Day of the Idiots (1981) - Werner Schroeter

Carol, a beautiful, young woman, is a damaged soul,  desperately seeking the attention of the world around her.  She routinely performes eccentric acts in public in an attempt to be noticed, unable to break free of the cold world she feels around her.  Her boyfriend doesn't share her same eccentric qualities, being a sensitive, considerate man, who seems to have adjusted well to the social normalities of society.  Carol wants him to express his love in some way for her, even attempting to force some display of physical affection. Unable to take the pressure anymore, Carol reports herself as a terrorist to the authorities, seeking some strange form of solace in the asylum.  Werner Schroeter's The Day of Idiots is a perplexing and ambiguous piece of filmmaking about a group of deeply damaged woman.  The key to trying to understand Schroeter's nightmarish study is not take what occurs literally, understanding that much of The Days of Idiots seems to be told on a symbolic and allegorical level.  While a film like this is certainly up to many interpretations, Schroeter seems to using these damaged woman's struggles as a metaphor for the importance of personal needs, desires, and idenity.  While in the contruct of the narrative these woman are deeply disturbed, on a surrealist level they appear to represent oppression of the individual, with the mental institution being a symbolic representation of the social standards and norms of society.  One could also argue that Schroeter's film is a deeply unconventional story about a woman's quest for love, with Carol being driven mad by her boyfriend's lack of expressing his affection. Even the final sequence, when Carol escapes the mental hospital and is free from the oppressive regime she appears aimless, stillunable to find what she has always been looking for in 'love'.  Death comes in the form of a car accident, offering Carol another way out of her suffering.  Even if Schroeter's film is merely an outlandish excuse for him to create a haunting portrait of insanity, The Days of the Idiots succeeds with flying colors, being a cinematic barrage of suffering and torment.  Possibly Werner Schroeter's most challenging film of all, The Days of the Idiots is a unique cinematic experience that is open to many interpretations.  

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