MoMA’s annual Kino! film festival is a venue for modern German films to be seen and often receive their premieres in the U.S. This year, I got to see Es kommt der Tag, which is a film exploring karma and its personal and weighty effects on relationships among loved ones. The first twenty minutes side step a lot of clarity in favor of mystery, which is a bit of a mistake given how ultimately familiar the story is. While we have fun speculating on possible political motivations for the terrorist posters and the dossier of information the girl carries reluctantly into the struggling bed & breakfast/vineyard of Judith and Jean-Marc — why is she standing over Judith in the middle of the night, for example — it ultimately becomes clear what connects these disparate people together, and at this point the film loses a bit of its bite and saunters into expected territory (the grandparents stew in pleasantries and are arriving for saturday brunch, how awkward the meal will be!).

The actresses portraying Judith and the mystery woman, Alice, are both compelling and anchor what could be an interminably long third act with some raw emotion. It’s enough to distract you from the fact that you’ve seen this before, but not enough to be entirely riveting, just because once all the cards are on the table they have so little to work with. The central argument that Alice and Judith spar over is one of guilt – Judith is a former terrorist, and her actions gave Alice an irreparable childhood, so now that terrorist Judith has been discovered 25 years on, with a new unsuspecting family, should she still be forced to pay due diligence? Alice thinks so, and persists – at first terrorizing the family by posting Judith’s wanted poster all over their grape fields, and being an all around menacing presence. But it’s the more emotional appeal to Judith’s family members that cause her to finally confess the truth of the matter – it was an accident, and while she accepts responsibility for the action – it keeps her up at night – she feels as though she is no longer responsible.

The film’s ultimate position is betrayed by the end of the first act, when we discover what is in the little tin. If family is so important to Judith, why does she think there is a time-lapse on personal responsibility, particularly to the family members that you choose to protect. For those that you don’t, well, the title kind of tells you about them, doesn’t it? It’s unfortunate that the film gives Alice a brief view outside of her shell at the end, where she offers a way out for Judith other than the one that we expect. She’s already too much of a deus ex machina, here, persisting and persisting for the sake of it. The actress, Katharina Schüttler, is able to give these scenes where she is earnest (and So Germany, as Judith’s new husband, observes of Alice and his wife) a real gravitas, but even still by the time we’ve heard the argument put out in the same terms over and over again, we kind of feel like throwing out the lamb shank with all those champagne bottles, too.

The story of Franz Biberkof, Berlin Alexanderplatz is a fifteen hour film by Rainer Werner Fassbinder based on the novel by Alfred Döblin. I haven’t seen all of it yet, but I hope writing about each section will not only give me the momentum to finish it, but it’ll give some perspective to what I write after having seen it all. To be fair, it was done for television, and comprises 14 episodes, so it’s not like these entries won’t have any structure.

Franz Biberkof has just been released from prison, after serving four years for killing his girlfriend. The first chapter of his story, as its title suggests, catalogues Biberkof’s readjustment to a society to which he’s afraid to reintegrate. It launches into a relatively difficult scene with a Jewish man telling a parable which we take to more or less summarize the next fourteen hours we’ll be watching. This, of course, would be a mistake, as the film points out the second the man’s brother-in-law comes in during one of the most portentous thunderstorms ever captured in film (maybe that should be capital). So he attends to the red light district for a whore, to prove his manhood this side of jail. It doesn’t work of course, and he’s ridiculed. This scene is particularly effective with its carnival-loop of player-piano music streaming in from the bar below.

Nevertheless, Franz is a sweet man, hopeful for the future and generous, but emotional. He returns to his apartment and the murder scene of Ida, the aforementioned girlfriend. It seems not much has changed in his absence, and the landlord welcomes him home with equal parts motherhood, worry and suspicion. Franz attempts to make peace with Ida’s sister by getting her flowers and nearly raping her. There are plenty of hints that the sister and Franz carried on prior to Ida’s death, but it seems more that Franz is invested in re-establishing his manhood with something that is familiar.

Ultimately, Franz runs into an old friend whom he goes drinking with, where he meets a young, impressionable Polish woman who moves in with him, and is instructed by the Berlin police department that as a convict he is not allowed to live in many neighborhoods of Berlin as a convicted murderer. The scene where Biberkof reads off the districts is the most effective and moving scene of the first chapter, as you can see not only the effect on Franz, but on the polish woman and his friend as well. Enrolling with a charter called Prisoner’s Aid allows Biberkof to stay in Berlin, provided he do work for them and check in once a month.

It must be said that the story of Biberkof resembles in more ways than one that of McTeague by Frank Norris. Considered the first “Gothic” American novel, both Alexanderplatz were constructed into monumental films of gargantuan length (McTeague as Greed by Erich von Stroheim). Both are about simpletons, big hearted men found to be in circumstances above their heads. I’m sure Biberkof’s struggle lands him in a metaphorical desert, with something a lot more guilt-inducing than a briefcase of money handcuffed to his wrist. Leave it to the Germans to obfuscate something so pure as a golden tooth outside your shop.

Use this link to find all posts about Berlin Alexanderplatz as they become available.