Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Film Strongman Ferdinand
Posted by Ed M. Koziarski on 08.24.10 at 04:24 PM
"It is one of his chief aims to call every kind of institution into question, particularly those of the state - if I interpret half way correctly - and if his work is not indeed even more radical, that is, designed to prove that basically Alexander Kluge is interested in the destruction of every type of institution," Rainer Werner Fassbinder wrote of fellow German New Wave filmmaker Alexander Kluge.
A former cop who takes a job as security chief for a West German corporation grows increasingly obsessed with the threat that Communism poses to his employer in Strongman Ferdinand (1976), known as Kluge's most straightforward work.
White Light Cinema screens Strongman Ferdinand tonight at 8 p.m. at The Nightingale, 1084 N. Milwaukee Ave. $7-10.
Also by Kluge:
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“Strongman Ferdinand” by Alexander Kluge (1977) How Freaks of National Security Ideology become Terrorists and Violators of Human Rights is a detailed depiction of the psychology of a right-wing functionary, a person who has only one goal in life – to subdue other people in order to serve his rich masters as efficiently as possible. He is afraid that people’s democratic freedoms will be used by them as a cover for their desire to subvert his government and his security zones, and he is spying on people in order to trap them, arrest, interrogate, torture and force them to confess their criminal intentions. For Ferdinand serious culture (cultivating independent thinking) and democracy (cultivating versatility of life styles) are nothing but swamps breeding anarchic monsters.
Ferdinand’s bizarre destiny is to shift from being an anti-terrorist to becoming a terrorist himself, to blur the very distinction between anti-terrorism and terrorism. For him advanced anti-terrorist activity includes terrorist activity as a part of itself. The logic of transformation of anti-terrorism into terrorism is analyzed by Kluge’s film with a prophetic power.
Kluge made this film with stylized asceticism to emphasize the deadly boredom of his anti-hero’s universe, his emotional poverty and pathological limitations of his imagination. In personal relations Ferdinand is practically autistic; the absence of any eroticism makes him, in order to satisfy his sexual needs, to resort to persistent manipulation of women. His cultural horizon is identical wit his job description. He combines the psychological features of conservative dogmatists and the Soviet functionaries of communist doctrine.
Kluge’s main point is that totalitarianism is a function of cultural illiteracy.
Victor Enyutin
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“Strongman Ferdinand” by Alexander Kluge (1977) How Freaks of National Security Ideology become Terrorists and Violators of Human Rights is a detailed depiction of the psychology of a right-wing functionary, a person who has only one goal in life – to subdue other people in order to serve his rich masters as efficiently as possible. He is afraid that people’s democratic freedoms will be used by them as a cover for their desire to subvert his government and his security zones, and he is spying on people in order to trap them, arrest, interrogate, torture and force them to confess their criminal intentions. For Ferdinand serious culture (cultivating independent thinking) and democracy (cultivating versatility of life styles) are nothing but swamps breeding anarchic monsters.
Ferdinand’s bizarre destiny is to shift from being an anti-terrorist to becoming a terrorist himself, to blur the very distinction between anti-terrorism and terrorism. For him advanced anti-terrorist activity includes terrorist activity as a part of itself. The logic of transformation of anti-terrorism into terrorism is analyzed by Kluge’s film with a prophetic power.
Kluge made this film with stylized asceticism to emphasize the deadly boredom of his anti-hero’s universe, his emotional poverty and pathological limitations of his imagination. In personal relations Ferdinand is practically autistic; the absence of any eroticism makes him, in order to satisfy his sexual needs, to resort to persistent manipulation of women. His cultural horizon is identical wit his job description. He combines the psychological features of conservative dogmatists and the Soviet functionaries of communist doctrine.
Kluge’s main point is that totalitarianism is a function of cultural illiteracy.
Victor Enyutin
