FREE ON YOUTUBE Rainer Werner Fassbinder - Welt am Draht

It was 1982 when Rainer Werner Fassbinder phoned Paris from Munich. He told a friend that he had flushed all his drugs down the toilet. All except a pinch of cocaine. It was supposed to be his last. Fassbinder died at the age of 36 - but WHAT a work he left behind! What a level he thought! Fassbinder made his debut at 22 and his last film at 36. In between are 40 films! It could well have been another 60 without this last pinch... Could he have maintained his level in old age? We can't know. But we can enjoy his stylistic vision, which he had created with such small budgets. The fact that Fassbinder left such a treasure is no wonder that Welt Am Draht was almost destroyed in it. You didn't know his TV Mini series for a long time. When we founded Filmkunstbar Fitzcarraldo, there were still legal disputes about Fassbinder's work and possible DVD releases. I preferred to buy Fassbinder DVDs in England - because of the English subtitles and because there weren't many releases in Germany. As an import we also got World On A Wire - which so many guests had asked for! The subject seems familiar today, but not then: the idea that the world as we know it exists in a completely different world. Possibly even as a computer simulation? The focus is on Stiller (Klaus Löwitsch), an engineer who works for Simulacron. This is a program that creates identities for characters who have no idea that they are not real. Simulacron promises to be the technology of the future, but there is an evil intent behind it: total control. Maybe even the programmers of Simulacron themselves will be manipulated by an even higher instance? However - when I looked at Welt Am Draht again - I did not get the impression that Fassbinder was so interested in its history. As in so many late works of New German Film, it is all about the pictures, the exercise in style itself. What do they look like this time, the characters embodied in so many Fassbinder films by the same actors? All Fassbinder characters speak the same strangely artificial language. Never; not even in the 70s, has a human ever spoken like that! All these figures belong to a pure art world. Stiller's dilemma is that his world simply doesn't make sense. He works for Vollmer (Adrian Hoven), who programmed Simulacron. Then he dives mysteriously. Then Lause (Ivan Desny), the head of the security department, also disappears. Just a moment ago Lause was talking to Stiller at a party... Strangest of all is the fact that no one has ever missed Lause or heard of him. A nobody. Fassbinder's camera now glides around his characters and opens impressive spaces in front of our eyes. In an occult way she demonstrates how all figures are connected with space and time. And among each other. The dialogues are ironic. Everything seems affected, like they drink or smoke. Everything is mannered. Take the test and imagine other famous cooper in World On The Wire: How would they have played? It's easy for me to imagine! Fassbinder is the great puppeteer. Of course, Stiller also corresponds to HIM; Cooper. As Stiller thinks and lives, so Fassbinder thinks and lives. Fassbinder loves pathos in his great movies. He exaggerates feelings like jealousy and anger. He exaggerates everything. World On the wire is quieter. Here his figures hide behind the shimmering surface of the pictures. Anyone who knows Fassbinder knows, of course, that here too everything revolves around his own thoughts, his vision. In Welt Am Draht it is packed in a science fiction case and that is exactly why the Mini Series is one of his most popular works today!