Don't make yourself an idol. The brilliant director Eckhart Schmidt shot mainly documentary films, and in the game he often worked in his early years. Also, this director was interested in youth subcultures, which is why he shot “Admirer” and “Gold of Love” after each other.
Despite the fame of the predecessor of the modern German avant-garde horror, “The Fan” is still more drama. The director was inspired by classic examples of world art, from F. M. Dostoevsky’s “Teenage” to Nagisa Oshima’s “Corrida of Love”. Desiree Nosbush, the future wife of the famous composer Harold Kloser, perfectly plays the main role and is not afraid to star in erotic scenes, despite his minor age. The plot of the film is quite relevant at all times.
A young pop singer, whose music will wilt his ears, becomes the object of adoration of the schoolgirl Simone, who constantly listens to his songs, watches him on TV and writes him letters with confessions of love, to which he receives no answer. Passion for an unattainable idol gradually fills the entire leisure of Simone, ousting friends, parents, study. She gives him ideal qualities, she is not confused by the abundance of young girls around him and it does not even occur to her that R, although famous, is quite a trifling personality, able only to have fun with women, and that there are many people around her with a richer inner world.
Eckhart Schmidt gives a picture of the life of Germany in the early 1980s, where the influence of American culture is quite palpable, and young people stubbornly seek themselves in this world, joining the hippie movement that has already come to an end in the United States, listening to rock music or fascinated by such a new phenomenon as pop. Eckhart Schmidt was one of the first to analyze the impact on the young soul of popular culture. The luxury of life of popular singers, their glamorous appearance fascinates many who are not so lucky in life. Parents who grew up in other times can no longer understand their children.
The director combines drama with road movie, and documentary style with thriller. From the very beginning, it is clear that this story will not end well, and that the blind adoration of her idol will lead the heroine to madness. Simone can’t even figure out whether it’s worth loving a stranger so faithfully. And where is the boundary between admiration of creation and worship of the Creator?
Eckhart Schmidt highly artistically shoots not only erotic scenes in which a naked 17-year-old fan seems especially defenseless against demons and the cold sexual calculation of R, but also the subsequent murder of an idol. And long before the story of Meiwes and Brandes, impressively brought to the screen by the outstanding avant-garde artist Marian Dora, and in full accordance with the long history of Garden Abe, the director embodies Simone’s desire to fully connect with the idol through the absorption of his body, when two become one. Before Schmidt, cannibalism was a metaphor, perhaps, only in Deodato and Margheriti, and even after a little cannibal films appeared that did not exploit the external side of this phenomenon. Remarkable in the atmosphere, quite delicately filmed scene of butchering the body and preparing the first dinner, was later vulgarized by many German butchers, Schnaas, Waltz, and others, in which maniacs with a special taste butchered the bodies of people. But that tension of feelings, a psychological spatter was achieved only by Dora, a former doctor who knows a lot about a person, although hiding, like a fool, with provocation and exploitation.
Do not think, however, that knowledge of the finale, and so replicated on horror sites, somehow can spoil the viewing. After all, the essence of the work is not at all in individual parts, but in the aggregate impression. Schmidt brings to a logical conclusion the motive of adoration by fans of his idols, at the same time showing that the connection with his beloved in a symbolic-erotic act of cannibalism did not bring Simone peace. She remained an unhappy child in need of love and understanding. Her mind erased the murder from memory, drove into the subconscious, and now Simone is writing letters to R again, fantasizing about how well they will be together.
Unfortunately, the work of Eckhart Schmidt is little known. He somehow lost himself against the background of his contemporaries, not only quite recognized R. V. Fassbinder, V. Herzog, V. Wenders, F. Schlöndorf, but also more avant-garde Rosa von Praunheim and Werner Schroeter. It can only be compared with Hans-Jürgen Sieberberg, a few led director of the same years, fundamentally scolded by Fassbinder (film critic Sergei Kudryavtsev on this occasion wittily noted that, apparently, due to the fact that Siberberg was a rare straight in the environment of Fassbinder).
At the same time, Eckhart Schmidt aesthetically belongs to the new German wave, with its analysis of existential problems. The difference from the great existentialists (Antonioni, Bergman) among the Germans was only in the fact that they tried to combine the philosophy of existence with a social platform, well, about as it was in Sweden during the period of Furtiotalism, which is especially pronounced in the work of Alpha Schöberg. So in this quiet masterpiece of Schmidt, the problems of human existence in an evil and absurd world seem to grow out of the social stratification of society. Children are increasingly drawn to marginal cultures, and fathers cling to patriarchal life. And all this is superimposed on the social apathy caused by the turmoil experienced by Germany.
Schmidt, in his own way, also analyzes postwar syndrome. Where can the sprouts of life reach, but to the images of the culture of America-the savior, who planted democracy in one half of divided Germany. And in the other half, the Communists ruled, weaving the minds of the young inhabitants of the GDR with the bonds of propaganda.
The tragic history of post-war Germany, as if frozen at a crossroads, gave fertile material for creativity to many directors. You will inevitably agree with the idea that true creativity is possible only through resistance, that there is too much freedom in a calm and well-fed bourgeois environment. In the polyphony of radio voices, screens, intrusive advertising, glossy magazines, one’s own individuality is lost. Man becomes only a consumer of "spiritual" goods.
That’s why “The Fan”, despite the bad reputation of the first splitter, still attracts attention, and, after looking, you are convinced that this is undoubtedly a great movie. A sensitive documentary director caught a certain nerve of time, only the nascent era of mass culture, turning everyone into spiritual cannibals, striving to know as much as possible and as best as possible to resemble their idols and favorite stars.
9.5 out of 10