A Couch Potato of Epic Proportions
The sleeve says:
"Rainer Werner Fassbinder's controversial, fifteen-hour-plus Berlin Alexanderplatz, based on Alfred Döblin's great modernist novel, was the crowning achievement of a prolific director who, at age thirty-four, had already made forty films. Fassbinder’s immersive epic, restored in 2006 and now available on DVD in this country for the first time, follows the hulking, childlike ex-convict Franz Biberkopf (Günter Lamprecht) as he attempts to "become an honest soul" amid the corrosive urban landscape of Weimar-era Germany. With equal parts cynicism and humanity, Fassbinder details a mammoth portrait of a common man struggling to survive in a viciously uncommon time."
The story:
"Based on Alfred Döblin's influential and prescient epic novel about the waning days of the Weimar Republic, Berlin Alexanderplatz traces the fall of Franz Biberkopf, an urban Everyman, as he attempts to make his way through a society compromised by unemployment, violence, anomie, and promises of social order proclaimed by conflicting political parties. Fassbinder not only adapted Döblin's complex narrative for the screen but also composed an original two-hour epilogue in which Biberkopf travels through a turbulent dreamscape emerging from his and Germany's experiences." - MoMa.org
I've always had a thing for European films, both classics and contemporary. Strange thing is I've never really fancied epic films much. I'm patient and I can wait, but I prefer the fast forward button more. Which begs the question, why this 15-hour film? The truth is, I have absolutely no idea. I just want to. I just feel like it. One thing's for sure, I'll need to hide the remote. Far, far away from arms reach.
I foresee saying to myself, sometime in the not so distant future perhaps, "Aha. There goes 15 hours of my life".
