The Lost Honor of Katharina Blum

Angela Winkler isn't much of anything, but when she has a brief affair with a man who turns out to be a terrorist, the police investigate her, and the press crucifies her.

Distrust of news organizations is not a phenomenon that arose in the 21st century; 'gutter press' is recorded as of 1845, and 'yellow journalism' in 1881. This collaboration between Volker Schlöndorff and Margarethe von Trotta from the novel by Heinrich Boll is an outright polemic, almost as savage as the attack on Miss Winkler's character. It's hard to qualify it, since the entire situation creeps up on the audience, just as it does on Miss Winkler. One day she's going to discotechs and dancing to 'Spanish Flea', the next the police are talking to her calmly, and a few days later, her name is all over the papers.

In a society where 'news' has become some sort of addictive drug that stresses out anyone who looks at it, and maddens anyone who doesn't -- and no, I haven't looked at the election results, and don't tell me -- here's a movie as bitterly prophetic as NETWORK.