Berlin Alexanderplatz

We have here a man - Biberkopf - haunted by his past and confronted from all sides by people trying to break him. He has made an oath, he will maintain this oath, he cannot maintain this oath; zum Rhein, zum Rhein, zum deutschen Rhein [whatever happens, this cannot end well]. In the league of literary adaptations there have been few that have blended creativity & devotion to its source so well; the rich symbolism, metropolitan tones, and rhythm of Döblin are brilliantly composed by Fassbinder

There is something very very German in this movie, like all other movies of Fassbinder, Biberkopf is the perfect protype of the lower-middle class German citizen who sways between prosperity and misery, virtue and vice, vividness and boredom. In that sense the plot shares the general theme of the antagonism of the good and evil in the German tragic drama and Fassbinder tries to emphasize the everyday dullness of the German life despite the everchanging modernist background.

Well worth seeing. Yes, all 15 1/2 hours of it. Some parts move faster than others, but it's never dull. Imparts unto you serious bragging rights just for having seen it, since it's kind of like the Mount Everest of art films. It's also NOT what you might expect

Schnürsenkel!

The look is quite unusual: a mix of soft-focus shots where everything seems to glow & sparkle, some coarse, super-grainy telephoto-looking shots, and some flat, neutral-coloured, painting-looking shots. It really creates a dreamlike effect. The sheer length of the work is put to good use, making it one of the few films I can think of with the scope of a good novel, but the narrative keeps a pretty clear focus and the pacing isn't particularly slow -- it's just really long.

Well, this more or less lives up to its reputation as the Ultimate Feel-Bad Experience, i'll give it that much. Yet despite the not undeserved acclaim, i can't really bring myself to consider it one of my favorites of Fassbinder's, less because of any single substantial flaw than because 16 hours is just a hell of a lot of Fassbinder to take, and is almost inevitably a bit uneven despite the talent involved, and i'd be lying if it didn't seriously drag at times (on top of being a huge drag).

Fassbinder's mammoth, dreamlike portrait of a derelict man-baby and the whores, criminals, and drunks he associates with. Franz's inability to keep things straight and narrow seems to be both a personal failure and symptomatic of a greater systemic problem, in which the German people have been rendered broken and infantile, their eyes barely half open; easy targets for abuse and manipulation. It's no surprise, then, to see why the average German might have embraced his/her National Socialism...

Who needs Dekalog when there's Berlin Alexanderplatz?

Really fascinating and accessible story that feels like reading a wonderful novel. With the runtime Fassbinder has time to explore a multitude of themes, from individual ones like love and liberty, to social ones like poverty and politics. There are times when it's a bit of a drag but most of the time the human and social drama keeps you hooked. Then there's the epilogue which has a totally different style but works pretty well in its own way.

a bit of a slog at times but worth it for the epilogue