Word: biberkopf
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...Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Berlin Alexanderplatz opens with a man's release from prison, and chronicles the difficulty he encounters in adjusting to the outside world. After taking part in a 15-hour marathon showing of the 1979 made-for-TV miniseries, one can certainly relate to protagonist Franz Biberkopf's temporary detachment from reality...
...spite of its admittedly imposing length, Berlin Alexanderplatz manages to maintain an audience's attention, mainly by presenting a superbly crafted plot and highly symbolic cinematography. The film, composed of 13 parts and an epilogue, details Biberkopf's unsuccessful attempts to lead an honest and "decent" life following his release. It is simultaneously a story of failed and successful relationships and occupations, flirtations with Nazi sentiments, dealings with villainous small-time gangsters and bouts with alcoholism and insanity...
...with romance and criminal intrigue, it is to be expected that the protagonist should, in proper Freudian fashion, relive certain events of his life over and over again, seeking control over events otherwise relegated to the unchangeable past. Fassbinder brutally exploits the technique of flashback in scenes in which Biberkopf recalls the murder of his girlfriend. Fassbinder offers different voice-overs in each reenactment, which appears in each of the 13 segments. It gets very tedious watching the same clip no less than 14 times, and the often-worthwhile meanings contained within the voice-overs are unfortunately lost when...
...aural techniques also fail precisely because they try so hard to be profound and meaningful: one can't help but wonder, for instance, whether there is supposed to be some deeper meaning to the playing of Janis Joplin's "Me and My Bobby McGee" during certain scenes in Biberkopf's dream sequence...
...Franz Biberkopf presses his hands to the sides of his head, as if he were about to pulverize a rancid cantaloupe, and screams. He staggers wildly about the apartment-house courtyard, its high walls allowing the merest tantalizing glimpse of sky. This is Germany, 1927. As the nation spun from the humiliation of Versailles to economic and social anarchy, and then into the toxic delirium of the Third Reich, so Franz spins. A laborer and part-time pimp who has just been released from prison after serving four years for beating a girlfriend to death, Franz has few resources...