Mother Küsters' journey to heaven
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| Original title | Mother Küsters' journey to heaven |
| Country of production | Germany |
| original language | German |
| Publishing year | 1975 |
| length | 120 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Rainer Werner Fassbinder |
| script | Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Kurt Raab |
| production | Tango movie |
| music | Peer ravens |
| camera | Michael Ballhaus |
| cut | Thea Eymèsz |
| occupation | |
| |
Mother Küsters' Journey to Heaven is a feature film by film author Rainer Werner Fassbinder shot in Frankfurt am Main .
action
Because of mass layoffs, the worker Küsters first kills his head of personnel and then kills himself. He leaves behind a helpless mother Küsters. Neither son Ernst nor his wife Helene want to be associated with the factory killer and move out of the shared apartment. Daughter Corinna benefits from the death of her father, she can use the unexpected publicity for her career as a chanson singer. On top of that a published reporter of a tabloid a defamatory article. Mother Küsters found protection for a short time with the DKP people Karl and Marianne. There she feels that she is being taken seriously, joins the party, but hopes for her husband's rehabilitation in vain . She confides in the anarchist Knab, who with friends occupies the newspaper editorial office that published the tabloid article. There are hostages taken and the story ends tragically.
background
For his film, Fassbinder was inspired by Piel Jutzi's socially critical classic Mutter Krausens Fahrt ins Glück from 1929, which shows parallels in character constellation , plot and course. Fassbinder shot two versions from the end of the film. The one mentioned in the plot is faded in in titles, in the alternative ending the hostage takers give up and the film turns out well. The alternative ending was used in the US version.
reception
At the Berlinale 1975 the film caused tumults. The audience furiously attacked Fassbinder, and in the end he was presented with a roll of toilet paper as a prize. Not so in the USA, because in the summer of 1977 a large Fassbinder retrospective opened at the New York Film Festival Mother Kuster Goes To Heaven , which was enthusiastically celebrated. Mario Adorf remembers that up until that point in time, every American smelled a Nazi in German . Fassbinder, on the other hand, who stood for a young German cinema that critically examined its past and present, was fully accepted. With Fassbinder, the image of Germany that prevailed in the USA changed.
Reviews
“The fate of a widow whose husband has killed his boss and himself out of indignation over the announced mass layoffs and is shamelessly exploited for the interests of the press, advertising, party and anarchists. A rigorous, well-constructed teaching piece about people's egoism, their inability to act in solidarity and the seduction of the innocent. "
“[...] he (Fassbinder dV) brought me the script for MOTHER KÜSTERS 'DRIVE TO HEAVEN. I read that and then went to him in the management room, where he was sitting with his boots and a floppy hat, and then I said to him: "Tell me, I've read this book now. I know that you are against the right I know that you are against the left, against the extremists, against this and that - who are you for? " There was a pause for a moment, then he took his boots off the table, opened his eyes wide and was actually amazed at the question himself and then answered me: "You know, I only see where things are burning and where things are going wrong and where what stinks. And whether that's right or left, up or down, I just shoot in every direction. " That was Fassbinder. "
“The film begins like a sequel to Why is Mr. R. running amok? […] (The film, d. V.) seems like a pessimistic response to Piel Jutzi's important, socially critical film from 1929, Mother Krausen's Drive to Luck […] (the film, d. V.) is thus […] the political one meant film by an apolitical director. "
"In this film, too, Fassbinder" captures "his characters in frame-like images, be it in mirrors, door frames, windows, etc. They are prisoners of themselves and of a society that is" ordered "by functional elements and instrumental structures. Neither the DKPisten, nor Niemeyer, Corinna or Helene and Ernst, but also Mother Küsters can escape the "assigned framework". In retrospect, the story unfolds as given, almost determined by the mechanisms of a society in which the repeatedly propagated freedom reveals itself as direct and indirect compulsion, even as imprisonment. "
“Seducibility and lack of human instead of ideological solidarity in Mother Küsters' Journey to Heaven (1975), one of the most skeptical and bitter films ever made about the Federal Republic; [...] "
Individual evidence
- ^ Claudia Lenssen: Film of the Seventies. In: Wolfgang Jacobson u. a. (Ed.): History of German Film. Stuttgart, 1993.
- ↑ [1]
- ↑ Michael Töteberg: Terror and Despair. In: Ders .: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Rowohlt's monographs. Reinbek near Hamburg, 2002. p. 104.
- ↑ Jürgen Trimborn: A day is a year is a life. Rainer Werner Fassbinder. The biography. Berlin 2012. pp. 256 and 276f.
- ↑ Mother Küsters' Journey to Heaven. In: Lexicon of International Films . Film service , accessed June 17, 2017 .
- ↑ cit. n. Hans Günther Pflaum: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Pictures and documents. Munich, 1992. p. 43.
- ^ Wilhelm Roth: Annotated Filmography. In: Peter W. Jansen (Ed.) And others: Rainer Werner Fassbinder. Frankfurt am Main, 1992. pp. 177-180.
- ↑ [2]
- ^ Hans Günther Pflaum, Hans Helmut Prinzler: Film in the Federal Republic of Germany. Munich, 1992. 1997, 1st edition p. 30.
Web links
- Mother Küsters' Journey to Heaven Film and background information from the Rainer Werner Fassbinder Foundation , Berlin.
- Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven in the Internet Movie Database (English)