"Die dritte Generation" or "The Third Generation" is a West German German-language film from the year 1979, so this one will soon have its 40th anniversary. The writer and director is Rainer Werner Fassbinder and it is among his later works. He died 3 years later an untimely death at the age of 37. This is one of the films by him where he really unleashes and what worked very well with "Satansbraten" did not work out so well here. The film is over-the-top and ignores all kinds of restrictions. The reason I did not like it is because it just didn't fit the topic. This is one of Fassbinder's most political movies and it's obvious he was very much influenced in his work by the big issue of left-wing terrorism in the FRG back then. But with some of the scenes and dialogues, the film loses all its seriousness in my eyes. The cast once again includes several familiar names from his movies such as Carstensen, Kaufmann, Schygulla and Spengler. So if you have seen some other works by Fassbinder, you will definitely recognize some familiar faces. I personally can see though why this film was not received so well by awards bodies despite the political relevance it had without a doubt back then. I have to give it a thumbs-down. Not recommended.

In Berlin, a cell of terrorist composed by middle-class people is activated with the sentence "The World as Will and Idea", based on the central work of the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer "The World as Will and Representation". They plan to abduct the businessman P. J. Lurz ( Eddie Constantine) that works with sales of computers, while they are chased by a persistent chief of police.

"Die Dritte Generation" a.k.a. "The Third Generation" is a weird, hermetic, disconnected but mesmerizing film of German director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, divided in six chapters and dedicated to those who truly love (meaning no one in the vision of the director). The plot explores the concept of terrorism and the contradictions of the middle- class and apparently the central idea is based on Schopenhauer's central work. Unfortunately I do not have knowledge in philosophy, sociology or political science to fully understand this inaccessible film. Fassbinder uses unusual angles with his camera and strange sounds to expose with irony the bourgeois values of each ridiculous terrorist of this generation that does not have ideology. In the end, I liked this collection of ideas in spite of I have not clearly understood the film as a whole. My vote is six.

Title (Brazil): "A Terceira Geração" ("The Third Generation")

I went into The Third Generation, quite frankly, not expecting it to be a black-as-death comedy of errors. I was under the impression, perhaps misinterpreted by a description on a netflix DVD, that Satan's Brew was Fassbinder's only real comedy. But as it turns out The Third Generation is one not merely in its context but in the form; this is one of the Fassbinder films that owes far less to the melodramas one sees throughout his career than to Godard, who was also a big influence (if only, as I've heard, to beat his prolific output). Specifically, in The Third Generation, one can see Fassbinder, in telling this loosely episodic and original story of Berlin terrorists, a challenge to what was already a great challenge with La Chinoise: how to show on film how absurd a terrorist group really is, how it functions when not absolutely clear and concise like a bunch of man/women-children, and how the form of the film, the style, has to go with that.

Damn it all if this isn't such a warped movie. I don't even mean that just in its characterizations, though there is some of that, but in the nature of its filming, the contradictions between the content and the style, and the nature of over-lapping sound. Please do pay attention to how sound is used in The Third Generation: it's the kind of relentless assault that, at least in this facet, comes closest to Godard's attack on cinema. There's very rarely a scene where it's just silent, and often the sources go on top and blend into one another, with characters speaking dialog, and then music (either/and/or the very experimental compositions and instrument choices by Peer Raben or incidental),and then usually a television/videos or other dialog or something else entirely.

It certainly can contend with Altman as having the most sophisticated sense of sound editing, but it's not just this, or even those perfectly lurid transitions taken from writings on bathroom walls and stalls (again, a twist on Godard's chapter-break-up): Fassbinder's savage satire is about the contradiction of a society that is so alienated that they are literally trapped in their houses most days and nights while scrambling for some kind of plan they wait and plot to enact. Fassbinder's camera- which for this he was his own DoP- does sometimes move fast, like say in the shooting scene at the restaurant (watch the fast pan to his face, not expected but very effective),but a lot of the time it stays still, or moves slowly in on a room, on faces or a situation unfolding, like with the naked woman compulsively stealing money. But there's other scenes where it's just maddening (in the best possible way) to see what he'll shoot, like when the snitch is rambling on and on to the Inspector about "You're his father, You're father is his grandfather" repeatedly as if in a coke-head trance, as the camera does long takes, barely moving on this insane scene happening in front of us.

What ultimately separates a radical like Godard and a radical like Fassbinder, however, is perspective. For a short period Godard was actually on the side of the revolutionaries/terrorists in France, however many there were, in the heat of 1968, even if, arguably, La Chinoise worked best as a subtle or unintentional attack on such misguided 20-somethings. Fassbinder, on the other hand, hated these bastards in Berlin, the youth groups who kept starting up stuff to the point where he moved to Paris, and decided to do his own kind of lampooning, if you will. Some parts aren't funny, at all, such as the junkie overdose or the implication of the higher-ups like Eddie Constantine's character actually fronting the terrorists money, or, of course, Gunther Kauffman's own path and moments as a character. Other parts, like the shoot-out in the street with the gang in drag/weird costumes would make any surrealist wet their pants in gleeful, obscene laughter.

What makes The Third Generation so invigorating a piece of cinema is its distinctive style, its approach to taking a stance practically politically with its barrage of sound and deliberately methodical camera movements and the rapid-fire cutaways to other things happening in other rooms or buildings or moments. But also the nature of this group-think mentality, of which there's so few really good films let alone possibly great ones. It's a serio-comic experiment in Gonzo movie-making from someone who knows his stuff.