MOTHER KUSTERS GOES TO HEAVEN
MUTTER KÜSTERS' FAHRT ZUM HIMMEL
1975,
Janus Films,
120 min,
Germany,
Dir: Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Frau Kusters (Brigitte Mira) gets the terrible news that her husband Herrmann has gone berserk after layoff announcements at the local tire factory, killed his supervisor and then committed suicide. As reporters sensationalize the deaths, Frau Kusters finds no comfort from her self-involved children, and befriends German Communist Party members Karl and Marianne Thalman (PEEPING TOM’s Karlheinz Bohm and THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT’s Margit Carstensen), who crash Herrmann’s funeral and see his death as a revolutionary act. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s brilliant send-up of Germany’s class structure, blood-sucking media and armchair activism features a superb cast and is shot impeccably by cinematographer Michael Ballhaus. In German with English subtitles.