Berlin Alexanderplatz (The Criterion Collection) [Blu-ray]

Please forgive me if these hastily scrawled thoughts on this subject are disorganized; it is only because of the depth of feeling I have for this film. Berlin Alexanderplatz was, as many have said already, an incredible, climactic, mind-bending experience. I bought it on a whim when I had a little extra money in the bank (I got it for $60 lightly used on Amazon) and I don't think I'll ever forget those several weeks of picking up lunch after class, coming back to my dorm, and watching an episode of Berlin Alexanderplatz. This is a labyrinthine film that routinely defies conventional film-watching expectations. When I finished, I was in an absolute daze. It was a true shock to my senses. I then proceeded to watch the interviews with cast and crew (Hanna Schygula's interview is particularly memorable as she mistakes key plot elements involving her own role of the film, which doesn't matter at all as she is a sensational actress, as Fatih Akin's The Edge of Heaven has proved once more) and begin researching the film, its makers and its time period. This film caused me to do copious amounts of research on the Weimar Republic, something I continue to this day. What is so interesting about the Weimar Republic is that it is the closest example we have today of what a society looks like before what might be called, for lack of a better word, an apocalypse. This film is, among dozens of other wondrous things, a vibrant, enigmatic portrait of a unique time, both real and surreal (and in light of what transpired in the times that ensued, surely this is a time which realism fails). The time is fascinating and evoked in a manner as piercingly true as biting your tongue. This is not a film pieced together from other films. This is not a pastiche; this is not Tarantino. This is far beyond such pettiness, a truth all the more dazzling when one considers Fassbinder's youth. This film is not derivative. The film is so achingly original that one perceives it almost as an art form unto itself. This is a film born of a new covenant. It is challenging. It does not categorize easily, nor can it be simply predicted. There is a world, an ocean of life in all its forms, in this film. This is a film that makes us better film viewers.Berlin Alexanderplatz is one of the undeniably transcendent film experiences I have ever had. There are scores of genuinely unforgettable moments and sequences that add and compound and culminate to make a frighteningly unified whole. It is a tremendous machine of humanity, artistry, and mortality. It is one of the few films that can genuinely, without hyperbole, be called works of genius, films that give so much, films that beg us, compel us to be better human beings, films that challenge our entrenched, uncontemplated sensibilities, enlarge our minds, ensnare our senses, and open the doors of our perception to undreamed of worlds and consciousnesses. Roger Ebert once wrote "A great movie acts like a window in our box of space and time, opening us to other times and other lands. The more windows we open, the better." This film may be the fire escape out of the whole, mad asylum. Or, it might be an open window on how a single man, and his society with him, got in. So, how good is Berlin Alexanderplatz? It's pretty good.

"BERLIN ALEXANDERPLATZ" (Fassbinder, Germany,1980)."We are too miserable for to be unhappy".Charles BukowskyThe first thing is that person, that comes out from about four years prison: He is Franz Biberkopf (A Superb!!! Günter Lamprecht). He has now to continue in the outside word jail, but now alone. He holds in the chest a guilty wound which seeks to cover with alcohol, prostitutes and disposable women from another main character Reinhold Hoffman (Gottfried John) a psychopath guy with a tin layer of lamb. Fassbinder was fascinated with this two characters, Franz and Reinhold, form Alfred Döbling's novel about the same name, manly because by their latent homosexuality, which was clearly the only explanation of a friendship highly unlikely in other circumstances.Franz Biberkopf murdered his woman, almost without notice, at least the first blow. She cried; face him, hoping that he could do something, in the positive side of a couple mood. But Franz is far away of the emotional side of the brain, and cannot continue shaving himself, with one of those blades that seemed swords of cavalry, and as in a reflex movement, he cut a pit what it cannot handle, like a dermal bump.That act of despicable impulsivity, transforms him into a paralyzed being by the possibility of the evil within. Germany is just through an economical crisis after of the First World War. There is a great economic depression, and a lonely man is only under his skin. It is an animal sentimental, but at the same time explosives. In his life stop by different women, but remains, as an angel love, Eva (Hanna Schygulla), which appear like a friend that is in love with him, but is living with a wealthy man. The other woman the he is love with is Mieze (Emilie "Mieze" Karsunke, by a young Barbara Sukowa, that was directed to act like Gelsomina, a Giulieta Massina's character in "La strada" - 1956. F. Fellini).After all, Franz Biberkof is without job, a pimp sometimes, because he loose one of his arms after to be betrayed by Reinhold, once. Subsequent to being released from jail, he strides, slips, falls from one stretch of his life to the next. He wants to be honest, but circumstances, "bar friends", enroll him again in merchandise robbery, and is betrayed by his companions, not one but several times. He is not allowed to have nothing not even love. Men like Biberkopf are everywhere, are the "Nowhere Man" of The Beatles song. They are just like floating corpses going in the current direction, the flood is their highway, doesn't matter were heading to.The editing and restoration of this film of 15 and a half hours, it was possible thanks to The Criterion Collection. The film was divided into six DVDs with 13 chapters, an epilogue to 2 hours and disk extras.The film, by extension, was shown on television, breaking record of viewers and inaugurated with much and inadvertently, the phenomenon of serial tale. That repeated after with Twin Picks of David Lynch, with decorum. Thanks Reine W. Fassbinder by "Berlin Alexanderplatz" and by all the other wonderful and master pieces that you created!!