Warum läuft Herr R. Amok? / Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970)
A Film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
DVD5 | ISO | NTSC 4:3 (720x480) | 01:27:58 | 4,45 Gb
Audio: German AC3 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama, Art-house | 3 wins | West Germany
A Film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder
DVD5 | ISO | NTSC 4:3 (720x480) | 01:27:58 | 4,45 Gb
Audio: German AC3 @ 192 Kbps | Subtitles: English
Genre: Drama, Art-house | 3 wins | West Germany
A technical designer enjoys a comfortable life with his wife and child. He has the approval of his boss and is in good health except for smoking too much according to his doctor. His wife is visited by a girlfriend one Sunday afternoon. The man is bored watching television and grabs a chandelier and kills the conversing women and his child. In a chilling display of nonchalance, he contemplates his own death by hanging in this disturbing feature. This film was the fourth for director Rainer Werner Fassbinder.
IMDB
Among the early works of New German cinema auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (Warum läuft Herr R. Amok?) reminds me of my first feeble "fictional" writing for my collegiate Narrative Writing course—only due to theme and plot elements. I was fortunate to get a "C" on my piece of drivel that essentially lifted a banal car monologue my mom had blathered on the long commute to the university that I ended with an abrupt nihilistic suicidal dive in front of an oncoming car. My writing professor labeled my anti-organized religion diatribe "immature" and declared that the ending was far too "easy." Although somewhat parallel, Fassbinder's collaborative work with Michael Fengler plays much more provocatively than my long forgotten initial foray into fiction.
The story is extremely simple, and focuses primarily on a middle-aged couple. Easy going overweight Herr R. (Kurt Rabb) works as a draftsman in a small architectural company. The people at the firm are pleasant enough, but their daily routine of drawing straight lines with their T-squares is as mundane as their social conversations that consist of generic jokes. Herr's wife (Lilith Ungerer) similarly maintains their boring bourgeois lifestyle—they watch TV, dutifully raise their son Amadeus (Amadeus Fengler), and tolerate occasional visits from friends and family.
Herr R. appears to be virtually sleepwalking through the monotony. Demonstrating little initiative, we learn from his wife that he's hoping for a job promotion after he drinks too much at an office party. We also see him stoically listening to their son' teacher describe how "average" their son is academically and how he has reading problems because of a lisp. Soon after Herr drills his son to pronounce "sh" sounds properly—another display of shallowness, emphasizing that appearances and what others think are more important than any internal triggers.
The static camera captures the mood of the narrative perfectly. Herr R. moves from one humdrum setting to another—he only becomes animated when an old friend comes to visit him, and he begins reminiscing "old times" ad nauseum. Of course, this bores his wife to death (the audience as well). The same goes for Herr whenever his wife's parents or friends visit; in fact, it's during the final interminable conversation between his wife and a neighbor that previously restrained Herr R. "loses it."
It’s a shock. After lulling the audience into a quiet monotonous routine, the film jolts us provocatively. It's nowhere near the best of Fassbinder's work, but it's a provocative film that certainly isn't easy to forget—as long as you patiently sit through its entirety.
Fassbinder's fourth film, WHY DOES HERR R. RUN AMOK? was first shown in Germany in 1970 when the director was only 24 years old. Raab stars as an industrial draftsman who leads a mundane life with his mundane wife and his mundane child. Improvisational scenes of Raab at work, at dinner with his boss, out with his family, and at a record store fill the first 80 minutes of the film. The result is often boring, but that is precisely Fassbinder's desired effect. The camera doesn't budge–letting characters walk in and out of frame–and the sound is often garbled or barely audible. Within this tedium, however, Fassbinder captures a frustrating and uneventful existence.
The audience begins to feel the frustration Raab feels in his life. At the picture's end, Raab is watching television in his living room visibly annoyed at his wife's conversation with a friend. As their talk continues, Raab methodically walks to the television, grabs a heavy candelabra, and proceeds to bludgeon his family. The following day Raab goes into his bathroom at work and hangs himself. The emotional impact of the final minutes of the film is extremely powerful only in light of the tedium that precedes the murder. Because the audience feels a need to release tension, they are drawn into Raab's killing spree. The murders come as a shock, and one leaves the theater suffering from an emotional drain. Considerably less stylized than his other films, WHY DOES HERR R. RUN AMOK? is a product of Fassbinder's involvement with a group tagged "antitheater" that believed in a Socialist means of making films. This accounts for Fassbinder's sharing a codirection credit with Fengler (who later acted as a producer for Fassbinder). The result, however, is most definitely a Fassbinder film. A dark and bitter work that is difficult for some viewers and fascinating for others.
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