Set in 1930s Germany, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Despair tells the story of Hermann Hermann, a Russian exile, who runs an established chocolate manufacturing company in Weimar, Germany. Cuturally and politically disconnected from everyone and everything around him, Hermann Hermann begins to plot his escape from his everyday life. Hermann decides that the only way to escape his bankrupt business, vapid wife, and increasingly racist German society due to the rising Nazi party, is through faking his own death. Finding a man of lower class who bears a striking resemblance to himself, Hermann begins to strike the plan, seeking a way out of the madness of the world around him. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Despair is a bizarre, surreal mix of influences and styles that pulsates with passion and melodrama, though never quite reaching the levels of some of Fassibinders best films. Fassinbinder's style is on overdrive with Despair, using a bombastic sea of glass and mirrors to reflect on the beautiful mise-en-scene that is compartimentalized in every sequence. While visually the film is stunning, with Fassbinder's use of mirrors, compositions, stellar camera movements, the melodrama comes off surprisingly dull. I had a real hard time getting invested into the characters in this film, with Fassbinder distoring perception throughout, creating a barrier that at times makes the viewer question what exactly is real and what is being imagined by Hermann Hermann, a man who feels like he is being driving to madess. I understand this is intentional but it didn't feel so all the time, thogh I loved how Hermann routinely sees himself outside himself, with the desire so strong to be free that it is beginning to warp his perceptions. What I found most interesting about Despair is how Fassbinder seems to be commenting on the positive qualities of suicide, showing how death can serve as a way of escape from the cruelty's of life, saving oneself from utter mental destruction. Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Despair is can be an unpleasant experience at times, being far from one of the filmmakers best films, though Despair is an intelligent and provocative psychological drama with a whirlwhind of style that keeps it interesting.
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AuthorLove of all things cinema brought me here. Archives
June 2023
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