Touches You

Memorable, crazy movie

Fresh and Exciting

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

"Faustrecht der Freiheit" or "Fox and His Friends" is a West German German-language film from 1975, so this one had its 40th anniversary last year. The writer and director is German filmmaking infant terrible Rainer Werner Fassbinder and he was roughly at the age of 30 when he made this 120-minute film back in the 1970s. And I already wrote that I think it may be Fassbinder's most personal film. There seem a lot of parallels to the filmmaker's real life in here and it shows that he put all his heart in it, for example that he was not even scared of full frontal nudity to make Biberkopf/Fox look authentic. This one here came out 5 years before Fassbinder made his successful mini-series "Berlin Alexanderplatz", which is of course also known for its main character Franz Biberkopf, so the name in here is certainly no coincidence. But the thing that hits closest to home is of course the ending because (apart from the location) we see exactly the way the real Fassbinder died. Unfortunately, despite this emotional impact, I never managed to create a lot of interest in the story. I guess this may have to do with me not being the greatest Fassbinder fan, but also with the script, which never seemed really interesting or even edge-of-seat level to me. Fassbinder is nonetheless fun to watch and I still believe he is at least as good of an actor as of a filmmaker, if not better. So with another lead actor than RMF (who lost some weight for his role here), this may have dragged even more. Nonetheless, my verdict overall is thumbs-down. I do not recommend the watch. I guess Fassbinder is just superior with female main characters.

In an interview with RW Fassbinder, he mentioned that it was important to him that this be the first movie featuring homosexuals where that wasn't the problem, or rather that wasn't some kind of big focus- they're gay, big deal, get over it, lets go on with the rest of the story. And his intentions were realized since it's not about homosexuals, per-say, but about class. In the film Fox (Fassbinder himself in part of the title role) is a carnival worker- Fox and the Severed Head the act is, and in a clever turn Fassbinder never shows us his own character's trick, perhaps as an allusion to disappointment in the film for Fox- and loses his job, only to miraculously win the lottery and meet a man (Peter Chatel) who is a little more well-spoken and well-raised, from a richer background than Fox's working-class roots. But Fox falls in love, and soon they get an apartment, as well as Fox becoming a business partner for his new lover's father's business.There is some melodrama, to be sure, but it's only somewhat about romance between two men, or about men who want to pick up other men for sex (there are a couple of very interesting scenes of this, such as when Fox and Eugen are on vacation and bicker with one another as to what to do with a Moroccan; Salem from Fear Eats the Soul in a great bit part). But it's more about money, about status and the crushing sense of self-worth that comes in a society based on a value system - even in the "lower" class, like the guys at the bar and the bar owner, who have their own sense of worth in their community, one that is not totally at ease with Fox after a while. Often Fassbinder has dealt with the element of the outsider in society, and here one can find no better example: Fox is awkward, doesn't always say the smart things, is not "book" smart to get by with intellectuals nor does he have the butch capacity of those like the traveling-through American soldiers.And yet at the same time Fox is, as well as the way Fassbinder brilliantly plays him, a good person at heart, not meaning to really hurt anyone, but just f***ing up a lot of the time, like when he puts through 40,000 pamphlets the wrong way through a copy machine at his work. Indeed I can't think of anyone else in Fassbinder's circle of actors who could've done it better: he's someone we sympathize with, even when he messes up royally or does the wrong thing at a family dinner or when his sister, a classic blue-collar woman, gets drunk and embarrasses those around her. He is, at least, more human than the out-for-his-own Eugen (and, likewise, Chatel portrays this coldness very effectively, like when we see his eyes darting around and lying right behind Fox). It takes a little time in the middle for things to get really interesting with the plot, in seeing Fox rising little by little to his quasi-ascension to a plastic happiness, as it were. But once Fassbinder gets there to the meaty parts of the drama, it's hard to resist its pleasures.And, also, there's some funny moments too, and as Fassbinder is such a likable guy on screen (ironic considering his reputation) there ends up being a few sardonic moments of humor, little jabs here and there about sex or that very obvious scene where Eugen is caught with having Fox in his apartment with another man coming by in the morning... and the twist, late in the film, when this situation becomes reversed. Fox and His Friends is not a masterpiece, but it is essential viewing in the Fassbinder cannon, for the way he goes about telling this story, how he avoids making it *about* gay people (just as he avoided making it simply about race in Fear Eats the Soul), and he himself proves himself a very good actor here in his own right.

In "Fox and His Friends" (1975) which Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote and directed, he played a main character, Franz Bieberkopf alias "Fox", a lower class, uneducated circus worker who loses his job when his lover, the circus owner is arrested and sent to prison for tax fraud. Fox believes in his luck and strikes it rich by winning 500,000 marks in the lottery and very soon attracts the attention of an elegant, posh, and sophisticated Eugen who knows very well how to make Fox pay for his expensive habits and how to make him invest a lot of money in his father business that is not very successful to say the least. What fascinated me the most - how convincingly Fassbinder - one man production company who came up with the idea, wrote the screenplay and directed the movie- played seemingly tough but as it turned, confused and vulnerable Fox. Another interesting aspect of the movie is the way Fassbinder describes the gay community in Germany of the early 70s. He does not make any excuses and he does not make his characters complete villains or innocent victims. The story he tells could've happened in any community.

A powerful and harrowing melodrama and one of Fassbinder's most accessible movies,this is a must-see for all those interested in intelligent filmmaking.The tragic story of Fox is masterfully and poignantly handled by Fassbinder, while never slipping into sloppy sentimentality.At the same time the film explores sexual and political issues that are still very much relevant.