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R. W. Fassbinder's Last Film: Querelle - Each Man Kills The Things He Loves
R. W. Fassbinder's Last Film: Querelle - Each Man Kills The Things He Loves
After watching Wings of Desire by Wim Wenders, and analyzing and discussing the many similarities between the perspective of the angelic protagonist (flying above the city, moving through walls, observing intimate moments of humans while himself unseen) and the camera, students had already become sensitized to the many different kinds of gazes that can be employed, explored, and exposed in this medium, often in manner reflecting on its own possibilities and limitations. For this movie, we would take these issues up again, but focus on issues regarding gender roles and sexuality, and ambiguous male sexualities in a world that imposes heteronormativity, but also draws power from its repressed, homosexual undercurrents, by forming what Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick calls "male homo-social bonds." These bonds reinforce gender hierarchies by being exclusive of women, while nevertheless being open to homosexual forms of desires under certain conditions, namely to strengthen those bonds. We addressed these questions by talking about different instances of "male" and "queer" gazes in the movie.
Based on the 1946 novel Querelle of Brest by Jean Genet, this movie is the last work by Rainer Werner Fassbinder, who died before its release in 1982. It is also his visually most distinctive film, and probably also his most overtly queer one. Shot entirely indoors, including outside scenes, and bathed in a warm, but artificial luminescence, this movie is very theatrical in nature, and has an aesthetics that is both campy and surreal. Following the Belgian sailor Georges Querelle after arriving in the port of Brest with his ship, the plot is just as much about self-discovery and his coming-to-terms with his homosexual drives, as it is about violence, destruction and power, and the relationships between brothers, and between men and women.
In this world, sexual encounters between men are frequent, but open homosexuality is nevertheless repressed and forbidden. This taboo is, ironically, enforced by a police man dressed in what looks more like a costume than an uniform, and who is also seen engaging in sexual acts with other men when not acting in his official capacity. Ambiguity and the doubling of roles are a strong theme in the movie, dividing the world into one that is official, straight, and in plain sight, and one that is hidden, even criminal, queer, and takes place away from the eyes of the public.
The only character stated to be gay, namely the captain of the ship, is in love with Querelle, but can never act on it. Instead, he only watches him from afar, confiding his unfulfilled romantic desires only to his personal tape recorder. Students noted in class how his distant, passive gaze and recorded voice put the captain in a position similar to the camera and sound recorder used to shoot a movie. As the only unambiguously gay character, as opposed to the many men who engage in sexual acts with other men while simultaneously insisting on their straightness, and even displaying homophobia themselves, he appears confined to a passive existence, largely outside of the plot of the film.
Another important motif in the film on which students picked up quickly is that of mirrors, both literally and metaphorically. Querelle describes his brother, with whom he has a rivalrous as well as incestuous love-hate relationship, as his mirror image. At the same time, they can barely meet without trying to kill each other, turning the relationship between brothers also into a suicidally narcissistic theme. Other characters are suggested to be mirrors of each other, as well.
Lysiane, the only woman with a speaking role in the film (the only other women seen are prostitutes in the background), is married to the owner of the port's brothel, where she also sings at night (usually a song based on a line from from the poem The Ballad of Reading Gaol by Oscar Wilde: Each Man Kills The Things He Loves). She is unaware that her husband regularly challenges the men who visit his establishment to play dice, and that the men who lose are required to have sex with him before they can see one of the women. (Querelle loses on purpose when it is his turn.) Simultaneously, she longs after Querelle herself, but is frequently ignored by him, as well as by all of the other male characters. She is seen talking to herself in a mirror, questioning her attractiveness as a woman, while oblivious to her male companions' true desires and inclinations. Here, students noted how talking to a mirror signifies both loneliness, as well as narcissism; a narcissism that is also displayed by Querelle and his desire to recognize himself in other men.
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