Le rôti de Satan

Rainer Werner Fassbinder's 1976 dark comedy that for all intents & purposes is not for everyone. A sardonic writer is strapped for cash & looks for any way to refill his coffers. He lives w/his dying, neglected wife & his brother, who is virtually non-communicative, loves to play w/dead flies & occasionally pinch the breasts of any strange woman who visits their apartment. Our anti-hero may not share his bed w/his hausfrau but he does invite a hooker over to the house for love-play (his wife has to foot the bill) & he tortures a number of sycophants (female of course) who fall sway to his supposed powers of verse while bilking them of any funds they have on hand. Not to mention the fact he killed a woman in the first reel & an annoying police detective keeps coming around sniffing for clues. More of an attack on creative pursuits (in this case the artistic scribe) than an out & out laugh-fest, this is an excoriation of all things literary (at one point our blocked writer declares he has broken through & begun writing again only to be found out he's merely a plagiarist) w/all the attendant lunacy & fake hosannas mere mortals thrust onto writers when in reality there may be no there, there. Not a particularly likeable fable to be sure, this film still should be screened for those Fassbinder's completists (for a man who made so much in so little time before his untimely demise) hoping to gain some insight into the man's work & his outlook on the vaulted elite.

According to the description on the DVD I received of Satan's Brew from netflix this was the first actual full-on comedy that Rainer Werner Fassbinder directed. I imagine watching the film that it was something that was building up in him and basically, in a near literal expression in his art, exploded. This film is about as kinetic and sharp-tongued as Marx Brothers, as insane as the best Mel Brooks, and even has some of that completely f***ing gonzo sensibility that one only finds with other tales-of-writers like Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas which has little to do with actual writing and mostly to do with how far its creative genius will go in excess and other "shenanigans." I can probably make more comparisons, but it might be unfair to the success Fassbinder pulls off here: it's as inspired as all of those, but it's all him, his natural excesses and *big* personality coming out in the cracks (big cracks) of the story and the character Walter (Kurt Raab).

Simply put, this movie is not just funny, it's hysterical. It's so hysterical that you'll laugh at yourself while laughing at what's going on on screen. Fassbinder's tale of a writer who hasn't written in years, spends all of his advance money on whores, has a lunatic brother obsessed with flies and having his way with them, has a wife whom acts more like a mother than anything (albeit she reminds him it's been 17 days... no, 18 days since sex last happened), and then at the end of his rope financially and mentally and with a really (more than relatively) crazy sycophantic woman following him everywhere he goes turns to pretending he's a homosexual 19th century poet, is like a loaded baked potato. Really loaded; you'll wonder where something might suddenly pop, until something else interesting happens - Fassbinder will write his characters and direct his actors in moments of seriousness, taking us into moments that do feel real and not just super absurd pieces of German theater.

Suffice to say it helps that Fassbinder has the exact right person to play this unlikely (very unlikely) anti-hero with Walter: Kurt Raab has a look that is devilish, diabolical, slightly seductive and with the possibility of violence or the unexpected at the drop of a hat. He's also as funny as the material can get him to be, which includes saying random lines like to a leering restaurant patron, "Quiet, you person!" Sometimes just his demeanor is amusing, and also frightening and highly charged; he is in a way like the Cartman ala South Park for Fassbinder, as a figure who is pretty twisted, verging on if not just evil (dont assume anything with that opening murder!), and surrounded by a league of people who he can manipulate or feel crossed by or just not know what to do with (his "biggest fan" whom he make walk out in the cold in a thin raincoat or stay under a friend's rug). Just watching him react to the brilliant actor playing so over the top the fly-fixated brother is classic stuff.

Towards the end it becomes grim, and possibly stranger than ever. It's also overall not something you'll want to show your mother (unless, you know, your mother is a Fassbinder fan or into crazy German cinema). But for a certain niche audience it's about as uproarious as any anarchic comedy, and in fact as beautifully directed as anything of the great slapstick or surrealist days. In this case, they go hand in hand; it's one of the director's very best. A+

In the case you've seen a lot of Fassbinder's films, this is worth a shot. You will definitely not be bored, so there's that. The film can be abrasive and there really aren't any likable characters. If you don't like that kind of stuff then avoid this. I can't blame you. I hated the first hour, then I reluctantly started respecting it, realizing that it was a satire and black comedy not a straight drama, pi**ing on the myth of the artistic genius and the wide berth we grant them (or did before the Me Too movement).

This protagonist actually reminded me a lot Pablo Picasso, a notorious wife-beater and all around jerk. Of course no would pay to see their sacred cows brought down a peg, so we have stand-ins like this guy. But the critique still works.

It's a biographical film, but not of the typical hacky kind that every director seems to make. Fassbinder had undoubtedly seen a lot of sycophants and brainless hangers-on in his life, self-aware enough to sense how full of **** people were when they were in the presence of a celebrity, knowing that he really could only trust a few people, compelled to "develop" and chronically produce or become irrelevant. Fassbinder would know. He died after making forty films in a decade, his heart exploding from too much coke.

...a bonafide screwball comedy. I love this movie mainly because it is nothing like Ali:Fear Eats Soul, Fear of Fear, or Martha. Those movies are excellent but most directors stick with what they know they are good at. This movie is like getting hit in the back of the head with scrambled eggs.

The plot is about a deadbeat yet famous poet played by Kurt Raab who is plagued by writer's block. He gets into trouble fuelled by his idleness. During a brief moment of creativity, he discovers he inadvertently copied word for word Stefan George. That makes him believe he is morphing into George but there is a problem when it comes to sexual preferences. The scene where he learns he is not George is hilarious. So are the scenes with Margit Christansen who is totally unrecognizable from the other roles she played in Fassbinder's movies. She plays a groupie to the poet who gets mercilessly abused psychologically by him and physically by his idiot younger brother played by Volker Spengler.

The humor can get extremely crass and its not for everyone but I enjoy it.

This is Fassbinder going for slapstick comedy, sort of. Everybody seems to have taken too much coffee or something in this movie. As I had seen some of his heavier stuff, this came as a very welcome surprise, with a quicker pace and some belly laughs. One of his best!