Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven

Rating:
Summary: Excuse me, can I exploit your personal tragedy?
Review: A bitingly clever film from Fassbinder. It apparently offended a lot of Germans when it was initially released, but is quite interesting to watch now as a document of Germany in the `70s. No one is the "good guy" here - the newspapers, the Communists, and the anarchists all want to use Mrs. Kuster's tragic story to their own benefit. Even the laughably ignorant Mother Kusters fails to become a sympathetic character. The woman just doesn't have a clue.

As in all Fassbinder films, the regular actresses steal the show. Ingrid Caven is lovely as the aloof nightclub singer. Irm Hermann isn't quite as strong as she is in `Bitter Tears of P.V.K.' or `Merchant of Four Seasons,' but she makes an impression all the same. Margit Cartensen and Karl Heinz Bohm are very picturesque as the "armchair Communist" couple - all ideals but probably not willing to make any real sacrifices.

Probably Fassbinder's most political film, and a very important piece of his oeuvre.

Rating:
Summary: Excuse me, can I exploit your personal tragedy?
Review: A bitingly clever film from Fassbinder. It apparently offended a lot of Germans when it was initially released, but is quite interesting to watch now as a document of Germany in the '70s. No one is the "good guy" here - the newspapers, the Communists, and the anarchists all want to use Mrs. Kuster's tragic story to their own benefit. Even the laughably ignorant Mother Kusters fails to become a sympathetic character. The woman just doesn't have a clue.

As in all Fassbinder films, the regular actresses steal the show. Ingrid Caven is lovely as the aloof nightclub singer. Irm Hermann isn't quite as strong as she is in 'Bitter Tears of P.V.K.' or 'Merchant of Four Seasons,' but she makes an impression all the same. Margit Cartensen and Karl Heinz Bohm are very picturesque as the "armchair Communist" couple - all ideals but probably not willing to make any real sacrifices.

Probably Fassbinder's most political film, and a very important piece of his oeuvre.

Rating:
Summary: Naiive Widow Out To Clear Murder/Suicide Husband's Name
Review: Fassbinder's most political film, mixes all imaginable elements dominating the news in 1970s Germany. The story begins with a radio news bullitin about a factory worker going berzerk, killing a supervisor, then himself. The man's lower class family (busy with small assembly "homework") engages in evening small talk, casually mentioning the news flash in their conversation. Minutes later the bad news arrives at the door.

Immediately the vulnerable "Mother Kusters" is hounded by reporters from the boulevard press. Twisting her words, as well as those of children and a pregnant daughter in-law, along with taking countless bad-angle photographs, the press has their story. The name of easy-going, kind and obediant Father Kusters is ruined.

Several characters bring definite color to this unusual story. Mother Kusters' 30-something daughter, an aspiring lounge singer (a la Marlene Dietrich) shamelessly exploits her newly gained celebrity status by initiating press interviews about her father's tragedy, then moving in with the questionable reporter, who also arranged singing work through "connections".

Mother Kusters soon is "lulled in" by some upscale and persuasive communists, who appear sympathetic, but eventually seem to be exploiting the poor old woman for their own political gains. Finally Mother Kusters ends in a bizarre trap she unwittingly fell for: A group of anarchists, under the pretence of assuring that her husband's name will be cleared, use the woman in a hostage stand-off aimed at the release of political prisoners. - The final scene suddenly stops in a freeze frame, with a brief written description of the immediate action to follow. WOW!

Although not among Fassbinder's great classics, this is an impressive film. The statements made here were originally (in the mid-70s) met with criticism. The treatment of communism and anarchy (in a not necessarily negative way) were seen as contrary to common acceptance of the day. Years after the Cold War's end, the story of "the factory murderer" seems dated. Still, a well-worth-seeing film!****

Rating:
Summary: Compassionate study of a woman, and a scathing social satire
Review: Like all of Fassbinder's best films, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven (1975) is many things at once. It is simultaneously a deeply compassionate portrait of a working-class woman and a scathing satire of her exploitation by the media and political factions, as she tries to clear the name of her dead husband, branded "the factory murderer." It is emotionally rich but intellectually dense, filled with arguments and counter-arguments galore; psychologically astute yet highly stylized and visually lush. It is a comedy, a drama, and much more. It is also an excellent example of how Fassbinder uses image and sound, often in subtle ways, to develop - and play with - his themes. A unique feature is that he wrote and shot two strikingly different endings (both are included on the excellent DVD), one for Europe, and a more hopeful one for the U.S. They provide two very different ways in which the title character "goes to heaven."

The character of Mother Kusters is remarkable for several reasons. Although Fassbinder often has a tendency to allegorize his characters (albeit in fascinating ways), even as he does here, Emma Kusters (Brigitte Mira) is both a potent symbol of The Mother and, simultaneously, a flesh and blood woman. When so many of his characters, not to mention people in the real world, are destroyed by their rigidity, her willingness to explore new ideas - to incorporate an increasingly complex view of the social world, her family, and even herself - seems a genuine form of optimism.

The film's literary roots also connect with Fassbinder's aesthetic and political aims. Although he attributed its inspiration to an obscure story, the key cultural "mother" is Gorky's in his 1906 novel, Mother (an indomitable Russian peasant woman, after having her political consciousness raised through a family tragedy, joins the Russian revolution). It was also dramatized by Brecht, whose theories of how to engage the audience's mind as well as emotions were a crucial early influence on Fassbinder. But sure to raise the hackles of his Leftist predecessors, Fassbinder takes some hilarious jabs at Communists and anarchists, not to mention right-wing journalists. With so much humor, many people consider this an outright comedy.

But Fassbinder also raises many serious, and still-relevant, social issues - about the nature of mass media and politics - even as he returns to one of his perennial themes, exploitation. And although he satirizes most of the characters, except Mother Kusters, he never dehumanizes them. Take the photographer/reporter Niemeyer (Gottfried John). He is tall, lanky, almost vulture-like, yet he comes across as sincere and likeable, even as he wheedles the most intimate details out of Emma Kusters - and even beds her crudely self-promoting daughter Corinna (Ingrid Caven). It would be easy to reduce Niemeyer, for cheap laughs, to a one-dimensional stereotype. But Fassbinder gives him considerable emotional, even moral, depth. And he is defended by Mother Kusters herself: "It's his job to create sensations. Everybody has to make a living." Fassbinder is merciless, and witty, at condemning the institution; but he ekes out some sympathy for the employees.

Fassbinder uses visual design to make his themes still more complex and involving. He begins not with an expected establishing shot, to show us where we are, but by holding on a closeup of Mother Kusters' hands, as she screws a round brown part into a small white plastic box, one after another after another. Eventually he reveals that she is working not in a factory but at her kitchen table, as she laments, "I'm getting slower." The routine is efficient, even graceful, yet dehumanizing. Not only does this establish her socioeconomic status and long-suffering character, it indicates the same type of repetitive work which drove (the never-seen) Mr. Kusters to murder and suicide. Throughout the film, Fassbinder also uses color in fascinating ways, contrasting the unfulfilled lives of the Kusters with bright primaries - blues, yellows, and especially reds. This is simultaneously satirical, poignant, and even beautiful. He also makes achieves visual coherence and thematic resonance through the use of shape. In contrast to the often comic tone, the dominant visual motif is oppressive, of narrow openings (in doorways, halls, corridors) between stark walls, often shot from twisted angles and in shadow.

Although I don't want to give away either of the surprising endings, I believe both are effective. Each gives characters and themes closure, albeit in dramatically - or comically - different ways, even as they bring to mind Mother Kuster's bittersweet key line: "As my [husband] used to say, you have to see the good in all people." Fassbinder understands that simple, but difficult, maxim too, as he explores the emotional complexity of characters and their lives, in a film without any villains, but with one extraordinary woman at its heart.