kaspian-1

I had never seen any of the work of Schlöndorff prior to watching this film, so Fangschuß came as an overwhelming surprise, a movie whose pathos and displays of cinematic brilliance (Igor Luther) seem like something between the thanatotic films of Bergman and the dreamlike confusions of some of Fellini's work-- Through a Glass Darkly and La Dolce Vita come to mind. More then any film I've ever seen, Fangschuß seems to capture that terrifying collapse of ones life into a sort of unpredictable madness and ambiguity, the torture that the films personal relations depict overshadowing the brutality of the war itself, in a way that all the while juxtaposes the themes of love and death in a way I had hitherto not thought possible. Certainly not light watching-- but I'd recommend this film to everybody, especially since so few people seem to have heard of it.