Learning how to express emotion with Fassbinder

      

     In this film, "Fear Eats the Soul" is the central mantra, and Fassbinder certainly lived by this concept. While he only lived to be 37, he completed 40 films. In his short but prolific career, Fassbinder was bold enough to explore the most controversial themes of his time, including race/immigration, LGBTQ+ rights, Marxism, and Germany's fascist past. Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is simple, but it is beautiful and poetic. The color palette in this film is probably Fassbinder's strongest. Because Fassbinder worked so quickly, one might expect his films to lack in attention to detail, but this is generally untrue. While it is clear that his films are produced very quickly, his shots and edits feel entirely natural. He worked fearlessly, trusting his natural talent.

    In Fox and His Friends , Fassbinder mirrors his own struggles in love through Fox's character arc. Nobody forced him to make this; if Fassbinder wanted to use his talents to make standard, uncontroversial genre films, it is likely that he could have made more money and achieved more fame. Purely out of courage and artistic integrity (among the greatest artistic integrity in film), Fassbinder made Fox and His Friends to engage with the ugliest parts of his soul and reflect on his and his partners' mistakes. It is a classic rise-and-fall narrative, with circus worker Fox winning the lottery and therefore achieving the fastest possible form of social mobility. Immediately, he engages in a relationship with a bourgeoisie factory owner. However, Fox is quickly sapped of every penny of his lottery earnings by the exploitative ruling class so that the factory can remain intact. While it is a very personal emotional project, Fassbinder also executes a very complex Marxist statement. Fox does not perform any physical labor for the factory, but his sexual relationship with his partner is based chiefly on Fox's wealth, turning Fassbinder's body into a physical commodity of sorts (similar to how Ali is objectified and commodified for his physical features). 

    Has there been a more personal, emotive director than Fassbinder? Through the character of Fox, he parallels the pain of his own real-life relationships. Fassbinder was known to buy his partners expensive cars (he bought a man four Lamborghinis in one year) and other gifts using the money from his films, and multiple of his relationships involved cheating and domestic abuse. All of this is present in Fox and His Friends, and the film is all the more heartbreaking and poignant with knowledge of Fassbinder's personal life. The strangest part is that the film feels highly dramatized, but much of it happened in real life.

    The character of Ali seems like a curious outlet for Fassbinder's emotions, but he works similarly to Fox. While Ali seems to be somewhat wooden in his line delivery at first, this is because German is his second language. While the Germans around him are largely racist toward Ali, he is ultimately fetishized and commodified for his capability in physical labor. He is objectified by the women at the bar he frequents, who pester him for sex multiple times throughout the film. At the end of the film, however, Ali is given the central moral conflict. He cheats on Emmi, and we see how this torments him emotionally. He slaps himself on the face, cries and buries his face in his hands; we cannot help but feel for Ali. Though he speaks "broken" German, Fassbinder gives him the most emotional depth of any character. In fact, he punishes himself so much for his mistakes that he gets an ulcer, losing his physical "value". The most romantic sentiment in the film is the final shot, in which Emmi sits by Ali on his hospital bed. She has learned to love him beyond his physicality, and the final statement of the film ultimately becomes one about true, free love: what matters most in a relationship is loyalty and emotional connection, no matter what you look like on the outside.

    When compared to the Hollywood melodramas that Fassbinder idolized, Ali can be taken as an updated, layered exploration of the same themes of romance between "outsiders". For example, Vincente Minelli's Tea & Sympathy (1956) challenges the conservative notion of masculinity. While Minelli hints at the theme of homophobia that Fassbinder explored deeper than practically any filmmaker up to that point, the lead character, never actually "comes out". He is simply portrayed as less masculine than his peers (more interested in the arts than athletics, relates more to a middle-aged woman than his peers, etc.). This character and his romance with a housewife explore peoples' gaze on a romance using methods similar to Fassbinder: staring, talking behind their backs, or telling the "outsiders" off directly to their faces. While Fassbinder generally follows the technical aspects of prior melodramas, Ali updates the genre by tackling issues such as race and immigration which were too taboo for 1950s Hollywood.

    What is it that makes a bigot opinionated on someone else's romantic affairs? Through their respective melodramas, Fassbinder, Ray, Sirk and Minelli posit that cultural conditioning. Often times it traces back to religion or parenting, but above all else it stems from conformity.

    Barry Jenkins' If Beale Street Could Talk (2018) is the greatest melodrama in recent memory, using the setting and technique of Old Hollywood melodramas to make an allegorical statement about mass incarceration in America today. Fassbinder would be proud of this, as Jenkins not only made a great film but continued Fassbinder's revolutionary spirit of progressing society through these challenging works. Jenkins' films are more accepted than Fassbinders were, which acts as a testimony to what Fassbinder was able to achieve. However, as long as racism, homophobia and transphobia exist, these films need to be made.

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