Satan's Brew

Rainer Werner Fassbinder was an exceptionally prolific filmmaker, churning out more than 30 features, as well as shorts and television pictures, before his death in 1982 at the age of 36. He was a difficult, moody, but prodigiously gifted artist, and almost all of his films have some redeeming qualities. This calamitous attempt at a madcap comedy is the rare exception. The central character, said to be a satirical takeoff on the enfant terrible director himself, is an egomaniacal poet (played as a screaming, bug-eyed hysteric by Kurt Raab) who abuses everyone around him. He's a thoroughly repulsive fellow with radical ideas that are utterly incongruous with his constant need for money, and the broadly-drawn figures surrounding him are equally distasteful. Perhaps Satan's Brew is intended as a sort of apologia for its maker's own excesses--a commentary on the wild, sometimes positively insane nature of the creative process--but if so, it's a terrible miscalculation. Though the film is well-shot (Fassbinder was always a virtuoso with the camera) and the digital transfer on this extra-less disc is excellent, Satan's Brew feels longer than his 16-hour Berlin Alexanderplatz, and it's more likely to make you gag than laugh. Not recommended. (F. Swietek)