This could be seen as something of a follow-up to Fassbinder's collaboration of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok, only from a different perspective and slightly altered details. In that film, Herr. R was a seemingly normal, quiet family man with a wife and kid and after putting up with crap from his family and work (even if not really apparent) he just snaps and kills his family and then hangs himself at work. In Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven we don't even see the freak-out and murder and suicide, which is the right decision on Fassbinder's end since this is not about the husband going insane as much as the wife, who in this film, Emma (Brigitte Mira), is still alive, has to 'deal' with the cards she's been dealt. Which includes a newspaper that prints fabrications on the details of Mr. Kusters, children who leave poor Emma all alone to her own devices, and an at-first sympathetic communist couple who take her under their wing and prop up her late husband as a revolutionary.
I would consider this not quite Fassbinder's most 'political' film as another commenter on this site noted (that I would argue would be The Third Generation), but it still contains much of what makes his dramas about urban alienation and, in this case, exploitation work so well. Emma Kusters is so much a genuine house-wife that it's almost too easy for her to be picked apart by people who have their own interests at heart. No one would give her a second look if she wasn't so vulnerable after her husband's death and his crime, so shell-shocked about the event and then the fall-out of not knowing anything else on her mind except for Herman. And like in Fear Eats the Soul, Mira expresses such vulnerability and precise, touching moments as an 'everyday' middle-class German woman who has no such thing as a solid ideology. Perhaps if there's any strong political commentary it's about being aware in the first place, knowing what communists and anarchists actually do when give the opportunity. Why did Hermann K Run Amok? Who cares, they might really say. Emma does, or wishes she could.
There are many great scenes here and moments of cinematographic ingenuity. I loved two particular shots, one where the camera tracks backward from the podium of the communist meeting, at first on the male speaker's face and seeing the audience in a kind of daze, and the other in the "European" ending where the camera moves slowly on Emma Kuster's bewildered expression as the anarchists make their demands, as she is completely alone in a room full of people with guns and hostages. But the curious thing are the two endings. The first, which as perhaps an experiment or just a lack of funds, is the European ending which is quite bleak, even for Fassbinder, as it shows what happens with the anarchist's hostage situation. We see this ending in description via screenplay-subtitles, and it's hard for me to figure if this was intentional or not. The ending that was shot, for America, is better, since it tries to keep the focus on Emma's lost cause of trying to retract the newspaper story via sit-in (and contrary to what you might think, the anarchists aren't any less nasty).
It ends, in fact, with a moment of hope, as the person locking up takes Emma back to his place for dinner, the "Heaven and Earth" with sausages. This too, however, isn't quite the best ending possible. Perhaps a compromise between the two would have been the best thing, as one is too bitter and the other possibly too sweet. Yet as it remains, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven is one of Fassbinder's most interesting films, one of a few made in a year that also included the underrated Fear of Fear and the powerful Fox & His Friends.
I would consider this not quite Fassbinder's most 'political' film as another commenter on this site noted (that I would argue would be The Third Generation), but it still contains much of what makes his dramas about urban alienation and, in this case, exploitation work so well. Emma Kusters is so much a genuine house-wife that it's almost too easy for her to be picked apart by people who have their own interests at heart. No one would give her a second look if she wasn't so vulnerable after her husband's death and his crime, so shell-shocked about the event and then the fall-out of not knowing anything else on her mind except for Herman. And like in Fear Eats the Soul, Mira expresses such vulnerability and precise, touching moments as an 'everyday' middle-class German woman who has no such thing as a solid ideology. Perhaps if there's any strong political commentary it's about being aware in the first place, knowing what communists and anarchists actually do when give the opportunity. Why did Hermann K Run Amok? Who cares, they might really say. Emma does, or wishes she could.
There are many great scenes here and moments of cinematographic ingenuity. I loved two particular shots, one where the camera tracks backward from the podium of the communist meeting, at first on the male speaker's face and seeing the audience in a kind of daze, and the other in the "European" ending where the camera moves slowly on Emma Kuster's bewildered expression as the anarchists make their demands, as she is completely alone in a room full of people with guns and hostages. But the curious thing are the two endings. The first, which as perhaps an experiment or just a lack of funds, is the European ending which is quite bleak, even for Fassbinder, as it shows what happens with the anarchist's hostage situation. We see this ending in description via screenplay-subtitles, and it's hard for me to figure if this was intentional or not. The ending that was shot, for America, is better, since it tries to keep the focus on Emma's lost cause of trying to retract the newspaper story via sit-in (and contrary to what you might think, the anarchists aren't any less nasty).
It ends, in fact, with a moment of hope, as the person locking up takes Emma back to his place for dinner, the "Heaven and Earth" with sausages. This too, however, isn't quite the best ending possible. Perhaps a compromise between the two would have been the best thing, as one is too bitter and the other possibly too sweet. Yet as it remains, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven is one of Fassbinder's most interesting films, one of a few made in a year that also included the underrated Fear of Fear and the powerful Fox & His Friends.