O Rei da Morte

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.

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

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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.

I wouldn't care if Spielberg, Scorsese and Coppola never made another film (actually, I'd be rather grateful), but the possibility that Joerg Buttgereit might never direct another movie is truly upsetting. It's been 13 years since his last film, Schramm, but I live in hope.

Der Todesking is one of Buttgereit's most accessible films. That could be the very reason why I was so disappointed with it when I first saw it. After the filth and carnage of Nekromantik, Der Todesking seemed almost timid. The film is a collection of vignettes relating to suicide and death, linked by footage of a rotting corpse. The gore is very mild in comparison to Joerg's other movies and the violence is largely implicit. Strangely enough, the film has grown on me immensely over time and despite my initial misgivings, I now consider it to be my favourite Buttgereit opus.

This is a cerebral and beautifully constructed film. Buttgereit has always exceeded in making the most repulsive act (having a threesome with a rotting corpse, for example) visually appealing. This film is no exception, containing some truly brilliant imagery. The scene where a man shoots his wife and then puts an empty picture frame on the blood splattered wall is one example, the man who screams and beats his head against a wall for literally five minutes is another. The film also benefits from a higher standard of acting than some of Buttgereit's other films. The director himself even has a nice cameo in the Ilsa inspired video.

Hopefully Germany's most fabulous pervert will get off his butt and make another film in the near future. In the meantime, Der Todesking is a great reminder of Joerg Buttgereit's skill and genius.

Buttgereit does a beautiful film about suicide? Who would have thought that the same director of the filthy, Nekromantik, would be capable of bringing us such a moving portrait about suicide. Well, it is also a film about violent death, not just suicide. This is subject matter that most writers and directors would shy away from because it is too dark. It took someone like Buttgereit with enough audacity to give this disturbing topic its humanity. The film itself is actually seven short films each one dealing with violent death/suicide from different aspects. There are indeed some parts that will move you to tears such as a bridge (somewhere in Germany, we don't know where but that's not important) and on film captions of the occupations (no real names given) and ages of the people who have used the bridge to meet their end. At the very end of the film you are shown photos of smiling children obviously during more happier times. This scene got me emotionally more than any other. I have to spoil one thing but as a cautionary statement, there is one scene unfortunately that has become almost a trademark for Buttgereit: the obligatory castration scene. But get past that and this film is a wonderful, emotional experience. This one certainly has earned it's place on my all time top ten movie favorites. I feel very fortunate to have been given the opportunity to see such a marvelous film. Now if only it would be made available on DVD?