Even if bad acting and untold emotional rattling is forgiven, “The Marriage of Maria Braun” the first in the BRD (Bundesrepublik Deutschland, official name of West Germany) trilogy of director Rainer Werner Fassbinder does not fill in good memories of a good cinema. In Germany, a nation surviving the war and a country to be rebuilt from scratch, one woman desperately tries to build a life for her so determined that she goes cold and numb which becomes a self destructive exercise in forgetting the real intended purpose for her survival, love. The film let down by some bad acting and a screenplay of dullness, negativity and no soul is dead in most of its frames.
Maria Braun (Hanna Schygulla) amidst the bombs and bullets marries Hermann Braun (Klaus Löwitsch). The marriage lasts for half a day and a full night which still lasts forever for Maria. She hopefully goes to train station every day to get a word from Hermann posted in war front. The currency is just a paper now and things which are remotely useful or for pleasure becomes the money. But we do not feel the real intensity of it since the protagonist is emotionless. She remains rigid to the happenings around and which does not mean she is happy. She wants to live a wealthy life along with her husband. Even upon learning that he is dead from Hermann’s friend, Willi (Gottfried John) who returns and rejoins with Maria’s friend Betti (Elisabeth Trissenaar). This is a crucial scene when it happens. While she is happy for her friend, she is broken down to nothing by the loss of a reason for her living. Hanna Schygulla an unusual beauty falls flat which marks the start of a suicidal script with a bad casting.
An obsessed person over a life of future of herself and her husband, she pursues with an African American army official Bill (George Eagles) and in fact gets pregnant with his baby. If in 2001 disaster “Pearl Harbor”, the dead character of Ben Affleck can return with asinine predictability, then the 1979 German movie has all the right in the world to have it. Hermann returns and that’s when things goes bad to worse when Maria kills Bill (may be she wanted to hurt him to make Bill leave the grip over Hermann). Schygulla again does not capitalize the anchoring point of the film with confidence and emotion.
It is not that she cannot act because the film uplifts specifically during her encounter with Mr. Oswald (Ivan Desny), a French Businessman she meets in train and advances her career through him. We get that she is straight as an arrow in affairs and blunt to bludgeon him with unexpected rude truths. She knows what she wants in per se of sexuality and her love belongs to only person, Hermann. She surprises with giving Maria a definition of whom really is she. We come to know her blind love for her husband and while she does not tell to Oswald, she makes it clear of the so called relationship they have. The twenty minutes of it is the only true honest moment the director spends the film with us and more than that is the tenure when Schygulla is convincing and good in her Maria.
It is a dreadful position to be in a place torn down with a non-existent economy or future to rely upon. To have a dream like Maria had is an honest ambition. It is also sad that to survive and to achieve it, she needs to pass on through the men but what I do not understand is the missing face of Hermann. He does show her love by taking the blame for Bill’s murder but even through the bad acting of Schygulla we see the relentless and desperate love she has for Hermann but we don’t even see the slightest hint of it in Hermann. A failed chemistry glaringly shows the bland screenplay further to its crawling demise. There are good things to say about the film too. Camera work and the angles of the placement along with its movement with the characters are catchy and try to enhance the positions of each personality in that scene. The only supporting role which remains true to its character and performance is Ivan Desny as Oswald. A man trying hard to find his last days to be filled in peace and pleasure from a woman filled with bitter and pain.
This film and the next two movies in the trilogy are supposed to be iconic in the play of women in the building up of West Germany as it is said. I sympathized with Maria and all of them to live through the post war trauma of finding hard for a social life and coming to an existence of importance in a shattered world. I was able to do that after the movie was over and when I read about the scenarios of the situations they were in. I did not sympathize for the route Maria took and fall into the depths of lost personality. Unfortunately reading about it does not invoke the same feeling. The film’s failure bodes up high and clear for that.
Maria Braun (Hanna Schygulla) amidst the bombs and bullets marries Hermann Braun (Klaus Löwitsch). The marriage lasts for half a day and a full night which still lasts forever for Maria. She hopefully goes to train station every day to get a word from Hermann posted in war front. The currency is just a paper now and things which are remotely useful or for pleasure becomes the money. But we do not feel the real intensity of it since the protagonist is emotionless. She remains rigid to the happenings around and which does not mean she is happy. She wants to live a wealthy life along with her husband. Even upon learning that he is dead from Hermann’s friend, Willi (Gottfried John) who returns and rejoins with Maria’s friend Betti (Elisabeth Trissenaar). This is a crucial scene when it happens. While she is happy for her friend, she is broken down to nothing by the loss of a reason for her living. Hanna Schygulla an unusual beauty falls flat which marks the start of a suicidal script with a bad casting.
An obsessed person over a life of future of herself and her husband, she pursues with an African American army official Bill (George Eagles) and in fact gets pregnant with his baby. If in 2001 disaster “Pearl Harbor”, the dead character of Ben Affleck can return with asinine predictability, then the 1979 German movie has all the right in the world to have it. Hermann returns and that’s when things goes bad to worse when Maria kills Bill (may be she wanted to hurt him to make Bill leave the grip over Hermann). Schygulla again does not capitalize the anchoring point of the film with confidence and emotion.
It is not that she cannot act because the film uplifts specifically during her encounter with Mr. Oswald (Ivan Desny), a French Businessman she meets in train and advances her career through him. We get that she is straight as an arrow in affairs and blunt to bludgeon him with unexpected rude truths. She knows what she wants in per se of sexuality and her love belongs to only person, Hermann. She surprises with giving Maria a definition of whom really is she. We come to know her blind love for her husband and while she does not tell to Oswald, she makes it clear of the so called relationship they have. The twenty minutes of it is the only true honest moment the director spends the film with us and more than that is the tenure when Schygulla is convincing and good in her Maria.
It is a dreadful position to be in a place torn down with a non-existent economy or future to rely upon. To have a dream like Maria had is an honest ambition. It is also sad that to survive and to achieve it, she needs to pass on through the men but what I do not understand is the missing face of Hermann. He does show her love by taking the blame for Bill’s murder but even through the bad acting of Schygulla we see the relentless and desperate love she has for Hermann but we don’t even see the slightest hint of it in Hermann. A failed chemistry glaringly shows the bland screenplay further to its crawling demise. There are good things to say about the film too. Camera work and the angles of the placement along with its movement with the characters are catchy and try to enhance the positions of each personality in that scene. The only supporting role which remains true to its character and performance is Ivan Desny as Oswald. A man trying hard to find his last days to be filled in peace and pleasure from a woman filled with bitter and pain.
This film and the next two movies in the trilogy are supposed to be iconic in the play of women in the building up of West Germany as it is said. I sympathized with Maria and all of them to live through the post war trauma of finding hard for a social life and coming to an existence of importance in a shattered world. I was able to do that after the movie was over and when I read about the scenarios of the situations they were in. I did not sympathize for the route Maria took and fall into the depths of lost personality. Unfortunately reading about it does not invoke the same feeling. The film’s failure bodes up high and clear for that.
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