Review of Berlin Alexanderplatz

In November of 2007, Criterion released “Berlin Alexanderplatz” (1980) on DVD. It took me until recently to finish it. This is largely because the film is 15 ½ hours long, easily the longest movie I’ve ever seen. Does it still count as a film at such a length? Well it did get a theatrical distribution, though it is better known as a mini-series and mostly consists of hour-long “chapters” (like television episodes) that have their own titles and credit sequences. Struggling through to the bitter end got me thinking about movie runtimes and how length affects the viewing experience.

“Berlin Alexanderplatz” is based on the work of the same name by Alfred Doblin, a Joyce-style modernist novel once declared unfilmable. It was directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, icon of the New German Cinema movement, who considered it his crowning masterpiece. It was well received by critics in the early 1980’s and the Criterion release generated much excitement and praise. As a huge fan of Fassbinder’s BRD trilogy (which was also granted a stunning Criterion transfer) and a moderate follower of some of his other works, I decided that a viewing would be worth the commitment.

The story follows Franz Biberkopf (Gunter Lamprecht) beginning with his release from jail for manslaughter. Biberkopf vows not to return to the life of crime that first doomed him, but finds life in the economically depressed Weimar Republic to be harsh and depressing. He tries to stifle his loneliness with a procession of women, an abundance of alcohol, an ill-considered flirtation with Nazi politics and the dubious company of the criminals that haunt his favorite bar. None of this heals his damaged psyche and crippled emotions or fixes the underlying factors driving his downward spiral: poverty and unemployment. Occasional odd jobs and fleeting loves prove only temporary tourniquets for his misery.

After a few breakdowns and betrayals, Biberkopf finds himself aiding a heist and loses an arm in the ensuing chase. Though the lost limb is no help to his circumstances, the worse consequence is his striking up a friendship with Reinhold Hoffmann, one of the robbers, who secretly hates him bitterly and draws him into pimping. He is temporarily saved by the introduction of Mietze, a prostitute whose adoration for Franz knows no reason. However, his increased dependency on Mietze for unconditional understanding and love only positions him for a final fall. When she is murdered in a gorgeous forest, Biberkopf plunges headlong into madness.

Gunter Lamprecht’s performance holds the whole film together, occupying the screen in almost every shot of this titanic personal epic. He performs amazingly given the difficultly of the part, which includes hiding an arm for more than half the film, bursting with anger and frustration at intervals and spouting cryptic monologues while staring into space; all tasks that might be unrewarding and obnoxious in the hands of a less talented actor. The supporting cast isn’t too many notches behind, though they slip into the same narrative holding patterns so often that, even with the abundant screen time, they feel underdeveloped and incomplete.

Unfortunately, my praise for the film stops with Lamprecht. Fassbinder’s direction, while daring, turns the biography into a sluggish self-conscious death march. He turns to the Brechtian techniques that often make his work so intriguing and indelible, but exhausts them until they seem trite, pointless and painful. Occasionally throwing text onto the screen (usually quotes from the book) is one of the most obvious, and actually one of the most palatable examples (leading me to believe the book is pretty decent). The worst decision, rendering the film nearly unwatchable for someone like me, is an unremitting reliance on repetition.

Repetition is a killer. It was a lesson I wasn’t always willing to accept when my film professors drove it in, but I’ve since converted. I frequently find it at the root of problems with pacing, script, narrative progression, visual dynamism, interest, excitement, shock, etc. Fassbinder, for either thematic or budgetary reasons, absolutely exalts in it. Flashbacks, camera positions, locations, lines of dialogue, sounds, music, characters and situations all repeat with maddening insistence. Sometimes there is a façade of change, as with the rotation of female characters leading up to the entrance of Mietze, except that they all look the same, act the same and fulfill the same interchangeable purpose in the story. Even the themes get hammered home far too often, like an amateur essayist who thinks restating his thesis is the same as supporting it.

I generally welcome the related Brechtian themes of lack of progress and the inability of protagonists to overcome their obstacles. These concepts are often gutsy, powerful and admirably realistic in an industry that overvalues shallow victories and happy endings. But while I find such avant-garde ideas fascinating at 100 minutes, they are monotonous lessons at 931.

The unquestionable inevitability of Biberkopf’s decline makes all the minor ups and downs in the narrative blur together. The primary reliance on a half dozen relatively sparse sets prevents the viewer from escaping into visual appreciation, though Fassbinder’s camera movement and framing occasionally (not nearly often enough) revive the limited lifespan of the art direction.

Perhaps it’s just me. I know length impacts my taste. I don’t like very many television shows, for instance. One of my main complaints is the amount of filler. Most television shows have to cater to an audience that may be tuning in, possibly for the first time, at any moment. This means that personality traits, character allegiances, back-stories, major plot points, long-term goals, unusual constraints, over-arching themes and important locations have to be constantly reasserted to keep everyone up to speed. In general, the longer a show runs the more baggage it has to carry around and re-explain. Meanwhile, the original ideas and exciting freshness move in the opposite direction, ultimately reducing the viewing experience to character attachment, nostalgia and momentum.

I don’t mind a long film, but I like it to be lean. I even enjoy slow films (efficiency doesn’t necessarily mean rapid pace or dense story), if I’m given a healthy diet of food for thought, eye candy or artistic treats of other varieties. Efficiency is a virtue that can be exercised on any terrain, even in the company of minimalism, grandiosity, realism, poetics, character development or narrative progress.

What I don’t like is inefficiency, waste and repetition. The romantic subplot that exists for no other reason than that marketers think every film needs one. The phone conversation where the listener parrots every word for the benefit of the audience. The oft-repeated line trying to become a memorable catchphrase. The joke that occurs three times with a “surprising” twist on the third iteration. The dialogue that fills in backstory better left implied or gradually revealed. The cuts that serve no purpose except to stimulate the optical nerve. The shots that have no beauty, depth or style, but ensure that we are always looking at THE ONE MAIN THING important to the story. The music that forces an emotion that should be earned and self-evident.

Add length to that equation and it only gets worse. But then “add” isn’t the right word. Length, for me, is a multiplier. If a bad film takes up 90 minutes, that’s a missed opportunity to run some errands, or maybe go out for a nice dinner. It’s a minor offense; an artistic misdemeanor. If a bad film wears on for three hours, that’s a crime. It’s the murder of a whole evening.

“Berlin Alexanderplatz” isn’t terrible, but at 15+ hours mediocrity becomes pretty insufferable. If I was just tallying the highlights, I’d have to give the film a reasonably high score. I think many reviewers operate on that principle: that the sum of the best parts yields the value of the whole. In my mind, you have to divide the merits by the runtime and distribute it over the resources they had available. That might seem harsh for filmmakers. It asks them to maintain a high level of quality on every inch of film stock. It asks them to do more than throw money at the audience. I think it’s a fair demand.

Of course, you can take things too far in the opposite direction. There is no shortage of films that have been butchered on the editing table to meet that wholly artificial 2 hour cap. Hence the frequency of director’s cuts on DVDs that [usually] make films smoother, richer or more deeply felt. It’s a tough balance. It takes real talent to hone a film to its ideal state.

I think “Berlin Alexanderplatz” could have made a great film if Fassbinder had been constrained to a fraction of the time. The final 112 minute epilogue, for instance, makes a very decent standalone film. It's set mostly inside of Biberkopf’s crazed mind, with a compact barrage of surreal imagery and enough flashbacks and back-references to allow the audience to figure out the key events that tore apart his sanity.

Still, I think Fassbinder knew what he was doing. He made the film he wanted to make. The decisions about what to ship and what to snip belong, rightfully, to him and his editor (I’d make an awful producer!). Watching the whole thing just didn’t pay off for me and I can’t recommend it for others.

Walrus Rating: 4.5