Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)

Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980)

Directed by: Rainer Werner Fassbinder

Starring: Günter Lamprecht, Franz Buchrieser, Barbara Sukowa

Technically, Berlin Alexanderplatz is a miniseries, but it calls itself “a film in 13 parts,” so that’s good enough for me. Also, I watched this whole 15 1/2 hour long thing in a single setting, and I’m DAMN WELL GOING TO WRITE ABOUT IT.

Berlin Alexanderplatz is about Franz Bieberkopf and his life after he’s released from prison for killing his girlfriend. He swears that he’s going to go straight and never do anything wrong again, but through a series of events, he ends up getting sucked back into a life of burglary and pimping. Also, he goes through several girlfriends and political philosophies and friends, and each one of them makes him depressed and drives him to drink, pretty much.

The 14th part of the miniseries is actually an epilogue in a completely different style than the rest of the film, which is structured as a bizarre dream sequence and which is, frankly, really retarded. I don’t even want to get into the stuff that happens in the epilogue because it’s so different than the rest of the film and it’s so damn stupid.

It’s hard to synopsize Berlin Alexanderplatz because there’s just so much that happens in it. It is over 15 hours, after all (I just want to stress this because I spent ALL DAY watching it yesterday). Overall, I think the moral of the story is that people are all terrible, and also women are property or ex-prostitutes at best, and there’s really no big deal to beating them up or killing them. There’s a pretty strong anti-woman vibe in this film.

What surprised me the most about this film was that it was actually not that bad. It’s really long and there are slow parts to it, but overall it tends to move along at a pretty good clip, and it seems more like a normal movie, just with more material. There are really two or three completely different story arcs within Berlin Alexanderplatz, they just all happen to the same guy. I wouldn’t say it’s great or anything, and I wouldn’t watch it again (and I’d like to completely forget that retarded epilogue), but it’s not a COMPLETE waste of time. Assuming you’ve got 15 hours to spare. Maybe don’t watch it all in a row, like SOME people decided to do. Those people are dumb.