"Mutter Küsters' Fahrt zum Himmel" or "Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven" is a West German German-language film from 1975, so this one had its 40th anniversary last year. It runs for slightly under two hours and was written and directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who was 29 when he made this film, but already very experienced. Co-writer is Kurt Raab, who also acts in here, just like in many other Fassbinder films and the original story is by Heinrich Zille. This story is about a woman who fights for the truth when a dubious newspaper article is released that deals with the death of her husband. Fassbinder presents two entirely different endings to this movie and this contrast is possibly the most interesting aspect of the film. Which reaction is more accurate? The pacifist or the radical? I think Fassbinder's take is clear. The radical solution results in tragedy, also for innocents like Mother Küster and the other solution result in her finding happiness again possibly. There's two kinds of heaven and I quite like the title from this perspective. Just like almost always with Fassbinder, the title contains the name of the (usually female) protagonist and for older characters Fassbinder usually picked Brigitte Mira. I cannot blame him and it's nice to see Mira received a German Film Award nomination for her portrayal here. She is such a likable presence. I probably did not end up liking this one here as much as "Angst essen Seele auf", but it was still a convincing watch that almost never dragged which is a good achievement for a film that runs for almost 2 hours. And Mira alone is reason enough to see this one. One of my preferred films when it comes to Fassbinder. Thumbs up.

This could be seen as something of a follow-up to Fassbinder's collaboration of Why Does Herr R. Run Amok, only from a different perspective and slightly altered details. In that film, Herr. R was a seemingly normal, quiet family man with a wife and kid and after putting up with crap from his family and work (even if not really apparent) he just snaps and kills his family and then hangs himself at work. In Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven we don't even see the freak-out and murder and suicide, which is the right decision on Fassbinder's end since this is not about the husband going insane as much as the wife, who in this film, Emma (Brigitte Mira),is still alive, has to 'deal' with the cards she's been dealt. Which includes a newspaper that prints fabrications on the details of Mr. Kusters, children who leave poor Emma all alone to her own devices, and an at-first sympathetic communist couple who take her under their wing and prop up her late husband as a revolutionary.

I would consider this not quite Fassbinder's most 'political' film as another commenter on this site noted (that I would argue would be The Third Generation),but it still contains much of what makes his dramas about urban alienation and, in this case, exploitation work so well. Emma Kusters is so much a genuine house-wife that it's almost too easy for her to be picked apart by people who have their own interests at heart. No one would give her a second look if she wasn't so vulnerable after her husband's death and his crime, so shell-shocked about the event and then the fall-out of not knowing anything else on her mind except for Herman. And like in Fear Eats the Soul, Mira expresses such vulnerability and precise, touching moments as an 'everyday' middle-class German woman who has no such thing as a solid ideology. Perhaps if there's any strong political commentary it's about being aware in the first place, knowing what communists and anarchists actually do when give the opportunity. Why did Hermann K Run Amok? Who cares, they might really say. Emma does, or wishes she could.

There are many great scenes here and moments of cinematographic ingenuity. I loved two particular shots, one where the camera tracks backward from the podium of the communist meeting, at first on the male speaker's face and seeing the audience in a kind of daze, and the other in the "European" ending where the camera moves slowly on Emma Kuster's bewildered expression as the anarchists make their demands, as she is completely alone in a room full of people with guns and hostages. But the curious thing are the two endings. The first, which as perhaps an experiment or just a lack of funds, is the European ending which is quite bleak, even for Fassbinder, as it shows what happens with the anarchist's hostage situation. We see this ending in description via screenplay-subtitles, and it's hard for me to figure if this was intentional or not. The ending that was shot, for America, is better, since it tries to keep the focus on Emma's lost cause of trying to retract the newspaper story via sit-in (and contrary to what you might think, the anarchists aren't any less nasty).

It ends, in fact, with a moment of hope, as the person locking up takes Emma back to his place for dinner, the "Heaven and Earth" with sausages. This too, however, isn't quite the best ending possible. Perhaps a compromise between the two would have been the best thing, as one is too bitter and the other possibly too sweet. Yet as it remains, Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven is one of Fassbinder's most interesting films, one of a few made in a year that also included the underrated Fear of Fear and the powerful Fox & His Friends.

Good Fassbinder, if a little lethargic. Brigitte Mira, who just passed away earlier this month, plays a housewife who has long settled in her uneventful life. One day, however, her husband commits murder-suicide at the factory in which he works. Suddenly she has to deal with the media, as well as her uncaring family. She can't really figure out why her husband did what he did. Luckily, some local communists show up to help her figure it out. Soon she's a pawn in their politics. And, when they don't satisfy her need for an explanation, a group of anarchists steps in to use her for their own political purposes. The film ends twice – once we read Fassbinder's original scripted ending, then we see the ending he did use. Both work, though I think the first, unfilmed one is a lot more Fassbinder-esque. Mira is wonderful, as usual; some of the family material is too close to Fear Eats the Soul, and is rendered somewhat ineffective because of that.