"The Assault of the Present on the Rest of Time", in the year after 1984? That sounds intriguing. Too bad the title is completely disconnected from the content of this film. There are about ten segments, without a leitmotif, random and unrelated, mostly presented in a mockumentary style. The dialogues sometimes pretend to be deep, but it's a shallow depth. The segments are just fragments, they couldn't be shown individually as short films. It's more like somebody bored is zapping through (documentary) channels.
Armin Mueller-Stahl is quite good as a blind movie director, and he is an appropriate proxy for the director of this film, Alexander Kluge, who was unable to see that his without doubt highly intellectual concept didn't work out, at all. Why did he do it? Why did he start with a scene from an opera? Why the ridiculous interview about silly numerology? With every new segment the same question pops up: Why? There are no answers. Communication just doesn't seem to be his thing. Maybe somebody could make an interesting film about this failure, preferably in the style of Kluge. Nah, just joking.
One of the famous quotes from the novel "1984" is: "Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." That's the present assaulting the rest of time. Neither in the year 1984, nor in this film it was about redefining the past. Today, Kluge's slogan sounds much more apt and significant. He had used some other great, poetic titles. "In Danger and Dire Distress the Middle of the Road Leads to Death" (In Gefahr und größter Not bringt der Mittelweg den Tod, 1974; a beforehand rather unknown quote from a guy who died in 1655) -- in extreme situations extreme measures are an absolute necessity. "The Artists Under the Big Top: Perplexed" (Die Artisten in der Zirkuskuppel: ratlos, 1968) -- intellectuals who have deep insights into many things and no power to change anything, or to act accordingly. Great titles, great mantras! He should have made more of them. ("Bad German Movies"-Review No. 24)
