Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970) User Reviews

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?

[random_avenger · 6/10 · 28 August 2010]

Mr. R. (Kurt Raab) leads a convenient bourgeois life: he has a steady job with chances of promotion, a good-looking wife (Lilith Ungerer), a kid and many family friends. Still, a growing sense of disillusionment and alienation is gnawing Mr. R.'s mind... Is there anything he can do to cope with his mind-numbing life?

The film consists largely of lengthy conversations about the most mundane of things; work, vacations, the son's school, buying a romantic record in a music store... The whole picture is also presented exclusively with long takes and hand-held cameras. The improvised nature of the conversations further adds to the strictly realist documentary-like feel of the movie, as does the intentionally dull cinematography. With such undramatic direction, the only detail to suggest the advancement of Mr. R.'s emotional alienation is Kurt Raab's subtle performance: Mr. R. alternates between sullen observing and unrestrained blabbing, and when the camera occasionally focuses on his face instead of his chit-chatting friends, one can get a creepy feel of slowly escalating anxiety inside him. Lilith Ungerer as his wife also displays faint hints of similar emotions, but keeps them tightly hidden under her shell of excruciating normalcy.

When a film is titled like this one, some kind of dramatic ending or plot twist can be expected sooner or later. Here it only happens at the very end; until the last 10 minutes or so, the film is completely G-rated. The scene preceding the twist is the best one in the whole film and achieves a very distressing atmosphere, but still, the twist itself comes across as rather predictable and even lackluster. Perhaps it is just that modern audiences have become desensitized to such incidents, but more oomph would have been needed to justify the preceding 80 minutes of practically nothing, as Mr. R.'s boredom has also become ours by the end.

Even though there's not much to see besides the lead couple's performance, I have a taste for this type of uneventful, talky cinema. Ultimately Warum... was a curious novelty to me and kept me intrigued throughout, but I'm somewhat wary of recommending it to more casual film fans; something like Michael Haneke's 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance could be a more easily accessible take on the subject. Then again, if you know what to expect, Warum... may also be a rewarding experience in mundanity that many can surely identify with – you have to make up your own mind based on your tastes.

not easy to sit through, but has some surprising rewards

[Quinoa1984 · 7/10 · 29 June 2009]

I kind of wish I didn't know before watching Why Does Herr R Run Amok? that there was the distinct possibility- pointed by a quote on IMDb's trivia by co-star Hanna Schygulla- that Rainer Werner Fassbinder may have had *nothing* to do with with this film, considered by some to be one of his best. It made me think, from time to time watching, it, if maybe this point was correct, considering a) Fassbinder usually doesn't do improvisation, as it would appear this film does to the point where one wonders if a script was even used (was this, in fact, one of the first "mumblecore" movies?) and b) why his usual cast agreed to do it if it was only run by Michael Fengler (who, in his defense, also collaborated on The Niklashausen Journey and may be a capable producer in his own right).

Because, frankly, this isn't like the Fassbinder you would be used to after seeing, for example, the BDR trilogy or Fear Eats the Soul. It's as if Fassbinder and/or Fengler contracted Al Maysles to follow an 'average' middle-class German family, the father and architect and the wife a, uh, house-wife I guess, with an 'average' child. The style of dialog is improvisation, and the camera-work reflects this with the "cienema verite" approach. Indeed there may be only about 30 actual shots in the whole film; it's a series of long takes as the DP, Dietrich Lohmann, goes around a room and zooms in or out based on a feeling here or there or something that may be of interest (such as the desperation Herr R tries his best to hide in most scenes).

What happens with this style, for better or worse, is that we get into the daily grind, the mundane conversations in a living room or in a car (i.e. car repairs), a trip to the school for a talk with the teacher about the kid, or a trip to the not-totally sympathetic doctor, or the embarrassing toast that Herr R makes in front of his co-workers and boss. There is the mundane, and its so much that one starts to get into this mood. There is a drawback if one isn't ready/willing/able to be in this style; not a lot "happens" in the film until, of course, the frighteningly sudden climax of the "Amok" part of the title. Indeed there's something to this that draws in the audience with the characters; there's a scene where Herr R, his wife, their son and a couple of friends are walking along on a road, and it goes on for so long (both the shot and the slow walk) we, as well as the parents, don't realize that the son has gone off on his own and don't know where he ventured off.

Herr R. is an emotional story, but it's a little hard to penetrate. But for those who are patient and attentive there are some great rewards. One of these is Kurt Raab's performance (who, by the way, is also called Mr. Raab in the film, which adds to the confusion of whether this is documentary or fiction, or both at the same time); it's a performance that is tricky but works very well, full of subtlety and restraint, eyes darting carefully and physical expressions to the dot meant with importance. The performance is improvised, but there's nothing I can see that wasn't thought through to be on the screen by Fassbinder and/or Fengler. And it's this character, if nothing else, that marks it as the indicator of it being from RW; it's about the alienation of an outsider, someone in such a mundane world, so "normal" that there is barely any expression of individuality, of anything outside of a "norm" being seen as anything except quiet (or not so quiet) scorn. This is set up from the start with the characters telling the jokes, and Herr R's going flat with everyone else.

It's basically a super-low budget experiment in reality-as-drama, about the emptiness of a class system that allows people to live comfortably and with some semblance of peace, but also a form of life that can be shattered so easily and with such terror. The ending, indeed, can only be really comparable to the likes of Haneke's Cache for its random, existential impact. The more one lets Herr R in, the more this world is horrible and cruel and desperate. Not the brightest of times to have, but worthwhile all the same.

Fassbinder's nihilism knew no bounds.

[sunheadbowed · 7/10 · 12 May 2017]

Sometimes a film is not 'boring', it's actually a study on boredom as societal satire; a disarmament of psychological setting -- a slow-motion, funereal-paced race to the ugly punchline. The funniest jokes require patience and an ability to listen.

Fassbinder pulls it off marvellously in 'Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?', one of his best early films, from 1970. This particular punchline connects as hard as a blow to the back of the head.

If a life can only be understood backwards, this film parodies the theory by emulating it.

Fassbinder's nihilism knew no bounds.

A strong case for a second look

[jandesimpson · 31 October 2004]

It is impossible to appreciate some films to their fullest extent on one viewing, in particular those with an ending so unexpected that it throws into sharp relief the relevance of what has gone before in a way that was not always clear at the time. It is not so much a matter a re-viewing to see whether the twist "works" as in "The Sixth Sense" as being able to appreciate whether a shockingly sudden climax is the logical outcome of the main protagonist's reaction to the events that have led up to it. On a second viewing I find "Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?" works triumphantly. The German wunderkind, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, was certainly ahead of his time with a work that thematically predates Bresson's "L'Argent"and Haneke's "The Seventh Continent" and stylistically the even later Dogme school. Amazingly he was only 25 when he directed it with all the consummate skill of a master. The terrible ending is of course implicit in the title. We are aware that Herr R, a young draughtsman with an attractive wife and handsome little boy living a comfortable middle class professional life at the height of Germany's post-war economic miracle will go off the rails at some point but the act of suddenly picking up a candlestick and bludgeoning a neighbour, his wife and son to death before hanging himself in the toilet at his workplace is almost as shockingly incomprehensible to us as it is to his colleagues who admit to hardly knowing him. We need that second viewing to offer us the answers to a behavioural pattern that was staring us in the face all the time. Herr R. is a boring little man living in a world of boring little people but what marks him out from them is that he is inherently without the ability or motivation to conform to what they expect in the way of sociability. The opening scene encapsulates the dilemma of the "social cripple" in a gregarious but essentially shallow society. A group of thirty-somethings are walking along a street telling each other silly jokes. This is where the second viewing is so valuable to our understanding of what Fassbinder is telling us. As it is too early on for us to know any of the characters, we are scarcely aware that one of their number - Herr R. of course - is not joining in the storytelling. The scene is set for a series of social gatherings in which Herr R. generally plays the role of a tacit outsider even though several involve his own family. With his own parents it is his wife who chats with his mother, a garrulous old biddy, something of a social snob who goes on and on about a visit to a performance of "Otello" but is unable to remember any details when questioned. His father, eyes invisible behind dark glasses because of a conjunctivitis condition adds little to a conversation which becomes very much the mother's monologue of clichés. Equally unproductive is a walk in snowclad parkland with the wife's parents, a querulous couple, the mother again the dominant partner voicing her disagreement at the way the young parents cope with the boy playing hide-and -seek from the group. When an old school friend of Herr R. visits them the coin is turned and it is Herr R. who cannot stop excitedly talking much to the chagrin of his wife whose face is a picture of boredom. So Herr R. cannot win and in the longest and most embarrassing sequence of the film, an office meal in a restaurant, he gets tanked up on alcohol and delivers a speech full of clicheic nothings that only ends when members of the party start to leave. Again Fassbinder is ahead of his time with a scene that Mike Leigh would have been proud to make. Apart from a normal conversation at one point with his son there is only one scene when we are given a glimpse of Herr R.'s potential for reaching out to others and that is in something he buys for his wife. He visits a record shop to purchase a number they had enjoyed on the radio programme but he cannot remember the title. Two salesgirls can hardly disguise their giggles at first and we sense the onset of more embarrassment for both the audience and the central character. Eventually the tune is tracked down and we realize we have experienced a moment of charm in an otherwise charmless and chilling film. There is silence in the office where Herr R. and his colleagues work apart from the insistent clicking of a typewriter and staccato trivial chatter at home between his wife and a neighbour until the candlestick silences them "Why Does Herr R. Run Amok?" is a depressingly nihilistic film even by Fassbinder's standards but somehow he invests it with a powerful sense of inevitability in such an honest way that it ranks among his finest achievements.

This is like "Dogme", but in 1969/70! Watch it!

[Mithras-4 · 9/10 · 26 August 1999]

Herr R. is an ordinary German who works in an ordinary company, has an ordinary wife, an ordinary house, ordinary neighbours and lives an ordinary, squared life. But one day he goes insane and during a neighbour´s visit, he kills her, his wife and his child. The next morning, the police wants to arrest him and finds him hung up in his company. Nobody is able to understand the motive of Herr R. because he was just so "ordinary"... R. W. Fassbinder allowed his actresses and actors to improvise long dialogues which are so boring and unimportant, you nearly WISH that something happens. There are long scenes with only a few cuts, filmed on amateur material, so you nearly have the feeling you are part of the film, everything seems so real. It´s quite the same effect when you watch a "Dogme" film like "The Celebration (Festen)" by Thomas Vinterberg. He and Lars von Trier must know "Warum läuft Herr R. Amok?". Fassbinder said once, "Herr R." was his most "disgusting" movie ever. I´d agree - in a positive way! Judge for yourself!

Why does he?

[ilpohirvonen · 9/10 · 27 August 2010]

Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? is an early film by the famous director Rainer Werner Fassbinder. He is most well known for forming the New German Cinema movement together with Wim Wenders, whose film Im Lauf Der Zeit (1976) has often been seen as the representative of the movement. In the 70's cinema was going through a breakthrough time, in America studios were making independent, more personal films and in Europe post modernism was spreading to cinema. One can see this clearly in films by other European masters as well, in Fellini's work for instance. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok is a rare film by Fassbinder, it is under seen and in result of that often overlooked. It reminded me of Michale Haneke's films, 71 Fragments of a Chronology of Chance (1994) and The Seventh Continent (1989). The former because of the similar Amok-metaphor and the latter because of the same kind of way to show the frustration, despair, depression and violence in bourgeois life.

Herr R. is a good husband, who works for an architect company. He makes money for his wife, who doesn't work and his young son who is in school. The film describes the bourgeois life in the most realistic light possibly, and shows where the emptiness of it can lead in the worst case.

Many intelligent filmmakers have realized the interest in this case. Michale Haneke as I mentioned earlier, but also the famous Swedish director, Ingmar Bergman, who did the 6-part TV film Scenes From a Marriage. But those films certainly aren't just copying Fassbinder, not at all. They all manage to show us different things and realize something new.

Why is a very operative word in the title. Because the whole film builds around the life of Herr R.'s family. They live a quiet, peaceful life. They have many sophisticated, intelligent friends and they enjoy intellectual music and art. But soon the viewer finds out that their whole life is built on the illusion of bourgeois peace. So why does Herr R. run Amok? Is it because of the pressure of urban living? Work, family or nonexistence? Probably all of these reasons and more. The incredible pain of not knowing who you are, knowing that you've lived a lie for years, maybe even for decades. That kind of sudden realization will crush the individual.

The narrative of the film is documentaric, hand-held camera, simple sound & light equipment achieve to create a, excessive realistic atmosphere. Even that the narrative and atmosphere of it can be analyzed and categorized it is very unique. The film is very strange and shocking, something we don't usually see and that is what makes it even more fascinating.

The film is based on improvisation, mostly because they had a low budget. The word Amok comes from the Malay language meaning "suicide". By the expression 'to run Amok' people refer to sudden, insane violent rampage. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok is a brilliant description where the empty, distressing bourgeois everyday can lead to.

That's not me whom you see

[hasosch · 10/10 · 10 January 2010]

The idea that the human being is a Kosmos of his own, is know since the times of Romantics, at last. The even stronger theory according to which the human was been created after God has become a common feature of Christian religion. However, it has taken almost two thousand years before the philosopher Gotthard Gunther has stated that between an "I" and and "Though" there is exactly the same qualitative difference as between the human and God. On therefore has not to travel to the edges of transcendence in order to experience what a con-texture border means, it is sufficient to learn that insight into a Thou is excluded on principal reasons. This turns out to be important in all those cases where even close friends of a human become shocked and react in a way similar to: we would never have thought that he could do that.

Another problem, perhaps in a certain perspective even more delicate, is the border between a deed in thought and a deed in fact. Many people kill others in their wishes, dreams, they even say it without meaning it. On the other hand, some people would never say it, but then there is a moment when they do it. What is it that causes the transgression between thought and deed? R.W. Fassbinder presents a fully uncommented, non-condemnatory approach in "Warum Läuft Herr R. Amok?" (1970). Up to a certain degree, the absolute free speech which gives the illusion of everyday-conversations observed by a candid camera, has the form of a Brechtian "Lehrstück", however, there is no wagging finger to sense in this movie. The spectator is elevated into the position of the judge - if he really still thinks that the deed of Herr R. can be judged after having watched and understood the movie. The spectator even becomes a part of the movie, without him the communication scheme is incomplete. He is the receiver of a message from whom not even an answer is expected, but a revision in thinking on the basis of which has been presented to him. "A good movie is a movie that does not stop when people come out of the cinema, but continues in their heads", Fassbinder said once.

Highly Assured And Unsettling Early Fassbinder

[shanejamesbordas · 8/10 · 15 December 2006]

Co-directed by the young Fassbinder (then only 25 years old) with his friend and producer Michael Fengler, 'Herr R.' shows Fassbinder's tendency to get up the nose of the middle class.

Here, in opposition to his more characteristically considered style, a shaky hand-held camera eavesdrops on the eponymous Herr R.(played to perfection by the great Kurt Raab) who is tediously seen at his work, with his wife, during a visit from his parents and the like, while slowly unwinding inside.

Long takes predominate and we are also let into the life of Herr R.'s pretty but equally vapid wife for whom he, in a most affecting scene, buys a record without knowing the singer or song title - much to the shameless merriment of the shop-girls who serve him. Fassbinder keeps the tension tightly wound throughout and it is this knowing sense of what to show and when to withhold that gives the greatest indication that this is the work of a man who was to become one of Europe's greatest film-makers since Ingmar Bergman.

No doubt, many will find the extreme sense of realism and boredom too oppressive but 'Herr R.' has proved to be highly influential on a much later generation of film-makers and still retains the power to provoke and unsettle.

A Fakse Fassbinder

[gavin6942 · 5/10 · 22 September 2017]

With slicked-down hair and three-piece suits, dependable Herr Raab is a technical draftsman. He gets along with his colleagues although his boss wants him to go beyond technical cleanliness to problem solving.

Although Fassbinder is credited as writing and directing this film, it has since come to light that he probably did neither. The writing was largely improvisation, and the directing was exclusively Michael Fengler (a longtime Fassbinder collaborator).

Frankly, I am glad that this is not a real Fassbinder because he makes some excellent movies... but, for me, this would not be one of them. It just runs on, with people rambling for the entire duration. The reviews tend to be positive, but I see it as a film where nothing happens. And not in a funny way, just in a very pointless way.

Mr. Fassbinder, why do we see what we see?

[gorbatshow · 12 November 2002]

Why does Mr. R. run Amok? This question opens the films. Apparently. At first site Kurt Raab seems to lead quite a good life. He has a creative job, colleagues that accept him, at home there's a beautiful wife and a nice son. But thanks to Fassbinder and his way of filming, we can see closer at Herr R.

From the beginning he is simply not there, as Patrick Bateman would put it. When his colleagues make jokes, he walks with them, but not laughs with them. When his wife brings a friend, we see his narrow-mindedness. She is self-assured and liberal with no clue of what to do with her life, something Kurt is unable to understand. He needs order. He is order. He trys to have everything perfect in his sense, he works technically perfect like a machine, but lacks (human) ideas, or tries to cure his son's speech problems, but he always fails.

His system of perfection does not work. He does not work. And it keeps going on. You see Kurt in different allday situations, where he doesn't behave (all too) strange in a obvious way. But watch him more carefully and you see that he's empty. He holds down all emotions. In a banal situation, when he sees that his life is not perfect at all, and unable to adjust his system to the others like he always was, he tries to make his life perfect by eliminating all disturbing factors. He runs amok. And he does so as he always did: Emotionless.

What Fassbinder wants to show us, is what lies beneath the human fassade. We never know what a person really thinks or feel, because we're all masters of disguise and on the other hand unable or unwilling to find out (another) one's real feelings. And that can be dangerous.

Early work of Magic Fassbinder

[chandler-47 · 9/10 · 3 September 2006]

I always found this movie the best Fassbinder ever did. Mr. R. is working in an engineer office, a job that isn't bad, but - as we see later - he is more a musician (his son is called Amadeus). R. wants to have a life that is organized, with things you have to do and things you like to do. In some scenes he gets in conflict with the flower power generation to whom nothing is duty but all is okay. R. does not understand it.

R's wife and her girlfriend are talking about clothes and he wants to see a feature about Muhammad Ali in television, but he does not dare to turn on the sound (this is against his rules) whereas the women don't have problems to disturb him with their conversation. He then killed them both and also his son.

The movie is difficult to watch. Some camera angles go about several minutes without any change. Is boredom the right way to explain boredom in life? I think you can only do a movie like this one time in your life.

Beautiful, perceptive film

[melissamildrake · 9/10 · 23 September 2002]

They don't make great low-budget films like this anymore. Fantastic performance by Kurt Raab, very moving, delicate, intense. You can feel the chill run down your spine when you watch him slowly degenerating. Fassbinder at his early best.

Watch him snap

[Horst_In_Translation · 8/10 · 7 July 2016]

"Warum läuft Herr R. Amok" is a West German German-language film from 1970 and writer and director Rainer Werner Fassbinder was only in his early 20s when he shot this movie. It is among his first color films and it's a common trend for his early works that they were rather short, so this one also stays comfortably under the 90.minute mark. But still it delivers lots of quality instead of quantity. Fassbinder already had a circle of actors that he regularly cast in his films and you will find many familiar names here, most of all Kurt Raab who plays Herr R. So what is the answer to the English title of this film? Why does Herr R. run amok? It's a very interesting character study of a man who snaps at some point just because he does not fit in with the society he's living in. I personally think Herr R. is a very intelligent man, who understands a lot more than others do, but who is also not capable of articulating his emotions properly. This may be due to personal boundaries, but I also believe it is due to boundaries put on him by society. There are not many moments where we see what really goes through his mind and how he feels, because he is a very quiet guy. But there are scenes when we hear him speak and that tell us a lot about him and how he is seen by others. One scene would be when he and a colleague are in a car talking about another colleague. He defends her and it shows that he is actually a good guy who does not like speaking about others behind their back. or is it just facade? There are two more scenes that tell us how others perceive him. One would be at a record store when he starts singing and the two women laugh at him. The other is possibly the most important scene of the film, the dinner with his colleagues at Herr Raab's home when he gives a speech and it was so priceless to watch his colleague react to said speech, how they disrespect him worse than you could ever imagine and how they try at the same time to keep up their serious facade. Brilliant brilliant work by Fassbinder and the actors in there. The scenes with his mother disrespecting his wife is also nicely done. All in all, I think this was a very good watch and it is among my favorite Fassbinder films. Then again, I am probably a bit biased as I really like Kurt Raab as an actor. He gives a prime example of a performance that is completely subtle from start to (almost) finish and yet he does so much with his character, which is of course also because of Fassbinder's outstanding writing. Quite a shame that they received little more for their effort here other than Raab's German Film Award nomination. The ending also deserves a word. The major spoiler in the title already tells us that it is not what he does at the end, but absolutely why he does it and everybody will probably find a different reason. It may also have to do with the irreparable damage the cigarettes have done to him and lets be honest the doctor is a gigantic amateur if he keeps telling Raab there is no physical damage done and if he tells him to stop smoking immediately as if it was so easy when he smoked 40 cigarettes a day until then. But back to the ending. The scene at the office is another highlight at the very end, not only because the boss' statement that Raab killed his family (after no such thing had been said), but especially because it shows us too that we are somebody who does not know Herr R. at all while the camera makes it look as if we were a colleague of the man going with the other colleagues to the bathroom. This film is really impressive looking at Fassbinder's young age. Most filmmakers cannot come up with such a piece during their entire careers, let alone in their 20s. For me it's a contender of favorite Fassbinder film. I highly recommend the watch.

One of the best Fassbinder movies

[moskito24 · 9/10 · 4 September 2005]

This is a terrific movie. I have seen the unsettling ending of it years ago. Today I was watching it from DVD. My recollection of the ending was so strong that I remembered all small details.

Highly sensitively Fassbinder gives insight into the life of a man that runs amok. Fassbinder succeeds in showing the motives of a crazy amok run.

If you don't know any of Fassbinders movies you must be aware that this is different than anything you know. Fassbinder portrays a man that lacks self-awareness and is poor of showing his emotions and who does not do more than he is asked for in his job. Herr R. is slow in mind and words. And yet, all that does not accumulate to his amok run. What does is hidden behind a surface that Fassbinder discloses one by one... 9 out of 10.

furchtbar, schrecklich, und just plain bad

[atandt · 1/10 · 7 July 2005]

this 'film' has the distinction of being one of the worst things i've seen in a movie theatre. now i'm scared to watch any more Fassbinder films in case they are equally this college-film-studies-student-project bad.

***SPOILER*** when i went to see it, the blurb for the movie in the film guide read something like this:

"Follow Herr R. throughout his day as he smokes many cigarettes, buys a record in a music shop, goes out to dinner, and returns home to bludgeon the entire household."

well, the fun part is, that's exactly what happened. the movie played out like the blurb stated... much like a laundry list of events.

depth? important statements? subtext? NEIN!

i'm sure that Fassbinder is regarded as a valuable auteur by many. i should be fascinated to know why.

A minimalist examination piece from the young R.W. Fassbinder

[ThreeSadTigers · 26 June 2008]

Though the title asks an important question, the film itself offers no such resolutions, with Fassbinder simply supplying us with a series of potential ideas and scenarios that might lead an audience to draw their own conclusions as to why the film ends the way that it does. Although this was quite obviously an early work for Fassbinder, produced at a relatively young age and on a limited budget, the themes and ideas behind it are in keeping with the far greater and more assured films that he would eventually produce during the following years of his life. These ideas of dissatisfaction, fulfilment, alienation and dislocation would all be explored in varied films, such as The Merchant of Four Seasons (1972), Fox and his Friends (1975), Mother Kusters' Trip to Heaven (1975) and In a Year of 13 Moons (1978) respectively, with the director expressing these feelings often through jarring stylisation and alienation techniques to help convey the emotional intensity of the characters in a way that made it easier to comprehend from the perspective of the audience.

As some commentators have previously noted, the film-making technique employed throughout Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? (1970) draws heavily on cinéma-vérité conventions of heightened realism and bare formality, as the director - here co-credited alongside Michael Fengler - uses minimal production design, naturalistic lighting, long-takes and jarring jump cuts to establish a sense of drab, everyday normality and ironic, faux-documentary-like realism. This presentation of the film, when combined with the episodic narrative - in which nothing 'seems' to happen - make the eventual resolution all the more shocking and provocative. What Fassbinder is suggesting through the scenario presented here is never fully clarified, with the film beginning and ending with the title covering the screen and all potential notions that might have resulted in the breakdown of communication and the urge for destruction often being dismissed by the director(s) almost as soon as it has been established. Nonetheless, we can draw our own conclusion with the evidence that is implied here; whilst the benefit of repeated viewings and close attention paid to the character of "R." as he progresses through the film hints at a human being finally crushed by the humdrum grind of day-to-day subsistence.

There are a number of factors that seem to lead to the final act of the film; with the character belittled by his attractive wife, who stays at home while her husband works and continually chips away at his self-esteem by mentioning his failure to receive a promotion, his lack of social skills and his subsequent weight gain. He also has a son that is under-performing at school, as well as becoming alienated from his classmates as a result of an unfortunate speech impediment. "R." dutifully spends his time after work with the boy, reading to him and trying to coach him through certain words while his wife entertains their snooty and slyly condescending neighbours. This seems to suggest a tenderness and compassion to the character; qualities that are also obvious in the scene in which "R" and his wife recline on the couch in bathrobes drinking wine, listening to music and reminiscing fondly on how they first met. Nothing is black and white in Fassbinder's films, with the shades of grey presented in the character making the eventual shift in tone even more enigmatic and perplexing; with the cold and rigid examination of Fassbinder and Fengler also making any clearly defined interpretation more difficult as a result of the persistent lack of moralising or melodrama.

Some viewers have noted the similarities here to the later work of Lars von Trier, in particular a film like The Idiots (1998) with its roots in the Dogme 95 manifesto, as well as films like Breaking the Waves (1996) and Dancer in the Dark (2000). Like von Trier, Fassbinder is cold and clinical in his approach to the film, casting a cynical eye on the mechanisms of contemporary society and hinting at the very nature of bourgeois, 20th century living as a possible reason for this seemingly unprovoked cycle of violence. In one of the films key scenes, "R." visits his family physician for an annual check-up. Here, he complains of headaches, and the doctor opines that he's most probably over-worked and over-stressed. Instead of prescribing any kind of help, the doctor tells him to give up smoking, which will bring his blood pressure down and "help with the headaches". The flippant, unsympathetic tone of the doctor and his assessment of "R." seems a deliberate move on Fassbinder's part, with the clear hint that the characters problems stem from his heavy work load and need to provide for his family. Instead of addressing this issue, the doctor instead tells him to give up smoking; one of the few small pleasures that he seems to gleam from social interaction.

There are other hints layered throughout the film, which opens with "R's" work colleagues telling bad taste jokes that come to delicately set up a number the actions that the character will subsequently take. Fassbinder would later return to the themes of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? in his subsequent masterpiece, Mother Kusters' Trip to Heaven, which could almost be seen as something of a thematic sequel to the film in question. For me, the later film is infinitely better; one of the director's most pointed, affecting and intelligent works, and one of the very best examples of New German Cinema produced during that particular period. However, the way that the themes of that film are paralleled here gives yet another shade of interpretation to Herr. R's enigmatic approach to cinematic examination. Though it is (perhaps) a little rough around the edges, Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? is an interesting film from Fassbinder; one that benefits from the cold cynicism of its director, and a truly mesmerising performance from the subtly affecting Kurt Raab.

Warum Läuft Herr R Amok

[RaulFerreiraZem · 9/10 · 13 April 2020]

Great film. While a kind of unusual Fassbinder film (if a Fassbinder film at all since here in the trivia section it says that he had very little to do with the film) Why does herr R run amok fits nicely into his filmography theme-wise. The hand held camera cinematography, along with the title of the film and the seemingly meaningless character interactions give the film a found footage kind of feeling that make every little vocal inflection or gesture seem like a foreshadowing of an imminent disaster. The film however is smart enough to dodge any kind of reasoning to Herr R's acts. Sure his life was relatively miserable, his job was unfulfilling and stressful but there is no one big motive that leads directly to his deed at the end of the film. And it's that specific subjectivity that makes this film so powerful and shocking.