Il viaggio in cielo di mamma Küsters

Frau Kusters is preparing dinner late one seemingly ordinary afternoon in her seemingly ordinary kitchen in Frankfurt, Germany. Mrs. Kusters wants to add canned sausages to the stew, her annoying daughter-in-law thinks otherwise. The point, we soon find out, is moot: Mr. Kusters has murdered the personnel director at the soap factory where he works before committing suicide.

The film drew on both Douglas Sirk's melodramas and Weimar era workers' films to tell a political coming of age story. Fassbinder also clearly criticizes the small German Communist Party's moderation and "armchair activism". Now, I know nothing about the German Communist Party of the 1970s, but I do know Sirk and Fassbinder's borrowing. This film is one of the most obvious Sirk nods I have seen yet. And, therefore, one of the better Fassbinder films.

At first I was anticipating an attack on yellow journalism akin to the same year's 'Die verlorene Ehre der Katharina Blum'; but to me this film - with its title evoking Pudovkin's 'Mother', Piel Jutzi's 'Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück' and of course Brecht's Mother Courage - became more and more abstract and stylised as it progressed.

The film's pretty poster-paint colours and Brigitte Mira's depiction of stoicism in the face of adversity considerably soften the impact of what could have been an extremely harsh neorealist tract on the systematic abuse suffered by the downtrodden proletariat; and there are quite a few laughs. Very little actually seems to faze the put-upon Emma Küsters, who after receiving what would have been the shattering news that the circumstances of her late husband's death means the loss of her pension simply continues with equanimity her frugal existence assembling plugs in her dining room. Her treatment by a cynical journalist, well-meaning but ineffectual communists and - finally - violent nihilists suggests Fassbinder's mounting cynicism about the motives and effectiveness of the King Logs and King Storks that he had so far encountered offering solutions to society's ills, the ironic title effectively declaring the chances of the Mother Küsters of this world ever receiving a break in this world being zero.

Mother Kunters is just so drolly funny. The story is about a woman coping with her husband's death. Her husband died after he fell into some machinery at work. Oh, and there's something else. Her husband killed 2 people on the job before doing himself in. Actually, if you listen closely during the first 15 minutes of the movie, the "There's something else" line is repeated 3 times, which is very oddly funny. Mrs. Kunsters is of course, devastated by the news, and when her children get together, they all don't really get along, and deal with the death in different ways, her daughter is especially malicious, using the death to promote her laughable music career. Mrs Kusters, not finding solace anywhere, finally finds a couple willing to listen and feel compassion. Problem is of course, they're COMMUNISTS! Ha ha. Pretty soon they're convincing poor Mrs Kusters that her husband's death is directly related to The Plight of The Common Worker! I mean, that's priceless. Pretty soon, she's getting caught up with the hardline commies and soon violently protesting against newspapers that published negative stories about her husband. I mean, clearly we're dealing with manipulation, (both personal and political) and Fassbinder does it brilliantly here. As you could tell by the title of my review, I'm not the biggest Fassbinder fan, but I personally loved this one. Although the ending (the American one even more so) leaves a little bit to be desired, I, all in all, enjoyed this tremendously.

It is not a bad film, but has many problems. Acting is extremely wooden, actors just speak their lines, dialogues are not natural. The whole movie is dubbed, often very out of sync. The story does not make sense (the reporters are overly interested in the murder/suicide of an unimportant factory worker) and the endings are lame, especially the second one, which suddenly turns the film into a comedy.

Fassbinder's most political film, mixes all imaginable elements dominating the news in 1970s Germany. The story begins with a radio news bulletin about a factory worker going berserk, killing a supervisor, then himself. The man's lower class family (busy with small assembly "homework") engages in evening small talk, casually mentioning the news flash in their conversation. Minutes later the bad news arrives at the door.

Immediately the vulnerable "Mother Kusters" is hounded by reporters from the boulevard press. Twisting her words, as well as those of children and a pregnant daughter in-law, along with taking countless bad-angle photographs, the press has their story. The name of easy-going, kind and obedient Father Kusters is ruined.

Several characters bring definite color to this unusual story. Mother Kusters' 30-something daughter, an aspiring lounge singer (a la Marlene Dietrich) shamelessly exploits her newly gained celebrity status by initiating press interviews about her father's tragedy, then moving in with the questionable reporter, who also arranged singing work through "connections".

Mother Kusters soon is "lulled in" by some upscale and persuasive communists, who appear sympathetic, but eventually seem to be exploiting the poor old woman for their own political gains. Finally Mother Kusters ends in a bizarre trap she unwittingly fell for: A group of anarchists, under the pretense of assuring that her husband's name will be cleared, use the woman in a hostage stand-off aimed at the release of political prisoners. - The final scene suddenly stops in a freeze frame, with a brief written description of the immediate action to follow. WOW!

Although not among Fassbinder's great classics, this is an impressive film. The statements made here were originally (in the mid-70s) met with criticism. The treatment of communism and anarchy (in a not necessarily negative way) were seen as contrary to common acceptance of the day. Years after the Cold War's end, the story of "the factory murderer" seems dated. Still, a well-worth-seeing film!