, their son and a couple of friends are walking along on a road, and it goes on for so long (both the shot and the slow walk) we, as well as the parents, don't realize that the son has gone off on his own and don't know where he ventured off.

Herr R. is an emotional story, but it's a little hard to penetrate. But for those who are patient and attentive there are some great rewards. One of these is Kurt Raab's performance (who, by the way, is also called Mr. Raab in the film, which adds to the confusion of whether this is documentary or fiction, or both at the same time); it's a performance that is tricky but works very well, full of subtlety and restraint, eyes darting carefully and physical expressions to the dot meant with importance. The performance is improvised, but there's nothing I can see that wasn't thought through to be on the screen by Fassbinder and/or Fengler. And it's this character, if nothing else, that marks it as the indicator of it being from RW; it's about the alienation of an outsider, someone in such a mundane world, so "normal" that there is barely any expression of individuality, of anything outside of a "norm" being seen as anything except quiet (or not so quiet) scorn. This is set up from the start with the characters telling the jokes, and Herr R's going flat with everyone else.

It's basically a super-low budget experiment in reality-as-drama, about the emptiness of a class system that allows people to live comfortably and with some semblance of peace, but also a form of life that can be shattered so easily and with such terror. The ending, indeed, can only be really comparable to the likes of Haneke's Cache for its random, existential impact. The more one lets Herr R in, the more this world is horrible and cruel and desperate. Not the brightest of times to have, but worthwhile all the same.

Why does Mr. R. run Amok? This question opens the films. Apparently. At first site Kurt Raab seems to lead quite a good life. He has a creative job, colleagues that accept him, at home there's a beautiful wife and a nice son. But thanks to Fassbinder and his way of filming, we can see closer at Herr R.

From the beginning he is simply not there, as Patrick Bateman would put it. When his colleagues make jokes, he walks with them, but not laughs with them. When his wife brings a friend, we see his narrow-mindedness. She is self-assured and liberal with no clue of what to do with her life, something Kurt is unable to understand. He needs order. He is order. He trys to have everything perfect in his sense, he works technically perfect like a machine, but lacks (human) ideas, or tries to cure his son's speech problems, but he always fails.

His system of perfection does not work. He does not work. And it keeps going on. You see Kurt in different allday situations, where he doesn't behave (all too) strange in a obvious way. But watch him more carefully and you see that he's empty. He holds down all emotions. In a banal situation, when he sees that his life is not perfect at all, and unable to adjust his system to the others like he always was, he tries to make his life perfect by eliminating all disturbing factors. He runs amok. And he does so as he always did: Emotionless.

What Fassbinder wants to show us, is what lies beneath the human fassade. We never know what a person really thinks or feel, because we're all masters of disguise and on the other hand unable or unwilling to find out (another) one's real feelings. And that can be dangerous.

Sometimes a film is not 'boring', it's actually a study on boredom as societal satire; a disarmament of psychological setting -- a slow-motion, funereal-paced race to the ugly punchline. The funniest jokes require patience and an ability to listen.

Fassbinder pulls it off marvellously in 'Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?', one of his best early films, from 1970. This particular punchline connects as hard as a blow to the back of the head.

If a life can only be understood backwards, this film parodies the theory by emulating it.

Fassbinder's nihilism knew no bounds.

This is a terrific movie. I have seen the unsettling ending of it years ago. Today I was watching it from DVD. My recollection of the ending was so strong that I remembered all small details.

Highly sensitively Fassbinder gives insight into the life of a man that runs amok. Fassbinder succeeds in showing the motives of a crazy amok run.

If you don't know any of Fassbinders movies you must be aware that this is different than anything you know. Fassbinder portrays a man that lacks self-awareness and is poor of showing his emotions and who does not do more than he is asked for in his job. Herr R. is slow in mind and words. And yet, all that does not accumulate to his amok run. What does is hidden behind a surface that Fassbinder discloses one by one... 9 out of 10.