WATCHED - In A Year of Thirteen Moons

The movie opens with a man being beaten up in a park. Dressed in male attire he's been eliciting gay sex with another man. But that man is angered when he discovers that beneath the trousers is a petticoat and inside that there's nothing between 'his' legs. She returns home, but then has to explain how she came by the facial bruises and cuts to her lover Chistophe. He's had enough, packs and drives off leaving her once again alone. 

In A Year of Thirteen Moons from 1978, stands at a pivotal point between the older style representations of grittier urban sub cultures of Fassbinder's earlier output and the glossier sumptuously staged moral melodramas of his later output. Growing international success meaning that really shoe string budgets and short shooting schedules were now a thing of the past.

It has almost 'the' classic Fassbinder story line. Erwin, was once a burly broad shouldered butcher who worked in a slaughterhouse, but finds himself years later living as a transgender woman Elvira. Apparently trapped between two unreconcilable lifestyles, hence the folly of the incident in the park. There is the former life as a husband, a Father of a daughter and the present more chaotic hand to mouth existence as a transgender woman. Simultaneously unable to fully rejoin her family and yet not acceptable to a society unwilling to let Elvira live fully as Elvira.

Making its central character a transgender woman, was quite radical for 1978. But at heart this film is more about the tragedy of one individual's struggle against circumstances and the consequences of past actions. The extent of what a person may chose to do for love. Whether anyone can ever become truly what they feel themselves to be. That it is a transgender woman at the centre of it, is secondary to broader issues relating to identity and self fulfillment.

Fassbinder doesn't artificially clean up the storyline, nor remove any contradictions of morality, motive or ability to offend. For him all humanity is damaged, some of it self-inflicted, some of it by society through its rigidity and the oppression of conventions. Presenting you with something quite raw and relatively unfiltered, with all the rough bits still showing. Its what makes his films interesting but also challenging, they don't necessarily demand you empathise, just to think. He will rarely tie things up neatly for you. I would imagine this film might ruffle more feathers these days than it did in the seventies. It doesn't even try to be 'right on' or PC, it far too messy and human for that. 

So after Christophe's exit Elvira begins a series of return journeys to significant places and people from her past. An attempt to reassemble, or is it rediscover? who she is. How did the trajectory of her current life lead her to this? What was it that happened in Casablanca? What is her way forward now? 

She takes a local streetwalker Zora along for emotional support. First showing her the slaughterhouse of her former workplace. In real time you see cow after cow being dragged out and hung up, their throats cut and blood poring out onto the slaughterhouse floor. Its an unflinchingly painful scene to watch. One of the most unsparingly graphic in all of Fassbinder's films. The crude echo of its symbolism is unavoidable. It ripples through a later scene in the movie when Elvira knowingly watches, and does nothing to stop, a man from hanging himself. Is she incapable of feeling humanly connected to other people? So emotionally numbed and inured by her earlier life, that she's now damaged beyond repair 

Eventually Elvira braves revisiting Anton Saitz, the source of all her present pain. Erwin had once been deeply in love with him. Having declared his love, Anton then rejects it, saying in an off hand remark that maybe he'd find it easier if Erwin were a girl.  Erwin took this literally, and whilst in Casablanca has his genitals surgically removed, and begins transforming himself into Elvira. Anton, is a narcissist, a selfish, successful businessman with little or no qualms or morals. He hardly remembers Erwin, let alone what he had once said. Its all too unbearable. Elvira, unable to rediscover, construct or live a viable coherent sense of herself, ends up taking her life.

Fassbinder thought In A Year of Thirteen Moons was one of his best movies. To which I would agree. Its visceral on both an emotional and cinematic level. A multilayered complex movie, in both its characters and its structure. One that could bear repeat watching. Fassbinder doesn't make it an easy watch, yet it remains quietly compelling. 

You are often shown entirely mundane situations, with no apparent connection to the words you are actually hearing. There is one long scene where Elvira has passed out asleep on the bed. Zora is left impatiently clicking backwards and forwards from one TV channel to another. What you hear are the abrupt snippets of TV programmes, adverts, films, all mixed in with the sounds of video recordings of Elvira, counterpointed in the background by the sonic uneasiness of the music soundtrack. Its a sharply inter-cut audio collage, whilst visually not a lot is happening. 

Volker Spengler as Erwin/Elvira, is worthy of a special mention. His performance is excellent. Convincingly communicating Elvira's inner world, her drive to reasset her existence, her silliness, her naivety, her desperate loneliness and desire to be better understood by others, as well as by herself. Providing the warmth and human heart to what can be at times a brutally told tragedy, coldly stark and grim.

CARROT REVIEW - 6/8

Available to rent on Amazon Prime.