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Kill daddy good night by Eva Menasse.pdf
KILL DADDY GOOD NIGHT
Eva Menasse
What constitutes a good film adaptation? What really counts – the faithful rendering of the source material or the freedom to explore other means for conveying content? “Revolutionary Road” by Sam Mendes adapted from Richard Yates?s eponymous book and “Kill Daddy Goodnight” by Michael Glawogger based on the novel “Das Vaterspiel” by Josef Haslinger are two extreme examples of these disparate approaches. Mendes chose the literal route, which was, considering the overpowering mastery of Yates? book – easily one of the best twentieth-century American novels – probably also an act of humility. He stuck, not only in his dialogue but also in his images, so closely to, indeed almost mimicked Richard Yates? work, and yet he did not clone the book but managed to preserve its spirit and soul. No small task when dealing with a so flawless and already quite “filmic” source. “Revolutionary Road,” with its international stars Leonardo diCaprio and Kate Winslet and its carefully selected supporting cast, is the perfect, beautiful, faithfully rendered film enthusiast?s adaptation of a work of literature, which despite or perhaps precisely because of all this poses the snide question: But was it really necessary? Who actually needs a film adaptation of this literary masterpiece?
Michael Glawogger took a different approach. He chopped up, altered, nearly stripped the original down to its bare bones – and he added new motifs. Unlike Yate?s book, Haslinger?s story was not necessarily cut out to be a film. Fraught with a slew of subplots and vacillating between its two main storylines, “Das Vaterspiel” is a strangely irresolute novel that poses a big ethical question, only to ultimately shirk the responsibility of answering it.
On the one hand there is the story of a boy growing up in Austria. Slacker type Helmut Köpping is perfect for the part of Rupert “Ratz” Kramer, who hates his authoritarian father – a vain, hypocritical, socialist party cabinet member – and spends years creating a computer game whose special feature is that it can be personalized by the user. You just scan in the mug shot of your worst enemy, and that becomes the face on all your targets.
The second story deals with a much graver theme and is told through the testimony of the adult Jonas Shtrom, who survived the massacre of the Lithuanian Jews as a boy and has been trying to track down a former schoolmate ever since: Algis Munkaitis, the person who murdered Jonas? father along with thousands of other victims. As fate would have it, Algis Munkaitis happens to be Mimi?s grandfather, and Mimi, in turn, was Rupert Kramer?s first and only love. In the sixties, Jonas Shtrom almost succeeded in disclosing Algis? identity, after which the latter went into hiding in a Long Island basement where he has lived ever since. When granddaughter Mimi needs someone she can trust to renovate her grandfather?s basement, she remembers her classmate Rupert, who painted her apartment when they were going to college together. And this brings us back full circle to Rupert.
Unlike in the novel, which almost loses itself in the tragicomic descriptions of Rupert?s childhood before he lands the basement renovation job, Glawogger divides the story into two parts. In the first half, Rupert fights his way through a blizzard en route to the airport. Attila Boa?s images of snow and sleet combined with Olga Neuwirth?s music produce a fathomless, disoriented, menacing atmosphere – as if the viewer him-/herself were behind the wheel. His hated native country has him in its grips and isn?t about to let him go without a fight. A seemingly endless drive; outside in the snow – actually all just part of Rupert?s imagination – a computer image of his father runs along beside him trying to get him to stop. They are beautiful, convincing images. And into this eerie winter journey Glawogger edits flashbacks from Rupert?s past, arguments with his father, his first encounters with Mimi. And Jonas Shtrom?s testimony. We have become jaded by so many harrowing accounts of the persecution of the Jews, and nowadays dealing with this subject in films or literature is one of the most delicate challenges there is. But Michael Glawogger tackles this hurdle effortlessly. A stationary camera, a bare room, and a great actor like Ulrich Tukur, whose emotions in these scenes are betrayed only by his restless thumbs, the flash of white shirt cuffs – that?s all it takes; in fact, this reduction forces the viewer to fully concentrate on the words – as if immersed in a book. At some point Shtrom (Tukur) takes out a set of photographs, which the camera doesn?t bother to show us because the essential words and images are already etched into our minds: the pajamas Shtrom?s father was wearing as he was herded out onto the street, the mole on Algis? right cheek, the armband he wore not around his upper arm like everyone else but around his lower arm.
This is one of the most succinct demonstrations of Glawogger?s art of elaborating the novel?s intentions. In the book, this testimony sounds like just another story because there is too little in terms of diction to set it apart from the surrounding text. An Albert Drach would have done it differently. In the film, however, this testimony, which is interrupted only by the contemplative reverse angle shots of the reels turning in the tape recorder, forms the classic austere contrast to the rest of the story, in which the director – in part because of the computer game motif – experiments freely with form, color, and details. Take Mimi, for example, Rupert?s mysterious boss for whom he would do anything. Sabine Timoteo plays her role in a fascinatingly monotone, singsong voice that has all the friendly impersonality of a computer animated being. Glawogger, gives the character a rare disease – alopecia – complete lack of hair, which is why she wears wigs, constantly changing wigs, in all colors and lengths. It is a daring move from a film perspective, but Timoteo?s decelerated artificiality makes her immediately recognizable in each of her new “disguises,” a woman without qualities, so to speak, Rupert?s elusive projection surface. By contrast, in Haslinger?s book Mimi just wears eccentric hats.
But despite all our fascination with Mimi, neither the book nor the film offer an explanation as to why Rupert, the shy loser, the likeable antihero, actually follows through with the renovation of the basement hideout for this mass murderer and in the end almost becomes friends with the ominous old man, and this is the crux of the story. The only resistance Rupert puts up is the remark: “Me help a Nazi! What next? I can't do that. My grandpa was in Dachau.” After that, ambition gets the better of him, probably partly because his father was never much of a handyman, so that Rupert used to get advice and equipment from his grandfather, the one who had been interned in Dachau. And while he usually kept quiet when his father was lecturing him, now in the basement he is the one doing most of the talking. It is almost as if the computergame murderer were somehow trying to woo the real-life murderer. During the second half of Glawogger?s film, a mute Itzhak Finzi as Algis Munkaitis sits in his basement, at one point stoically rescuing his meal from a cloud of dust that fills the room when Rupert starts tearing down the ceiling panels. At first, he only opens his mouth to give Rupert a piece of his mind, but before long they are drinking beer together, and Rupert is allowed to salt the old man?s cheese.
Not until the end, when the job is done and Mimi wants to get rid of her Austrian guest, does she give him Jonas Shtrom?s dossier. It is Christmastime. Old Algis wears a suit, an electric Christmas tree sings and dances on the sideboard, the whole basement is nicely redone, and an overwhelmed Rupert wants to know the truth. It is the perfect anticlimax because Algis candidly admits to everything, to having shot as many people as one can shoot operating a machine gun non-stop for several hours. He regrets nothing and still believes in the survival of the strongest. Rupert doesn?t know what to say to all this. He leaves the basement and soon afterwards has no choice but to return home anyway because his real father, in his mind a ruthless bastard but really just an average citizen, has suddenly committed suicide. Josef Haslinger?s novel tells a very strange almost amoral story. There is no revenge, no retribution, no comprehension, and no forgiveness; Rupert doesn?t even turn the old man in. To him a few years in prison wouldn?t be much of a punishment; on the contrary, he?d probably even end up with more light and fresh air.
And what about the ending, after all is said and done what remains of the aggrieved childhood and the contact with the murderer in the basement, what has Rupert gleaned from all this for the rest of his now fatherless life? Michael Glawogger is not able to answer these questions either, but he does manage to extract and develop the essential aspects and motifs in a clear, clever, and entertaining way. With Rupert he creates a character who is surrounded by real and surrogate fathers but who is unable to wean himself from paternal dependency.
A film adaptation that presents the book it is based on in its best light, intensifies, and further develops it: what more can one ask for? In “Vaterspiel/Kill Daddy Goodnight” the genres fructify each other, and Michael Glawogger?s independent artistic accomplishment seems, therefore, almost greater than that of the perfect duplicator Sam Mendes.
But an underlying flaw still persists. In the end, the strongest character is that of the tragic, heartrending Jonas Shtrom. The boy forced to grow up too quickly and whose father was herded to the execution squad in his pajamas can do nothing more for his father than to look for his murderer. This is the real world, and it is real blood that Michael Glawogger is showing us by not actually revealing either one.
© Bernd Spauke © Stefan Falke
DOWNLOAD:
Kill daddy good night by Eva Menasse.pdf
KILL DADDY GOOD NIGHT
Eva Menasse
What constitutes a good film adaptation? What really counts – the faithful rendering of the source material or the freedom to explore other means for conveying content? “Revolutionary Road” by Sam Mendes adapted from Richard Yates?s eponymous book and “Kill Daddy Goodnight” by Michael Glawogger based on the novel “Das Vaterspiel” by Josef Haslinger are two extreme examples of these disparate approaches. Mendes chose the literal route, which was, considering the overpowering mastery of Yates? book – easily one of the best twentieth-century American novels – probably also an act of humility. He stuck, not only in his dialogue but also in his images, so closely to, indeed almost mimicked Richard Yates? work, and yet he did not clone the book but managed to preserve its spirit and soul. No small task when dealing with a so flawless and already quite “filmic” source. “Revolutionary Road,” with its international stars Leonardo diCaprio and Kate Winslet and its carefully selected supporting cast, is the perfect, beautiful, faithfully rendered film enthusiast?s adaptation of a work of literature, which despite or perhaps precisely because of all this poses the snide question: But was it really necessary? Who actually needs a film adaptation of this literary masterpiece?
Michael Glawogger took a different approach. He chopped up, altered, nearly stripped the original down to its bare bones – and he added new motifs. Unlike Yate?s book, Haslinger?s story was not necessarily cut out to be a film. Fraught with a slew of subplots and vacillating between its two main storylines, “Das Vaterspiel” is a strangely irresolute novel that poses a big ethical question, only to ultimately shirk the responsibility of answering it.
On the one hand there is the story of a boy growing up in Austria. Slacker type Helmut Köpping is perfect for the part of Rupert “Ratz” Kramer, who hates his authoritarian father – a vain, hypocritical, socialist party cabinet member – and spends years creating a computer game whose special feature is that it can be personalized by the user. You just scan in the mug shot of your worst enemy, and that becomes the face on all your targets.
The second story deals with a much graver theme and is told through the testimony of the adult Jonas Shtrom, who survived the massacre of the Lithuanian Jews as a boy and has been trying to track down a former schoolmate ever since: Algis Munkaitis, the person who murdered Jonas? father along with thousands of other victims. As fate would have it, Algis Munkaitis happens to be Mimi?s grandfather, and Mimi, in turn, was Rupert Kramer?s first and only love. In the sixties, Jonas Shtrom almost succeeded in disclosing Algis? identity, after which the latter went into hiding in a Long Island basement where he has lived ever since. When granddaughter Mimi needs someone she can trust to renovate her grandfather?s basement, she remembers her classmate Rupert, who painted her apartment when they were going to college together. And this brings us back full circle to Rupert.
Unlike in the novel, which almost loses itself in the tragicomic descriptions of Rupert?s childhood before he lands the basement renovation job, Glawogger divides the story into two parts. In the first half, Rupert fights his way through a blizzard en route to the airport. Attila Boa?s images of snow and sleet combined with Olga Neuwirth?s music produce a fathomless, disoriented, menacing atmosphere – as if the viewer him-/herself were behind the wheel. His hated native country has him in its grips and isn?t about to let him go without a fight. A seemingly endless drive; outside in the snow – actually all just part of Rupert?s imagination – a computer image of his father runs along beside him trying to get him to stop. They are beautiful, convincing images. And into this eerie winter journey Glawogger edits flashbacks from Rupert?s past, arguments with his father, his first encounters with Mimi. And Jonas Shtrom?s testimony. We have become jaded by so many harrowing accounts of the persecution of the Jews, and nowadays dealing with this subject in films or literature is one of the most delicate challenges there is. But Michael Glawogger tackles this hurdle effortlessly. A stationary camera, a bare room, and a great actor like Ulrich Tukur, whose emotions in these scenes are betrayed only by his restless thumbs, the flash of white shirt cuffs – that?s all it takes; in fact, this reduction forces the viewer to fully concentrate on the words – as if immersed in a book. At some point Shtrom (Tukur) takes out a set of photographs, which the camera doesn?t bother to show us because the essential words and images are already etched into our minds: the pajamas Shtrom?s father was wearing as he was herded out onto the street, the mole on Algis? right cheek, the armband he wore not around his upper arm like everyone else but around his lower arm.
This is one of the most succinct demonstrations of Glawogger?s art of elaborating the novel?s intentions. In the book, this testimony sounds like just another story because there is too little in terms of diction to set it apart from the surrounding text. An Albert Drach would have done it differently. In the film, however, this testimony, which is interrupted only by the contemplative reverse angle shots of the reels turning in the tape recorder, forms the classic austere contrast to the rest of the story, in which the director – in part because of the computer game motif – experiments freely with form, color, and details. Take Mimi, for example, Rupert?s mysterious boss for whom he would do anything. Sabine Timoteo plays her role in a fascinatingly monotone, singsong voice that has all the friendly impersonality of a computer animated being. Glawogger, gives the character a rare disease – alopecia – complete lack of hair, which is why she wears wigs, constantly changing wigs, in all colors and lengths. It is a daring move from a film perspective, but Timoteo?s decelerated artificiality makes her immediately recognizable in each of her new “disguises,” a woman without qualities, so to speak, Rupert?s elusive projection surface. By contrast, in Haslinger?s book Mimi just wears eccentric hats.
But despite all our fascination with Mimi, neither the book nor the film offer an explanation as to why Rupert, the shy loser, the likeable antihero, actually follows through with the renovation of the basement hideout for this mass murderer and in the end almost becomes friends with the ominous old man, and this is the crux of the story. The only resistance Rupert puts up is the remark: “Me help a Nazi! What next? I can't do that. My grandpa was in Dachau.” After that, ambition gets the better of him, probably partly because his father was never much of a handyman, so that Rupert used to get advice and equipment from his grandfather, the one who had been interned in Dachau. And while he usually kept quiet when his father was lecturing him, now in the basement he is the one doing most of the talking. It is almost as if the computergame murderer were somehow trying to woo the real-life murderer. During the second half of Glawogger?s film, a mute Itzhak Finzi as Algis Munkaitis sits in his basement, at one point stoically rescuing his meal from a cloud of dust that fills the room when Rupert starts tearing down the ceiling panels. At first, he only opens his mouth to give Rupert a piece of his mind, but before long they are drinking beer together, and Rupert is allowed to salt the old man?s cheese.
Not until the end, when the job is done and Mimi wants to get rid of her Austrian guest, does she give him Jonas Shtrom?s dossier. It is Christmastime. Old Algis wears a suit, an electric Christmas tree sings and dances on the sideboard, the whole basement is nicely redone, and an overwhelmed Rupert wants to know the truth. It is the perfect anticlimax because Algis candidly admits to everything, to having shot as many people as one can shoot operating a machine gun non-stop for several hours. He regrets nothing and still believes in the survival of the strongest. Rupert doesn?t know what to say to all this. He leaves the basement and soon afterwards has no choice but to return home anyway because his real father, in his mind a ruthless bastard but really just an average citizen, has suddenly committed suicide. Josef Haslinger?s novel tells a very strange almost amoral story. There is no revenge, no retribution, no comprehension, and no forgiveness; Rupert doesn?t even turn the old man in. To him a few years in prison wouldn?t be much of a punishment; on the contrary, he?d probably even end up with more light and fresh air.
And what about the ending, after all is said and done what remains of the aggrieved childhood and the contact with the murderer in the basement, what has Rupert gleaned from all this for the rest of his now fatherless life? Michael Glawogger is not able to answer these questions either, but he does manage to extract and develop the essential aspects and motifs in a clear, clever, and entertaining way. With Rupert he creates a character who is surrounded by real and surrogate fathers but who is unable to wean himself from paternal dependency.
A film adaptation that presents the book it is based on in its best light, intensifies, and further develops it: what more can one ask for? In “Vaterspiel/Kill Daddy Goodnight” the genres fructify each other, and Michael Glawogger?s independent artistic accomplishment seems, therefore, almost greater than that of the perfect duplicator Sam Mendes.
But an underlying flaw still persists. In the end, the strongest character is that of the tragic, heartrending Jonas Shtrom. The boy forced to grow up too quickly and whose father was herded to the execution squad in his pajamas can do nothing more for his father than to look for his murderer. This is the real world, and it is real blood that Michael Glawogger is showing us by not actually revealing either one.