Original Post Date: 01.23.17
01.23.17, 9:23pm PT – I just finished watching Schramm (1993) by German mastermind Jorg Buttgereit and have to confess that I liked the version I had created in my own head better than the actual film. Hold on, HOLD ON! Before you label me as one of the biggest assholes on earth, let me explain…
I purchased the entire 4-film set by Jorg Buttgereit weeks ago and had anxiously been waiting to watch Schramm as its synopsis and dvd picture were really impressive. I mean, a dude covered in blood with a hopeless and terrified stare which reminded me of someone in great distress, plus the paragraph at the back of the case saying “Lothar Schramm [a deranged serial killer] is dying, face down in a pool of his own blood. Behind his closed eyes, fractured memories repeat themselves…”
Wow! I could not wait to watch it!
As unpredictable as life is, things kept getting in the way and had to wait until my life returned to normalcy (nothing big, just massive amounts of unrequired stress). As I knew the film was going to be intense, I kept reminding myself I had to be in the correct frame of mind to actually enjoy it, so I waited. And waited. And during all that waiting I imagined what the movie was going to be. Would we see Schramm committing the murders? Planning them? Perhaps a backstory? Would it be on a first person point of view? Wait, why is Schramm dying? Needless to say I created all these terrifying scenarios in a fantasy world which made me realize that maybe (maybe!) my unrequired stress was messing with me in more than one questionable way… fuck stress.
Now, let’s get down to business.
Within a few moments from the intro of the movie, you learn that Schramm (aka the Lipstick Killer) has died all alone in his apartment, well, if you don’t count the two corpses around him. All that you are going to see next are flashbacks of what presumably were his last days, with a few throwbacks to his childhood. (This is why I did not fully like the movie, as it only dealt with more or less current events and did not show why the serial killer was a serial killer… does that make sense? No? Okay.)
I have to give a big praise to the editing on this film. Although the story line was a bit slow, they took us to the past and the future and the present jumping to the past again, and then one more time to the future of that other sequence that made no sense, but wait a few moments… it makes absolute sense now!
The dialog was kept to a minimum (as with Nekromantik) and the music was hypnotizing (as with Nekromantik).
Our main guy, Schramm, had a taxi car and was nice enough to give a ride to her crush, the prostitute next door. She was kind. They hanged out. He never hurt her, although he kind of hated her. I don’t know man, Schramm was a very complicated person. Talking about complicated, there were random images along the film, not necessarily flashbacks from Schramm but just random scenes, like a guy committing suicide and the camera suddenly getting closer, and turning black and white, with no sound, and the camera guy breaking the forth wall by grabbing/covering the camera lens. I did not understand that one. I mean it was good… but what was its purpose?
Look, here’s a dreamy double exposure:
There was something that made me feel weird, and by me I mean my body, and by weird I mean confuzzled in a good way. If you are acquainted with the work of Jorg Buttgereit, you already know he successfully combines sex and death. He did it in Nekromantik (read my review here) and he did it again in Schramm (I still have to watch his other two films, “Nekromantik 2” and “Der Todesking”). Here in Schramm, there was this highly sexual scene that, well, pretty much did the job but oh no, all of the sudden Buttgereit throws at you images of pain and suffering that do not go with what your body is feeling. One moment you are having a good time and then that feeling overlaps with screams in your head saying “Oh no please stop!” – so basically you (rather, I) end up feeling used and a little bit dirty. (Yaz!)
Well my weirdo, it is getting late, so let’s say goodbye by admiring one of the many dream-like hallucinations from Schramm’s dying brain:
This fresh blood reminded me to make a salon appointment ;)
- Marath