The Farewell & Vodka Lemon
06.24.07 (5:54 am) [edit]I finally managed to secure some time for myself to see films.
The one that caught my attention recently was The Farewell by Jan Schutte. This is a hidden or cut off part of what is known as Brecht's official biography up to today in the world. Therefore the movie captures the Germany's national playwright's very last days, which were more focused on how he faced the consequences of his way of life: the polygamous commune that he was actually living in. That he was productive regardles s of his challenged health and the political turmoil that always awaited him were rahter secondary plots. In the context, his political responsiblity and how he took it might be the undercurrent of all incidents. Ultimately, all is doomed and becomes deceptive when Brecht was doomed. Because it simply meant the whole system would collapse shortly when the partriarch was about to die. So how those women of his life had took care of his last days was the actual plop as opposed to how he took care of them.
This way of life of Brecht was represented quite interestingly especially in terms of how contradicting it seemed to be given his ideas and works that were read rather differently. As a matter of fact, he was living in this environment openly for a long time and he did not even intend to cease the life style. On the contrary, he was even racking his female followers/mistresses up one after another with his wife's consistent dedication even to this official womanizing. The political stance and responsiblity the national artist had in pre and post WWII seemed more weigh on his life than on any of this 'too personal matter'. I got so appalled to see this film as someone living in the 21st century world. Well, didn't those women claim how false it was to sacrifice themselves just to glorify a man even if he was such a powerful figure? The most worthwhile part of the film was it: they were sincere and wise enough to know all he did to them was wrong. But they did not know how to actualize their awareness because, after all, they were dependent to this man. They ended up iiving in the shadow of his and getting protection from his power rather than resisiting it or challenging the tyranny. But what can you do when Brecht even got a nerve to write a will to let his last mistress, a young talentless actress he collaborated with, inherit his good amount of assets including his play's copyright with his wife's consent to it. The reaction his daughter had over all of these mistresses AND her own father's fallacy offers such an insight. Well, the movie at least gives you the picture of the complexity in 20th centry when people still were living in the legacy of the partriarchical fallacy. This also represents the pretext of feminist ideology to question how far is too far to retrieve the falsely distributited of power. The answer is this: you can never get too far to earn it back.
Another impressive movie was Vodka Lemon.