This coverage of the 1981 edition of Theater of the World festival, made by acclaimed director Rainer Werner Fassbinder, swings between a series
of performatic arts and play along with a serious criticism of the state of art of theater made by French actor Antonin Artaud many years before
those performances. Of the 30 groups that performed in the event, 14 are shown in this piece, and while I cannot be critical of what they do since it's
all too fragmented and zero context is given about them, I can be critical of this exact material as made by Mr. Fassbinder and it breaks my heart
to say it's a big disappointment (my first with him, so far).
I don't think the documentary genre favored the director so well, as it's such a disjointed piece with little input from him that it becomes
confusing in what is trying to do. While the many art performances/plays are presented, the voice-over during the acts keep criticising theater as
becoming decadent, soulless and no longer reflecting important life issues of its era - consider that Antonin's words were written way before those
acts since he's a thespian from another era. You may remember him for his role in Dreyer's "The Passion of Joan D'Arc".
And for all the excitment
and some breakthrough acts of a contemporary 1980's Germany and the new theater scene that came, it feels as if Fassbinder (a playwright of his own too)
is being critical of a moment and a group of which he didn't belong and felt they're not being authentic with what they're doing. The juxtaposition
of everything doesn't work while the images celebrate new performers and new playwrights, the words coming from someone else only reveal that this art is
dying and in need of a "plague" to rebuilt itself - the text makes a valid and interesting comparison between a plague and the theater, and how both can
be destructive forces that also help creation, allow new things and new ways of life to exist.
In terms of presentation it was a quite confusing thing to see as we aren't given the exact content and contexts of the play and performances;
Mr. Fassbinder instead of making chapters presenting a little about what's shown each time they succeeded one another, he gives us a typed list of the
14 acts right in the opening, as a Kraftwerk song plays in the background. The plays and acts are all very expressive, some are really fascinating and
memorable to watch (Pina Bausch was there) but just seeing the titles and way before the act makes it all too vague and lost in confusion (unless you know
exactly what is shown, but even so it's just fragments). I'll only
highlight the play with the naked couple and their bizarre act because the soundtrack was hilarious, with a repetitive criticism on theater (voice over)
and a same song piece kept repeating over and over like a scratched vinyl.
RWF used the critiques of another, but the ball is thrown back at us: is the art of theatre dying? Are there still things to be shown, staged that
can cause a revolution in our lives or is there a chance for us to see anything groundbreaking on stage? Or it does need to collapse once and for all in
order to be reinvented? Same questions we apply to the art of cinema, as a great majority already say that movies are dead and are only a repetition of
itself. I won't say that any art form is dead, it's just going to a lenghty lethargic process that sometimes wakes up from time to time to show new things
or reflect whatever the historical period we are living - not much of an interesting one but it's what we have.
At the time of this piece, RWF also made "Lola" and "Lili Marleen", two great films but I'm not sure about the exact order of how
those three were made. I'd like to think he was comissioned to make "Theater in Trance" rather than developing all by himself as he usually did. It's
just something to do, get busy (as he was an workaholic) and get fundings for future projects - being "Querelle" a possible result, his final. But if
he had a final saying on evertything, then the blame was on him. Pity that I couldn't enjoy it more. 5/10.
