Der Todesking

Jorg "Nekromantik" Buttgereit continued his serious obsession with death on this harrowing suicide-fest. One suicide per week day. Der Todesking, however, is far from being any sort of video nasty. Rather, it is a brooding, raw, brutally frank art-house hysteria punctuated by avantgarde delivery, particularly the recurring interludes of a decomposing corpse. There is also a spoof on "Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS," which is weird and totally unexpected if you consider Buttgereit's nationality. In any case, utterly depressing, plodding atmosphere and unnerving lack of dialogue bring this work even further into the category of obscure cult classics, not for the weak of heart or mind. But would you expect anything less from the man who gave us "Nekromantik," "Schramm," "Hot Love?" Indeed. "This is the Death King. He makes it so that people don't want to live anymore." Can YOU look him in the eyes?

Between the graphic, transgressive shock horror of Nekromantiks 1 and 2, director Jörg Buttgereit gave fans of extreme underground cinema this experimental arthouse/exploitation study of the act of suicide, depicting seven examples of self-destruction over the course of one week. As a bonus, in between the suicides we get to see the body of a dead man decompose via time lapse photography. Cheery stuff then.

First to take his own life is a man (Hermann Kopp) obsessed with fish. He studies fish, has a fish poster on his wall, eats fish, keeps a pet goldfish, and has a little picture of a fish on his mailbox. Rather fittingly, he dies in a full bath-tub after taking an overdose washed down with wine. The standout scene is a prolonged rotating shot of his apartment, showing the passage of time, just the start of Jörg getting creative with his visuals.

Day two sees a guy (Heinrich Ebber) renting a Nazisploitation film (called Vera, Gestapo's Angel of Death) from his local video shop. He sits down and watches the movie, which contains the sickening sight of a man having his penis cut off with a pair of garden shears. His girlfriend arrives and interrupts his viewing, so he shoots her in the head and frames the resulting splatter on the wall. All of this turns out to be a film within Buttgereit's film, which makes the Nazisploitation movie a film within a film within a film.

On day three, a rainy Wednesday, a man on a park bench (Michael Krause) recounts to a pretty woman (Susanne Betz) how his relationship with his wife became strained when she got ill, after which he puts a gun in his mouth and decorates a park statue with his brain.

Thursday is simple in concept, yet extremely moving: artful shots of a bridge, with captions naming all of the people who have thrown themselves off the edge. Buttgereit's impressive photography of the bridge combined with the long list of names make this compelling yet depressing stuff.

Friday follows a lonely spinster who enviously spies on two seemingly happy lovers in a neighbouring apartment. The woman receives a suicide chain letter that says she must make copies of the letter and then take her own life, but she decides to eat chocolates instead. The camera then shifts to the other apartment where the lovers are in bed together, covered in blood, having killed themselves.

The next segment concerns a young woman (Angelika Hoch) who commits 'amok suicide' by embarking a rampage shooting spree. Using a harness to mount a camera to her torso, the woman films the killings, which allows Buttgereit to show the action in first person shooter style, anticipating films like Doom and Hardcore Henry.

Last up is an extremely harrowing story of a tormented individual whose extreme anguish drives him to death. Buttgereit doesn't let on precisely what his character's personal demons are, but watching the poor fellow writhe and scream in agony (mental or physical?) is uncomfortable viewing, particularly when he begins to bash his head against a wall out of sheer desperation.

A bold experiment in film-making, exploring an uncomfortable subject in a visually and aurally interesting manner, Der Todesking is not for everyone, but then what art is?

7.5/10, rounded up to 8 for IMDb. For those looking for more low-budget, German, suicide-themed cinema, try Suicide (2001), which was surely inspired by Buttgereit's film.

"Der Todesking" is not exactly the type of film that makes you merry… Jörg Buttgereit's second cult monument in a row, which is actually a lot better than the infamous "Nekromantik", exists of seven short episodes – one for each day of the week – revolving on unrelated people's suicides. In between these already very disturbing episodes, Buttgereit inserts truly horrifying images of a severely decomposing male corpse. The episodes aren't all equally powerful but, as a wholesome, "Der Todesking" is ranked quite high on the list of all-time most depressing art-house films. Particularly the episodes on Wednesday, involving a man explaining his sexual frustrations to a total stranger in the park, and the one of Sunday, focusing on a younger man molesting himself to dead, are extremely intense and devastating to observe. The added value of this film, or any other shockumenary like it, is debatable and I'm not even sure whether or not Buttgereit had any type of message to communicate here. There's the vague mentioning of an eerie chain letter that encourages its readers to commit suicide but mostly we remain uninformed about these people's motivations to end their lives so dramatically. Entirely unlike I expected, "Der Todesking" isn't exploitative or repulsively graphic! On the contrary actually, I never could have hoped Buttgereit would be so subtle and thoughtful regarding the portrayal of pure human misery. The Thursday episode is a perfect example of this, as it stylishly shows different viewpoints of a famous German bridge while the names, ages and occupations of persons who jumped off appear on the screen. The production values are inescapably poor and the editing often lacks professionalism, but this isn't what really counts in this type of cinema. The subject matter is strong and forcing us to contemplate about the less cheerful – but also indispensable – aspects of life. GREAT use of tragic music, too!

Jörg Buttgereit goes a bit too far with his movies and themes at times, even for my taste but his movies are always something special and hard to classify. They are artistically made, with also often deeper meaning to its themes. This movie is a perfect example of his work.

It's also really hard to label this movie. It's not really a movie with a story to it, in a sense of having a beginning, middle and end in it. It also doesn't have a main character but instead focuses on 7 different suicides and killings, on 7 different days.

All different stories are being told with lots of class, though some of them are of course more 'interesting' and realistic than the others. They are not necessarily connected but yet together they still tell a story. The movie doesn't feel disjointed at all. All different stories have a different feel to it and Buttgereit tells the story without hardly using any words (also typical for his style) but instead lets the images and obvious sensible emotions of the characters tell the entire story. It helps to make this movie an effective one to watch.

Again, the production values all aren't too high and this might be something that might scare off some people. It however helps for this particular movie to set the right tone and atmosphere for the entire movie and its dark, disturbing and depressing themes.

A Buttgereit movie that I 'enjoyed' watching.

7/10

http://bobafett1138.blogspot.com/

A movie about suicide! Actually it's seven movies about suicide. We get to follow Buttgereit in to his strange world of death, it's not a fun trip, but I can guarantee you that it's not meant to be an enjoyable film. The film is divided into different short stories, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday... If you haven't seen any of Buttgereits earlier movies this one can be pretty hard to sit through cause it is pretty bizarre although not as graphic as his other movies, Nekromantik, Schramm. Needless to say; I love it, I love Buttgereit for making death into the blackness that it's doomed to be, he's not joking around. Another thing that needs to be praised is the soundtrack; beautiful. Buy this film, then buy his other movies.