My Head is a Funny Kind of Head

A little while ago, I was having a conversation -- well, an argument, and a weirdly heated one, at that -- with somebody about the state of modern science fiction films. It is my contention, and I've said this before, that science fiction is about the most debased genre in American films today, with only a handful -- A.I., Moon, Blade Runner, and, er...others -- from the past few decades actually qualifying as genuine science fiction films. Most are gussied up action films. And, as I have indeed said all this before, I don't really want to bore you with it again. But I'm convinced it's true, anyway, so encountering any true SF films is a real treat for me, and something to be celebrated, even if the film in question lies outside of the vague timeline I've laid out.

Not only does the film I have in mind fall outside of that timeline, it falls outside of the United States. The film is World on a Wire, made for German television in 1973 by Rainer Werner Fassbinder. It's the story of a man named Fred Stiller (Klaus Lowitsch), a computer programmer whose direct superior, named Vollmer (Adiran Hoven), on a massive project that involves creating a version of our world on a virtual plane, has recently died, mysteriously. Stiller is picked by the head of this project, Herbert Siskins (Karl Heinz Vosgerau) to take over, but after Gunther Lause (Ivan Desny), another friend and co-worker, literally vanishes just before he was about to tell Stiller why Vollmer was acting so strangely in the days leading up to his death, and what he believes Vollmer discovered about the giant, world-encompassing computer called Simulacron, and subsequently nobody seems to be willing to admit that such a person as Lause ever existed, Stiller suddenly finds himself quite possibly in the same deadly situation and broken frame of mind as Vollmer.

World on a Wire immediately precedes Ali: Fear Eats the Soul on Fassbinder's filmography, and in some pretty obvious ways -- subject, length, scope -- it could not be more different. Except it never feels different. To begin with, there's a bit of a "the gang's all here" situation, with Fassbinder regulars and associates Ulli Lommel ( a filmmaker himself, with such credits as the Fassbinder produced, and extremely Fassbindery-in-general Tenderness of the Wolves), Margit Carstensen, Kurt Raab (able to look pitiful or sinister at will) and El Hedi ben Salem all making appearances. This pales, however, next to the sense that World on a Wire takes place in the same world as every other Fassbinder film, a world of intensity and cheapness (by which I do not mean, even in the aesthetic sense, bad) and sex and death and bizarre reactions, sudden outbursts, madness. Check the sudden and manic kicking in of a TV screen in Ali: Fear Eats the Soul against something like Stiller's reaction to the sudden and devestating collapse of cinder blocks in World on a Wire. The latter is an extreme example, but in neither case can the behavior really be considered normal.

World on a Wire is based on a novel by American science fiction author Daniel F. Galouye called Simulacron-3. It's a novel I haven't read, but wish I had, not least because I'm having a hard time wrapping my head around the fact that it served as the source material for both World on a Wire and Joseph Rusnak's The Thirteenth Floor from 1999. That film is a tedious mess; World on a Wire is a mess too, maybe, I guess, but a glorious one. Rich, even novelistic (the 3 1/2 hour running time no doubt helps on that end) in a way filmed entertainment of any kind is rarely able to be, and truly eccentric in a way that only films can really manage. Throughout Fassbinder's film, characters in the background, or even in the foreground, will suddenly turn vacant when they're not being spoken to, or in order to get from one place to another people will unnecessarily walk to the background and behind a wall, looping around the other side and back into frame. Then of course there's the Marlene Dietrich impersonator taking part in a cabaret act about Nazis, and the giant shirtless chef muttering about his patrons being "barbarians" and the like. The thing about those vacant faces, though, is that this is all groundwork for certain story reveals later on. It's not just needless oddity.

And if you’re the kind of person who likes to do things like eke out a film’s themes, then you’ll probably be happy to hear that in World on a Wire Fassbinder hits the trifecta of identity, reality and existence. The problem I have with these as themes is that usually the discussion begins and ends with someone pointing out “That film is about the nature of reality.” But World on a Wire makes all this stuff immediate and vital and particular to the characters in the story. World on a Wire functions as both a science fiction film and as a thriller, and it is an endlessly suspenseful piece of work. And the nature of that suspense grows out of the question of what is the reality of Stiller, and how does that reflect on his view of himself and his world as actual things? Add to that what, if anything, would it mean if that existence suddenly ended? Identity, reality and existence aren’t just themes; they’re plot. And they’re not just plot; they’re life and death.

As with most great films, I’m a point where it’s difficult to describe why certain details elevate World on a Wire over so many science fiction films, old or new. For instance, intriguing questions linger in my mind, such as “In the world that Fassbinder has created, where, or even what, is Rome exactly??” The lack of answer is appealing. Or on a maybe more abstract level, why was it such a rush for me that the ending of the film first cuts between two realities, or ideas of reality, both true, one disastrous, and then ends with a build to Gottfried Hungsberg’s simple guitar theme over the closing titles, a theme that reminds me of the opening of the Beatles’ “Sun King”? Such a rush that I was led to rewind and watch those few minutes again? I couldn’t really say. But it was indeed a rush, as were the preceding 200 minutes.

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World on a Wire hwill be screening twice at TIFF Lightbox in the coming days. First tomorrow, June 17, and again on Sunday, June 19. If you can, you absolutely should.

Who Did What?

A few weeks ago, I watched The Tenderness of Wolves, which bears the credit "Directed by Ulli Lommel" (or the German equivalent). I find this to be a curious credit, for a few reasons. One is that the film was produced by Rainer Werner Fassbinder -- so produced by him, in fact, that he goes all the way to "presenting" it, too -- and features many members of his regular cast, such as Kurt Raab, El Hedi ben Salem, Irm Hermann, and others. Also, it looks just like a Fassbinder film, with its deceptively plain and casual camerawork, colors that are drab except when they're not, and so on. Further, while I haven't seen any other Ulli Lommel films, I did see a trailer for his movie Curse of the Zodiac, which looks like it was shot on camcorder by Jess Franco, when he was doing image tests in order to get Snake Woman just right.

I realize that all of this means less than nothing, but there are a couple of other clues that, while also meaning nothing in themselves, contribute to my belief that maybe Fassbinder was behind the camera during shooting of The Tenderness of Wolves more than anybody is letting on. One bit of evidence is nothing, a mere trifle: on the DVD commentary track, which Lommel shares with Willim Lustig, Lommel says, over a particular shot, "Isn't that a beautiful shot?" Now, yes, he could very well be tooting his own horn, but the tone in which he says it makes it sound more like he was admiring someone else's work. The cinematographer, Jürgen Jürges's work, quite possibly, though I don't remember him being mentioned.

Meaningless, I know. But early on, when Lommel is explaining how the film came about, he says that Kurt Raab was fascinated by the film's subject, serial killer Fritz Haarmann, and through German tax shelter/film funding laws, Fassbinder had a surplus of cash, and wanted to make a movie fast. Raab pitched the idea to him, but Fassbinder demured, saying the material was "too controversial", and took the producing position instead, passing the directing reins off to Lommel. And I'm sorry, but when did Fassbinder ever give a shit about appearing too controversial? I'm hardly an expert on the man, but it has always seemed to me that Fassbinder always made precisely the kind of movie he felt like making, controversy be damned, and, in fact, knowlingly courted that kind of reaction not a few times. So why in the world would this material suddenly make him blanch?

Of course, there is precedent for this sort of thing in Fassbinder's career, although going the other way. Why Does Herr R. Run Amok? is credited to two directors: Fassbinder and Michael Fengler. However, I've been told by people more educated than I that Fengler really was the director on that film, and Fassbinder was happy to co-write the script and then occupy the sidelines. And that film, even if it was helmed solely by Fengler, looks and feels exactly like a Fassbinder movie, as well.

So who knows? I don't, but do any of you?. It's curious, and is made even more so when I think that a case could probably be made that Raab directed the damn thing himself.