Despair

This movie is disturbing. The main character seems to be going a bit crazy. And the political climate of the country looks no better. We know that the war is coming, and will be terrifying. The people in this movie seem to have a strange hunch about all this terrible possibilities just around the corner. They probably feel there's no hope of stopping the process. They decide to get drunk. To enjoy the last days of a dying world. But the guy might not be going totally crazy after all. He has a plan.

This is the first Fassbinder's movie i watch. It's not a bad movie but i was not satisfied. First 15-20 minutes were interesting, visually great, odd-in a good way- acting, i thought this was going to be a great arthouse drama. Unfortunately, during the next 40-ish minutes, movie derailed. It became dull, monotonous and incomprehensible. I don't have a problem with bizarre movies which are too surrealistic, even artsy, to make sense as long as they are interesting or there is something appealing, like a great acting performance etc. Nope, there was nothing like that.

I gave this movie 6 stars because in the last 40 minutes, movie got back on track. Finally it starts to make sense, it was even exciting at some point. I didn't understand everything i was watching but it was interesting and that's all that matters.

Still, i can't recommend it.

Dirk Bogarde stars in this 1978 Fassbinder film as Hermann, a chocolate factory owner living in Berlin during the Weimar Republic who suffers from dissociation. He dreams of escape. On his travels he meets a homeless man who he thinks can imitate him in a scam. This will involve his faked murder so that he can escape his life. His wife will then receive a substantial insurance pay out because of his supposed death. In reality Hermann will vanish to Switzerland, live below the radar and start a new life. Will Hermann's plan go without a hitch?

I love the mystery of this film. It really is a puzzle of a film and sweeps us along on it's gorgeous journey. Twist follows turn and back again.

The whole cast are perfect with Dirk Bogarde being perfect as Hermann. The screenplay is brilliantly adopted from a Nabokov novel by Tom Stoppard with snappy and wicked dialogue that positively crackles.

The look of the film is muted and also beautiful because of it. It lends massively to why the film works so well as it's visually and uniformly a treat for the eyes. Enjoy the ride which will keep you guessing until the final frame.

This was good enough to encourage me to read the original Nabokov novel but this Tom Stoppard adaptation as filmed by Fassbinder has real problems. Stoppard suggests that it had been his intention that although we would see Bogarde and his supposed doppelgänger as different, Bogarde's vision, within the film, would be of his own image. If that sounds complicated wait till you see the rather melodramatic screen version. Andrea Ferreol as the ample 'ever moist' child/woman is fantastic (even though it seems she was learning the language on set) but Bogarde is only competent in what is admittedly and almost impossible role(s). There is much going on here in the director's first big budget movie but I feel he should have kept things more simple and not got so carried away with the finer details and contradictions of the inherent absurdity and surreal elements so as to highlight the tragedy of 30s Germany. Interesting and always ambitious but ultimately flawed interpretation.

One would expect a combination of Nabokov and Stoppard would result in amazing cinema. Unfortunately, "Despair" does not count as great cinema, not even as a great Fassbinder film, even though it is a rare Fassbinder film made in English with a German locale. (The problems are similar to Malick's "A Hidden Life": here, too, people except Bogarde, speak English with a heavy German accent.)

Vladimir Nabokov wrote his novel "Despair" as a spoof of Dostoyevsky's "Crime and Punishment." The script includes lines referring to Dostoyevsky and Arthur Conan Doyle. "Despair" the film falls short of achieving/adapting the greatness of Dostoevsky or Conan Doyle. It is possibly because for Nabokov and Fassbinder the mental state of Herman (Bogarde) is paramount than the tale itself.

The audience struggles to come to terms with a clean shaven Herman suddenly sporting an elegant moustache in between sequences. If it was a fake moustache, the audience is not prepared for it by Fassbinder. Or were scenes edited out in the final cut?

Fassbinder was evidently quite familiar with Nabokov. Nabokov wrote Lolita with a lead character named Humbert Humbert. Fassbinder extrapolates the idea in "Despair" (or was it Stoppard?) by calling the lead character in "Despair" Herman Hermann, when Nabokov called him just Herman.

If there was one outstanding aspect in this film it was cinematographer Michael Ballhaus working with mirrors and glass panes in doors. One great shot, creditable to Fassbinder and Ballhaus, was of two Jews continuing to play chess at the street cafe as a Jewish shop is attacked by Nazis followed much later in the film by a distinctly similar shot of the same Jewish duo playing chess with non-distinctive clothes.

Another important aspect of the film is Fassbinder 's dedication of this quaint work to three mentally unstable geniuses: Antonin Artaud (the actor/playwright who introduced The Theatre of Cruelty) , Vincent Van Gogh (the painter who cut off his ear) and Unica Zurn (a painter famous for her paintings of torsos bound with string). And lastly several actors in this film and those supposed to play originally in the film were openly gay as was the director..