In his feature film debut, FATE, director Fred Kelemen creates a challenging work that captures the despair of displaced immigrants in modern-day Germany. Kelemen's strong imagery and experimental style turn an elemental story into a provocative chronicle.
Valera (Valerij Fedorenko), a Russian musician, plays for his supper in a grimy subway station. A middle-class German man listens to the music for a while, then invites Valera back to his apartment to play for him.
During Valera's performance, the man grows increasingly hostile, insisting that Valera play only lighthearted polkas. Valera finally tries to leave, but the man refuses to pay him unless he drinks an entire bottle of vodka. Valera gulps down the liquor, takes the money, and then jumps into a
nearby city fountain where he cries out in psychic pain.
Later, Valera walks into a bar, where he wins some money in a pool match. The other players get angry when Valera takes the money and leaves. Valera next visits his girlfriend, Luba (Sanja Spengler), a prostitute, but he is angered to discover her with a client. In a rage, Valera shoots the man
dead. Valera flees, while Luba goes into shock.
Later, only half-dressed, Luba runs down her street, tripping in the rubble. When she gets up, she goes to a bar, where she is given drinks by the waitresses. After flirting and dancing with the men in the bar, Luba stumbles again, but, instead of helping her, the patrons of the bar rape her.
The next morning, Luba finds herself in a forest. She staggers through the woods until she reaches a landfill, where she hears Valera playing his accordion. The two are reunited, and are both nearly run over by a tractor. They emerge unscathed and go off together.
In the course of 80 very weighty minutes, FATE observes the lives of two Russian outcasts--a homeless street musician and his prostitute girlfriend--in searing, unblinking fashion. The other characters who appear are mostly native Germans who use and abuse the outsiders (as they also use and abuse
themselves) in ways that symbolize a breakdown of all forms of social decency. (Thematically, FATE brings to mind 1995's similar LA RONDE-inspired films, KIDS and ECLIPSE, as well as the work of Jean Genet.)
What makes FATE more than a series of indulgently depressing vignettes is how the director depicts the existential angst. In 1994, Kelemen transferred his video production to grainy 16mm film stock, giving an already dark piece an appearance that recalls early German Expressionism. The crude look
fittingly mirrors the souls of the characters.
One of many remarkable and haunting minute-long takes in the piece occurs as Valera--after being humiliated in the polka lover's apartment--cries out in the fountain, his black silhouette flanked by the water and lights. When the scene fades to black, his cry becomes muffled.
Elsewhere, Kelemen's use of hand-held cinema verite camerawork allays the stylization and creates many seemingly--and shockingly--authentic moments, including Luba's gang rape in the bar.
Some of FATE's images are difficult, even unpleasant, to watch, and the symbolism of the last shot is overemphatic, given what has come before. But all of FATE fits neatly into the canon of bitterly ironic work from Fassbinder, Herzog, and Wenders, the first masters of the New German Cinema.
(Graphic violence, nudity, sexual situations, adult situations, extreme profanity.) leave a comment