6/10
What can you do when you're in the middle of a 15 1/2 hour long film/TV series/serial/whatever and you're just not that into it? Just keep on pushing through, I guess. There were moments of brilliance in Rainer Werner Fassbender's lengthy adaptation of Alfred Doblin's novel but too few and far in between for me. The story centres around the massive Franz Biberkopf, newly released from prison on account of killing his lover/prosititute, now attempting to go straight in 1920's Berlin. There were things I really liked: the poetic tone of the entire series; the brilliant character Reinhold, the closest thing in the story to an antagonist; the depiction of 1920's Berlin and all the little details like the "KINO" sign constantly strobing into Franz's apartment; his landlady Mrs. Bast; the incredible, dreamlike episode 12 with Reinhold and Franz's new love Mieze; and the surreal epilogue which blew the doors off everything preceding it, reminiscent of what David Lynch did on Twin Peaks some 10 years later. Overall though I was bored a lot of the time - it was hard to see the point of a lot of what was happening on screen, and it seems like an obvious thing to say about a work lasting as long as this one, but it really could have benefitted from being a lot shorter. It's certainly an experience and I'm happy, in the end, that I undertook it, but it's not something I'll be revisiting any time soon.
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