Second week of Dekaden: Screening of Der Junge Törless and Angst essen Seele auf
All films are for 18 years old and above
Week 2, Sunday, October 23, 2022
- 2 PM - Der Junge Törless (Directed by Volker Schlöndorff, 1966)
- 4 PM - Angst essen Seele auf (Directed by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1974)
Stories about bullying and abusing, physically, sexually or psychologically, could be found almost at any time of our history. It is sadly not something unique to our latest #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter era.
Der Junge Törless is Volker Schlöndorff’s screen adaptation of The Confusions of Young Törless (Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törleß), the literary debut of the Austrian philosophical novelist and essayist Robert Musil, first published in 1906. Three students of an Austrian boarding school, Reiting, Beineberg and Törless, catch their classmate Basini stealing money from one of the three and decide to punish him themselves instead of turning him in to the school authorities. Their abusive treatment of Basini becomes openly sexual and increasingly sadistic; nevertheless, he endures all the torture even when, after being deprived of any dignity, he is discredited by the entire class.
Angst Essen Seele auf revolves around the romance between Emmi, an elderly German cleaning lady with Ali, a much younger than Emmi Moroccan migrant worker (so called Gastarbeiter) in German post WW II. The love story was considered inappropriate by the neighbors, colleagues and even Emmi’s children. But, as we also see in Törless, those people who hold more social or capital power will finally find out the way to accept any inappropriateness, which is through different kind of exploitation.
Confusions fueled by hatred, resulted in pressure and misuse of powers. These two stories of an alleged thief and a representative of social burden of a prosperous society are still indeed reflections of our societies nowadays, where we project our own discontentment to those who are most defenseless group in our proximity.
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