In crafting In a Year of 13 Moons, Fassbinder opened a window onto his own emotions, anger, guilt and regret, and in turn, created one of the most fascinating and groundbreaking movies of the 1970s, with a performance from Volker Spengler that is nothing short of revolutionary in its impact, emotion and insight. Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s In a Year of 13 Moons (1978) is released on Studiocanal Vintage World Cinema DVD, Blu-ray, and digital on 24 March. Pre-order
“People are terrible. They can bear anything. Anything! People are hard and brutal. And everyone is disposable. Everyone! That’s the lesson.” – Rainer Werner Fassbinder
Queerness, art, post-war German society, capitalism, pain, exploitation, violence, love, longing, and humour are just a few of the key themes that thread through Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s extensive catalogue of theatre productions and short and long-form films, spanning from 1965 to his premature death at the age of 37 in 1982. Fassbinder’s work would include groundbreaking German New Cinema titles such as Fox and His Friends (1975), The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant (1972), Querelle (1982) and the epic Berlin Alexanderplatz (1980), yet while these titles have rightly earned much praise over the years, many of Fassbinder’s films have received less attention, but deserve no less praise. In a Year of 13 Moons is one of those films.
In a Year of 13 Moons opens with Gustav Mahler’s haunting Symphony No. 5, a classical work that also held a prominent place in Luchino Visconti’s adaptation of Thomas Mann’s story of regret, beauty, loneliness and finality, Death in Venice (1971), and like Visconti’s film, In a Year of 13 Moons is also about the hourglass running dry.
Fassbinder sets the scene with text that scrolls over images of a Frankfurt park bathed in early morning light. The text explains that every seventh year is a lunar year and that people whose lives are dominated by their emotions suffer intensely from depression in those years. The text goes on to say that the same is true of years with thirteen new moons, and if a lunar year also happens to be a year with thirteen new moons, the result is often a personal catastrophe. As the camera pans the park near a railway line that is clearly a cruising ground, young men stand waiting for passing trade, and Elvira (Volker Spengler), a transgender woman dressed as a man, looks for the touch of another. But there is no love for Elvira from the passing trade, who beat her and humiliate her when they discover she is not a man, leaving her to crawl away into the bushes, her clothes torn and her face bruised.
Elvira transitioned from male to female when she was a young man (Erwin), and the reasons for that decision continue to haunt her to this day. She is a victim of love, never fully accepted as a woman by the men who seek to abuse and control her, with what remains of Erwin equally ostracised and rejected by society. She understands, only too well, the brutality of men, the power they wield, and the barbed wire barriers they erect to block love and tenderness. Elvira is caught in that barbed wire, each movement causing more pain as she attempts to find freedom. But Elvira has been trapped for a long time and is tired of the impossible struggle.
Over five days, we walk alongside Elvira as she finally faces her past, takes back her power, and frees herself from the barbed wire that had held her still for years; it’s her final act, and one that carries pain, loneliness, humour, and strength. In Fassbinder’s film, we are Elvira’s silent companion as a week in a year of 13 moons unfolds before our eyes, set against a backdrop of a city attempting to escape its past, just as Elvira embraces hers.
Mirrors reflect multiple identities, a nun circles a courtyard recounting personal histories like a planet circling the sun, a musical number highlights the insanity of unchecked power, and cows face slaughter in scenes that will turn the stomachs of even the most ardent meat eaters as Fassbinder explores themes of human brutality, blood, and death. In a Year of 13 Moons asks us to look beyond the melodrama and dig deep into human disconnect, loss, and the identities we forge through choice, necessity, and social pressure.
Cause and effect, gender identity, self-sacrifice, toxic love, and atonement sit at the heart of Fassbinder’s fascinating rumination on life, love, choices and cruelty, asking us whether the unfolding tragedy is individually constructed, a predefined destiny of Elvira’s making or the result of social pressure in a society that dismisses and judges before crying over those it pushes toward the exit. Fassbinder isn’t interested in providing us with answers; he is instead working through his own guilt and grief at the loss of his lover, Armin Meier, to suicide.
It’s no coincidence that Elvera is portrayed as an ex-butcher like Meier or that she spent her life in an orphanage, also like Meier. It is also no coincidence that Elvira’s story plays out over a week because Meier’s body lay undiscovered for a week following Fassbinder’s split with him. Did Meier attempt to change himself to find Fassbinder’s love, only to be rejected?
Those details we may never fully know, but one thing is evident: in crafting In a Year of 13 Moons, Fassbinder opened a window onto his own emotions, anger, guilt and regret, and in turn, created one of the most fascinating and groundbreaking movies of the 1970s, with a performance from Volker Spengler that is nothing short of revolutionary in its impact, emotion and insight. In a Year of 13 Moons is, without doubt, one of Fassbinder’s most emotionally complex and personal films.
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