Watched: Händler der vier Jahreszeiten (The Merchant of Four Seasons)

I really like Rainer Werner Fassbinder. I remember seeing this documentary about him and his contemporaries which really painted him as kind of a junkie egomaniac lunatic, but then again, what artistic genius isn't at least a little bit of one of those things? While he did come of like a bit of the tortured genius, he was also a funny guy. For me, his movies' sense of humor, their steady pacing, their extremely careful and deliberate use of music and ambient noise, and their heavy symbolism strikes a chord. Plus the guy knows how to use a pan. Really well.

I can also appreciate his constant reusing of the same actors, something plenty of directors I love (David Lynch, Darren Aronofsky, Christopher Guest, Sergio Leone- off the top of my head) do. Do directors this because they find actors (and crew, too- just look at Lynch's collaborations with Badalamenti or Aronofsky's with Mansell) who just work for them? I think it makes Fassbinder even more interesting because he was such an incredibly difficult person. Just look at his relationship with Hannah Schygulla, who has showed up in so many of his films (including this one). Apparently for a while she refused to work with him because he was so insufferable. But like Herzog and Klinski, she and Fassbinder made amazing, wonderful movies together. Was it because of, or in spite of their troubled relationship? Or were these relationships so tumultuous because of the work being wrung from them? I'm sure someone has written more about this, and I'm just being intellectually lazy. Maybe I'll spend the day doing some research.

Another one in this film who pops up again and again in his stuff is Irm Hermann, who plays the condescending, sort-of sexy, ambivalent wife to pretty great effect here. I think I liked her better as the masochistic assistant in The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant, just like I liked Schygulla and Klaus Löwitsch better as the doomed Hermann and Maria Braun than as poor Hans Epp's old war buddy and sister. But this is what kind of makes his casting these people over and over again so great- not only do we get to see just how much talent they have, but we can actually pick and choose our favorite version of them.

But perhaps because of these other, and in my mind better, options, The Merchant of Four Seasons is not my favorite of Fassbinder's stuff. I like it more than Katzelmacher (which also featured Schygulla and Irm Hermann) but then I like most movies more than Katzelmacher. Except maybe Star Trek: Nemesis. Fuck that movie.

So yeah, even though I think this explores economics and post-war German relationships in a really interesting way, most of Fassbinder's stuff seems to do that, and I liked it better in The Marriage of Maria Braun, Lola, The Bitter Tears of Petra Von Kant or Ali: Fear Eats the Soul. They all explore many of the same ideas, of survival and the need for love/validation; how these two needs clash and collude, what happens when one wins out over the other, and what it means to even be considering the two in a Germany that may never be what it once was.

That said, this still has some great stuff.

Also, poor Hans Epp. He just can't win, can he?

I swear Fassbinder has used this exact shot in other movies. Irm Hermann is kind of a weird looking actress- she's got sort of a doughy, uninteresting face sometimes (like here, and in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul) but then other time she can look really beautiful, like she does in Bitter Tears of PVK. She's in amazing shape (I should know, since it wouldn't be a Fassbinder film if there weren't a gratuitous shot of a woman naked once every 20 minutes!) and yet sometimes she just looks so utterly frumpy and potatoesque. I guess that's a tribute to how much she brings and takes away to/from her character with just her face and body language. So, kudos Irm Hermann! For being kind of unusual looking and making the most of it. Actually, she looks kind of Kirsten Dunsty in this shot, doesn't she? I think that might be a fair description of her. Irm Hermann: the proto-Kirsten Dunst, except more potatoey, talented, and German.