Episode 4, A Handful of People in the Depths of Silence:
I've changed my mind from episode 1. I no longer believe this show to be merely about a man adapting to life outside of prison. I now believe Franz to be a sort of canary in a mine shaft, reflecting the state of Germany on the eve of WW2. This explains his interest in the literal canary in the cage at the bar he frequents. The impotence of men I suppose reflects the impotence of Germany after WW1 which was neutered economically and militarily. Anyway, on to the episode.
Franz is now in a flop-house, drinking himself into oblivion. He gets a run-down of the other tenants from the busy-body owner of the liquor store where he gets beer by the pallet. This information is densely and scientifically repeated in voice-over as Franz crawls and stumbles around his apartment in a drunken stupor. One of the neighbors is a lawyer and his dictations form another wall of impenetrable jargon (true to the sex theme, the lawyer's dictation concerns the personal culpability of someone who contracts an STI.) This episode's plot metaphorically reflects the economic woes of Germany. Several times Franz defends his drinking by pointing out that there is no work to be had anyway. Franz's physical sickness directly results from Berlin's economic sickness. Indeed, the entire episode has a grim atmosphere of addiction and sickness.
This episode is also very fixated with religion. Franz's drunken antics attract the attention of a neighboring doctor whose rope-belt and thick overcoat makes him look strikingly like a monk. His cigar acts as a censer. He teasingly asks Franz if he would first accept help from God, who would want to posses him, or from Satan, who would merely want to be repayed. This is meant to imply that he is actually the devil in disguise (and perhaps is also intended to evoke the anti-semitic image of the Jewish money-lender?) He refers to Franz as Job. At one point, Franz mistakes a working man for a priest and begs him for salvation. This brings us back to the economic theme: Franz's delirious begging for spiritual salvation mirrors a Berlin begging for financial salvation from the proletariat.
In keeping with the religion theme, there is a very strange interlude about animal slaughter. A montage of photographs of animal slaughter (mostly horses being struck with sledgehammers, in keeping with the period) plays over narration about how the animal seems to accept its death when it sees the killing floor. Then an old man with white goat-hair glued to his body slaughters a sheep in a white room. He then does some bookkeeping (again, banking?) at a lectern while the sheep bleeds out in the background. "Five times thirteen is sixty-five" he says. Earlier, Franz had said "two and two is four" in his delirious ravings. Is this goat-man some supernatural being, operating on a plane as high above Franz as multiplication is above addition? Is this the devil leading the populace to the slaughter via the account-book? A very incongruously Jodorowsky-ian moment which I enjoyed but do not know what to make of.
Female infidelity is becoming a full-blown theme by now. We hear that one of the tenants, a waiter, recently broke up with his wife for cheating on him. His new wife still cheats on him, but is too smart to be caught. Franz originally went to jail, recall, for beating up his girlfriend, Ida, for cheating on him. In the previous episode his new girlfriend, Lina, hooks up with his friend Meck. This may tie into the male-impotence/sex theme, or may be an extension of it. In this episode, Eva visits him, offering to save him by letting him be her pimp (she is a prostitute.) Lina had offered the same last episode. Franz refuses Eva's offer as he had Lina's.
Anyway, Franz regains his sobriety. He then chats with the pornography-selling newspaperman who reveals he has had one of his testicles removed. Franz gloomily predicts the other will follow, really hammering on the male-impotence thing. He then reunites with Meck, who has begun selling clothing. Franz asks Meck where he gets his clothing and Meck hastily shushes him. The episode ends with a close-up of a newspaper condemning Carl Von Ossietzky in an ominous herald of things to come.
Episode 5, A Reaper with the Power of Our Lord:
Boy, these titles keep getting cheerier and cheerier, huh? This episode is an almost funny one. It opens with all of Franz's friends joining a fruit-selling operation. Franz, true to his canary-status, decides to stick with selling newspapers. Eva pays him a visit and Franz immediately bites her. He then meets up with an aristocratic-looking man who is a serial womanizer. The womanizer strikes a bargain with Franz that Franz will "steal" old girlfriends away from him and keep them for himself. A parade of women are passed around like bad Christmas presents and the idea would be funny if it were a Seinfeld episode but instead we overlay the proceedings with an extremely ominous piano score, rendering everything bleak and mournful. If you think about it, the scenario is fairly cruel to the women. I supposed this episode would herald a slide back to pimp-hood for Franz (precipitated by the initial visit from Eva.) By the end of the episode however, Franz has grown sick of the game, and apart from a new girlfriend (Cilly,) I doubt there will be any lasting effects.
There's a bit more religion here, although a much smaller amount than in the last episode. The womanizer, wracked with despondency over his empty, hedonistic life, attends a salvation army meeting but is scared off just at the point of public repentance by an ill-timed hymn. Like I say, kind of a funny episode. He talks to Franz about death and sex and seems unhappy about both. I'll have to keep an eye out for religious themes in future.
I think I was worn out by the previous episode once again. I suspect there may be some theme-reinforcing which could be done here with regards to the infidelity of women. Franz traps the cast-off girlfriends by seducing them. this leaves the womanizer free to refuse to see them because, after all, they have now cheated on him. This doesn't fit into any narrative I'm constructing yet however, so we'll have to table that observation for now. Perhaps I've hit another dead-end? This show is supposed to be a 14-part film. It's difficult to analyze such a behemoth piece-meal. I write so much for these episodes because I feel I have to include all of my abortive half-guesses as well as the accurate observations. Oh well. Very exciting!
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