"Martha" [Fassbinder, 1974].

[karamazov.]

Bleak, complex melodrama with dark comedy trappings, in which our miserable hero (the titular character) shortly after the death of an overbearing father, becomes married to a sadist and rapist. But her characterization as a superficially Dosty-type Idiot-hero is complicated by ambiguity and a kind of masochism: viz. her complicity in her own victimization; Martha is no Myshkin. With only occasional exceptions [e.g. Günter Lamprecht in "Berlin Alexanderplatz"], rwf characters resemble Kenneth Anger's in that they function essentially as models to be dressed in beautiful costumes, lit, and photographed, and Hitchcock's and von Trier's in that they act as puppets in his dramatic inventions, almost never seeming quite -real.- But here, I think Carstensen is also an exception, her performance so desperate and full of life and vulnerability, and within Fassbinder's stylized melodrama there is an excruciating realism and beauty. Also caught some references to Sirk.