Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #63202 in DVD
• Released on: 2006-05-30
• Rating: Unrated
• Aspect ratio: 1.33:1
• Formats: Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 88 minutes

Amazon.com
Rainer Werner Fassbinder turned to color for his fourth film, a bleak portrait of middle-class banality. Kurt Raab, the plump, baby-faced art director usually cast as the director's most pathetic characters, stars as Herr R., a seemingly successful middle-class professional and happily married family man who stumbles through life like a grinning zombie. As one might guess from the title, Herr R. (an appropriately vague, undistinguished character that Fassbinder leaves unnamed to better stand in for a German everyman) is about to go over the edge, and the film shows us why in relentless, numbing detail. At work he's an insignificant figure of ridicule; at home he escapes into endless hours of TV when not killing time with empty small talk (largely improvised by the cast), and he soon slips into a listless depression compounded by constant headaches. Fassbinder and codirector Michael Fengler don't make the experience easy for us. The film is as purposely banal as the chatty droning of the soundtrack, shot in a hypernaturalistic approach with a palette of muddy, dull colors that give the picture the quality of a faded Polaroid. There's a genius to the gesture, and the film marches inexorably to a harrowing climax, but it's not for all tastes. Even Fassbinder fans admit that this is a tough film to get through. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Exquisite Fassbinder demands repeat viewings
This film requires concentration and repeat viewings. Fassbinder employs exceedingly long takes and a relatively still camera to portray a man slowly being led to the end of his tether.

Herr R (Kurt Raab, a Fassbinder regular) is everyman. Indeed, each scene conveys the sheer drabness of his daily routine. Work, wife, in-laws. None of it registers. Despite the perfect middle class life--emotionally, he's stone. It has been said that he is invisible in this film. Certainly, he is not seen as something particularly dynamic or magnetic. He doesn't attract people, none of his co-workers seem interested in him personally. Likewise, he doesn't seem interested in them.

But he does feel. He's passionate about music, sings a gorgeous, heartbreaking ballad that causes him to sigh slightly and look even more wan and dejected than usual. His wife bores him, her friends irritate him. Work is a release of sorts, but he's not making any progress there. He tries to impress the right people but he ends up making a total ass of himself.

All of these factors lead him on a particular course. Hence, the title of the film. The key to answering it is careful, patient viewing. This is a brilliant example of building up evidence to support myriad theses about the motivations of a fundamental character. Just be focusing on Herr Raab's face provides essential clues as to the forces that drive him towards his destiny. Great film.

mesmerizing
This is a film that should not be too thouroughly explained prior to watching. Mostly it is a series of the every day happenings in the life of Herr R, a reticent underachiever. He is the child of a certain spiritless bourgeois existence. We watch him at his job, not quite making points with the boss, not quite winning the favour of his coworkers. We watch him try to teach his average, but slightly dreamy, son to pronounce properly. We watch his wife hosting the self-absord and catty neighbors to tea. In short, we watch an unextraordinary bit of an unextraordinary life, which is somehow familiar and for some reason completely entrancing. As one watches it can't helped but be asked why wouldn't Herr R run amok?

Don't you feel like Herr R sometimes?
I just finished watching Funny Ha Ha, a cinema verite, "mumblecore" film, and I thought of this film. This film is done is the same realistic style as that one, except this is much darker, brooding, tense, and funny. I adore Fassbinder, and I've seen this film a few times. It has a really creepy power to it, a tension that you can't really explain. The takes are very long (as opposed to Funny Ha Ha), and there is an unmistakeable bleakness to the proceedings which makes this film memorable (and a lot more memorable than Funny Ha Ha). Fassbinder captures the boredom and underlying violence of middle class morality, and it explodes in the final scene, which is realistic and terrifying at the same time. And there's something sad here, you feel for Herr. The scene in the record shop is kind of poignant, considering the 2 shop girls are mercilessly making fun of him, and he's oblivious to it. His family is very similar as well, mocking him for attempting to be human and frail, where others hide their insecurities through their bullying and coldness. So when the ending comes, you feel a sense of relief.