35mm

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?

Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Added screening on Monday, May 19.

Harrowing and bleakly comic in equal measure, Fassbinder’s story of explosive rage focuses on a man with a perfect middle-class existence… until he beats his family to death with a candlestick.

DIRECTOR
Rainer Werner Fassbinder
YEAR
1970
COUNTRY
West Germany
RUNTIME
88 minutes
LANGUAGE
German with English subtitles
FORMAT
35mm
START DATE
May 17, 2014

Added screening on Monday, May 19.

Herr R. has a wife and a child to love and keep company, a respectable job as a technical engineer, and a medium-sized apartment with a garden and a TV set to slump in front of: the complete middle-class existence. One night after work, as his wife idly converses with a friend, Herr R. beats both women and his child to death with the base of a candlestick. Fassbinder’s detailing of Herr R.’s empty existence is harrowing and bleakly comic in equal measure, exposing the creaking gears within the seemingly well-oiled mechanics of daily life. Fassbinder called this, perhaps not without some pride, “the most disgusting film I ever made.” He would return to a similar story of explosive rage from a completely different narrative perspective in Mother Küsters Goes to Heaven.

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?
Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?

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