[3.4]
One of the strangest Fassbinder films, this is a full-on absurdist black comedy that gives good ol’ Rainer free reign to emulate John Waters and encourage some seriously severe overacting. Kurt Raab plays the deliriously scheming poet Walter Kranz, who we meet demanding money from his publisher (even though he hasn’t turned in any material). He is the ultimate pretentious artiste, convinced of his own genius (why can’t everyone else SEE that?). Yet, instead of writing, he spends his time playing on the weaknesses of submissive women, who relish his abuse. After killing one of them in a bizarre S&M encounter, Kranz manages to finally write some new verse… only its plagiarized from deceased 19th century German poet Stefan George. Undeterred, Kranz becomes convinced he IS George, and thus begins taking on George’s mannerisms, dressing like him, and holding literary salons with actors he hires to dress in period costume. When he learns that George was, in fact, gay, Kranz goes to a public restroom and awkwardly tries to get solicited. After a brief flash of penis, Kranz goes to a hotel with a burly guy, but just can’t bring himself to do anything sexual. Instead, he dresses the man in a toga and has him model at Kranz/George’s next salon. While all of this is going on, Walter’s wife, Luise, stomps around the house complaining that she is dying (but she still dutifully takes care of selfish Walter, and manages all the payments to his hookers and hired audience), Walter’s mentally handicapped brother plays with flies and molests any woman he comes in contact with, and Walter’s masochistic, obsessed mistress Andreé (with her fabulously large coke-bottle glasses) does whatever Walter commands of her (including going outside in the middle of winter wearing only a summer dress, hiding in the basement where she is abused by Walter’s brother, and tucking herself under a rug when Walter doesn’t want to look at her).
The casting is dynamite, with varying degrees of scenery chewing. Helen Vita is a shrieking, tsk-tsk-ing powerhouse as Walter’s overbearing, slowly dying housewife, Luise. Unlike most of the other characters, she isn’t characterized by a single-minded focus or goal, and perhaps its because she manages to display such a wide range of positions that she is the most sympathetic and rounded of the cast. Margit Carstensen is marvelously shrill and somewhat nerdy as the doormat who idolizes Walter for his poetry and power, but when she learns that he is as masochistic as her, she spits on him and storms off, his spell broken. The story plays out many of Fassbinder’s obsessions, notably sexual “deviance”, power dynamics, and the theatre (the staginess of the blocking is hardly filmic). And yet, instead of his more famous films that strategically and effectively employ his concerns in dramatic screenplays, SATANSBRATEN follows a desperate comedy ethos of throwing everything on screen and seeing what sticks. It’s a mess of ideas, plot lines, and jokes, and it mostly works itself out, but it certainly doesn’t gel like Fassbinder’s great works. Still, even as one of his lesser efforts, there’s not much else like it.
burning retina 