but…
by
Douglas Messerli
Rainer
Werner Fassbinder, Kurt Raab, Heinrich Zille (writers), Rainer Werner
Fassbinder (director) Mutter Küsters'
Fahrt zum Himmel (Mother Küsters'
Trip to Heaven) / 1975, USA 1977
Throughout
Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s film Mother
Küsters' Trip to Heaven, almost all of the characters utter the word
“aber,” (“but”) letting it hang in mid-air between a sentence and an
alternative they
seem unable to express. Indeed the family at the center of his drama, the
Küsters, certainly have a lot of reasons to seek for other explanations to what
appear to be the facts, since the work begins with their husband and father
killing the bosses’ son before committing suicide, after, apparently, learning
that he would be among the employees laid off from work.
Emma Küsters (Brigitte Mira), in
particular, needs all the alternatives she might find, given that soon after
the event, she is betrayed by a journalist, Niemeyer (Gottfried John), who
promises her an enlightening article but serves up insinuations of her
husband’s violence and other pieces of information which she sees as lies. At
the same time, her selfish, pregnant daughter-in-law, Corinna (Ingrid Caven)
insists that her husband Ernst immediately accompany her on their already
planned vacation to Finland without even attending or helping Emma with the
funeral. Emma’s daughter, Helene (Irm Hermann) returns home to Frankfurt am
Main, but soon after takes up with Niemeyer and moves out of the house. She
plays to the cameras at her father’s funeral simply to jump-start her career as
a cabaret “singer” (read part-time prostitute).
We never asked much. My
husband never complained.
Maybe he'd said, it was tough
today, but that was all.
He accepted his superiors. We
just lived our lives,
day in, day out, without
asking each other much. Maybe
I should have asked him more.
Perhaps he had troubles.
He just bottled them up.
I think I can make you
understand why I joined this party
at my age.... not because of
politics, but because of people....
I believe [the Tillmanns],
and that's why I'm here....
There's a reason for all the
terrible things in the world....
I did what was expected of
me. Is that really life? In
the way others wanted us to
live? In the valley, all
you see is the mountains....
Forty years... I thought I knew
him,
and that there was no reason to talk.... But that's not
true. I
had no idea. How my husband must have suffered
to have
done what he did. And I knew nothing about it.
Is that
life?... But we never really learned how to live together....
How
desperate he must have been, not knowing which way to
turn.
He had nobody like you to talk to.... Things would
have
been different.... My husband is no murderer. And he's
not
crazy either. He's a man who hit back because he was
beaten
all his life.... I, Emma Küsters, will join you in your
struggle for justice.
Yet,
time passes without the Party helping to restore the truth, and the friendly
couple grow more and more disinterested in her problems as governmental
elections become the center of their attention. “Mother” Küsters has been a
useful symbol, but only a temporary cause for these “arm-chair” leftists.
In this instance the director himself
offers an “aber,” splitting the ending of his film in two, one ending (shown
mostly in Germany) in a shoot-out wherein the editor Linke is killed, as well
as Mother Küsters and the anarchist; this version was mostly reported by
captions (and is included in the Criterion edition, along with the second
(mostly American-shown one).
In the second version, the group stages a
sit-in, but is mostly ignored by the workers as they step over and around the
protestors, and finally leave for the evening. Eventually even the anarchists
abandon Emma, who seems to be left in the offices entirely alone. A friendly
janitor arrives to clean up, and seeing Emma sitting on the floor invites her
to his empty home (his
wife has died)
to have “heaven and earth,” the traditional German dish of liver, apples
(heaven) and potatoes (earth). And so, does Mother Küsters take another kind of
trip to “heaven.”
Fassbinder’s first ending suggests that
this work is a kind of tragedy, a work which reveals that the entire society
ultimately does care for the hardworking ordinary beings who Emma Küsters
represents. But in the second version, the second alternative, the director’s
film becomes a kind of comedy, a satire on journalists, the Communist Party,
and the anarchists—in short, the left, right and supposed “middle-ground”—of
German society, none of which can seemingly provide safe-haven for such
sufferers….but perhaps there is still a place for her and her kind.
Los Angeles,
March 24, 2017
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