Tftucday, October 0, 1CC3
Dally Kcbraskcn
Pcga 15
anoisase o9 German thriller iia 1 984' laaold
Ey Eric Pclercsa . . .
One ofGcrr.arys p-eatest directors
plays a rols he obviously and tho
roughly enjoys, that of a crusty, amoral
and thoroughly cedent detective, in
"Kamikaze '89." The film is part of a
tribute to its star, Reiner Werner Fass
binder, who died last year, and shows
tonight, Friday and Saturday at 7 and
9 p.m. at the Sheldon Film Theatre,
with a Saturday matinee at 3 p.m.
X ' '
Film
Review
Wolf Gremm's film 13 based on a fut
uristic thriller, "Murder on the 31st
Floor," by Per Wahloo, and it follows a
lot of mystery genre conventions. Police
Lieutenant Jansen (Fassbinder) is a
man who always solves his case and
the corporate-governmental baddies
who obstruct him cannot prevent his
winning, even though they own the
game. .
"Kamikaze W b a witty and fun film
partly because of the political com
mentary inherent in the story and
even more importantly because Fass-.
binder is good.
Everjtlir.3 is preen '' -r;
"Everything is green a synthesized
voice says blandly at the start. "The
chemical industry has found the solu
tion for sweet dreams." This is ob
viously a bad dream of the future, like
the artificial calm of "1D34" and "Brave
New World; as Jansen's . assistant
Anton (Gunther Kaufmann) says, they ;
drive you to drink and then make that
illegal ' . , -
Jansen refuses to challenge the sys
tem. "Never, never say, that," he cor
rects Anton's indiscretion in one of his
few emotional moments. Normally he
confines himself to laconic comments
like "Avoid unnecessary questions," and
"Avoid unnecessary thinking."
What Jansen seeks is to do his work
quietly and get along wear his absurd
leopard-skin suit and drive his car
with the leopard-skin dashboard,
drink his illegal alcohol and win every
case; ' y-'-y-y-
Much of the excitement in this futu
ristic thriller comes from its potential ,
for satire. The Police Disco where Jan
sen hangs out has a laughing contest
all through the weekend when he is
above a very strange assemblage of
dancers, almost encased and their
manic laughter is televised to a nearly
universal audience. :
One woman becomes progressively
nearer hysteria as television clips are
interspersed through the film, but the
winner, is Little Rita, a small blonde
woman with an idiotic, doll-like giggle.
Unexpected deaths '
Much is borrowed from Orwell and
Huxley here; somebody's sweet
dreams tablets drive him to gun his car
for Jansen and die . . but people are
never murdered, never commit sui
cide; Germany is full of "unexpected
deaths." -
The case Jansen works on is simple
enough; someone has sent a bomb
threat to the headquarters of Ger
many's control conglomerate, which
dominates everything. When Jansen
gets too close to finding out vital
secrets about the conglomerate, such
as the existence of its terrorist section,
he is advised to stop the investigation
and attempts are made on his life.
Jansen finds out the culprit of the
original bomb threat, only to discover
that a second threat has been issued,
obviously an attempt by the conglo
merate to blow up part of the building
and rid itself of certain persons.
Jansen saves them in his fixation of
doing a good job even if the bosses
dont want him to only to find they
have died the same day from "burns."
The film ends wonderfully with Fass
binder standing against a life size pho
tograph of astronaut Neil Armstrong
on the moon; he leans against it, copu
lates with it, laughs in front of it, as we
hear Armstrong and President Nixon
reflect on the grandeur of humankind
and the meaning of the moon landing.
Does Ms job
Jensen's own ambivalence about what
has happened is particularly interest
ing. The police lieutenant will always
do his job, but that doesnt mean we
don't see him at moments when he is
thinking about not doing it; Jansen is
clearly intrigued with the cartoon fig
ure Krysmopampas, "the ultimate
enemy," which people have seized on
as a way to express their contempt of
and frustration with the Germany of
"1989." ' --.v--:
And when Jansen is determined to
perceive a beautiful and mysterious
woman named Elena Fan as the most
important suspect in the bomb threat
case (she is not the guilty party), we
connect her glamor with her subver
sive activity. But Jansen never ap
proaches his Elena and never does
anything other than his job.
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Photo courttt y SheSdon FUm Thtitrt
The late E&iner CTerner Fassbinder in a scene from "ILamikaze fiD."
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