Rainer Werner Fassbinder abuses everyone and everything, including himself. Beautiful women adore him.
Dealing with the works of Bertolt Brecht is largely an issue of whether you agree with him before the show starts, or not. If you do, you'll like it.... most of the time. If not, then never, because Brecht held that there should be nothing in the work to rouse the observer's sympathy. Certainly writer-director Volker Schlöndorff and star Fassbender do what they can to honor that dictum in their translation of Brecht's seldom-performed work to the screen. Indeed, I will say that they have succeeded, but am left wondering whether it's an effort that should have been made. It's true that the new German cinema of the 1970s and 1980s looked upon humanity, and Western Civilization, as a blight upon the universe, but few of the practitioners save Herzog seem to me have managed more than an exercise in self-loathing.
Very well, you have convinced me you're loathsome. Now shut up and go away.
Perhaps that is why Brecht's widow stopped exhibition of this movie in any form. The ban was lifted in 2011 by Brecht's grand daughter. Perhaps she recognized the artistic value of this version, or perhaps she wanted the extra royalties it would bring.
