The wheezing of uncrucified hope Love is sour, dream is a garbage bucket,
And the expectation of a miracle pulls the rock to the bottom.
There is nothing to do here except to eat.
It's scary to be killed, but it's more scary to kill.
I want to put my hands on myself, but...
(c) Dolphin
It was tonight, there was nothing to do. And even if it was at a different time of day, a group of young people without striped swimsuits still could not occupy themselves with anything. All the entertainment of young Bavarian burghers was reduced to pigeon gatherings on the fence, drinking beer in the nearest bar, mechanical sex and sluggish discussion of each other. A slight revival in the inert existence was made by the appearance in their area of a silent Greek guest worker.
Anfan terrible of the German new wave Rainer Werner Fassbinder in his second full-length picture is surprisingly minimalistic: monochrome, fixed camera, short frontal scenes, fragmentary dialogues, scanty scenery. “Katzelmacher”, originally born as a performance, and when transferred to the cinema, did not get rid of deliberate theatricality. Such simplicity not only visually attracts with its laconic elegance, but also contributes to immersion in the anemic atmosphere of aimless existence.
The director directs a pessimistic view of a generation lost between memories of Nazi heritage and dreams of consumerist benefits of post-industrial society. The heroes of the film are people with downed landmarks, not enjoying the rebellious time of hope and tender sadness. Spending days in their established company, moving around the same boring locations, periodically shuffling around like a deck of cards, they have long lost interest in each other. Exhausted conversations hang in the air, emotions are devalued, attachments do not deliver a Gescheft, and the only thing left is deadly boredom and ringing emotional emptiness.
Fake words of love and real Deutschmarks, given for sex. Lack of new ideas, development, desire to expand their horizons. Apathy-eaten monotonous existence. Primitive needs, barely reaching the middle of Maslow’s pyramid. This is the director’s vision of the generation of the 1960s, a generation that does not create anything idle petty bourgeoisie, thinking in the banal-everyday old-fashioned categories, where the measure of everything is neighborly approval or censure.
But the most terrible thing is that behind the apparent indifference to everything there is a deep discontent with life - empty, passive, giving no incentive to move forward, but generating aggression, destroying the inner world, like accumulating radiation destroys the immune system. And this anger is ready to immediately spill out when the right reason arises. In Katzelmacher, such an occasion is the appearance in the closed world of the heroes of the Greek worker, played by Fassbinder himself. Jorges is a stranger to them, but the wave of negativity that has struck him is not the result of national or social intolerance. This is, first of all, a manifestation of hatred for oneself, for one’s miserable existence.
The fight that occurred at the end of the film becomes a kind of catalyst, forcing the characters to bring to the surface their deep and securely hidden dreams. The finale of the picture is far from optimistic: there were no cardinal changes in characters, the worldview of the characters did not turn upside down, but at least they began to think about the future, getting a chance to escape from the quagmire that dragged them. The gaze of Hannah Shigulla is full of hope for another life, although, unfortunately, she does not know that this life is possible only if there is a desire to create it – with her own hands, here and now. This is the only way to put an end to routine monotony and say:
I will live!