Perché il signor R. è colto da follia improvvisa?

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.

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.

The idea that the human being is a Kosmos of his own, is know since the times of Romantics, at last. The even stronger theory according to which the human was been created after God has become a common feature of Christian religion. However, it has taken almost two thousand years before the philosopher Gotthard Gunther has stated that between an "I" and and "Though" there is exactly the same qualitative difference as between the human and God. On therefore has not to travel to the edges of transcendence in order to experience what a con-texture border means, it is sufficient to learn that insight into a Thou is excluded on principal reasons. This turns out to be important in all those cases where even close friends of a human become shocked and react in a way similar to: we would never have thought that he could do that.

Another problem, perhaps in a certain perspective even more delicate, is the border between a deed in thought and a deed in fact. Many people kill others in their wishes, dreams, they even say it without meaning it. On the other hand, some people would never say it, but then there is a moment when they do it. What is it that causes the transgression between thought and deed? R.W. Fassbinder presents a fully uncommented, non-condemnatory approach in "Warum Läuft Herr R. Amok?" (1970). Up to a certain degree, the absolute free speech which gives the illusion of everyday-conversations observed by a candid camera, has the form of a Brechtian "Lehrstück", however, there is no wagging finger to sense in this movie. The spectator is elevated into the position of the judge - if he really still thinks that the deed of Herr R. can be judged after having watched and understood the movie. The spectator even becomes a part of the movie, without him the communication scheme is incomplete. He is the receiver of a message from whom not even an answer is expected, but a revision in thinking on the basis of which has been presented to him. "A good movie is a movie that does not stop when people come out of the cinema, but continues in their heads", Fassbinder said once.

They don't make great low-budget films like this anymore. Fantastic performance by Kurt Raab, very moving, delicate, intense. You can feel the chill run down your spine when you watch him slowly degenerating. Fassbinder at his early best.