Christin Freitag | Jetzt Jetzt Jetzt (Beat Beat Beat) / 2013 [TV broadcast]

the end of confusion

by Douglas Messerli

 

Sebastian Köthe (screenplay, inspired by Die Verwirrungen des Zöglings Törless Robert Musil), Christin Freitag (director) Jetzt Jetzt Jetzt (Beat Beat Beat) / 2013 [TV broadcast] [30 minutes]

 

Of the three films included here, by far the most sophisticated is Christin Freitag’s 2013 TV short, Jetzt Jetzt Jetzt, inspired by Musil’s short fiction The Confusions of Young Törless, although Törless, as least as portrayed in Volker Schlöndorff’s 1966 film, does not at all stand up or act in any way to protect the bullied and tortured school mate Basini, but leaves the school returning to the safety of his mother’s arms. Perhaps we might suggest that writer Sebastian Köthe is doing some wishful thinking in imagining his version of Törless, Fabian (Johannes Gäde,) as a far more involved individual, at least by film’s end.

     Throughout Freitag’s richly presented work, Fabian is not only “confused” but basically comatose and sits in the lunchroom seemingly waiting for something to happen in his otherwise quite empty life. At the same time in this very first scene he is also intrigued by, or at least highly observant of, another silent young man, Jakob Götze (Til Schindler), who sits and eats alone each day seemingly mirroring Fabian’s behavior in opposition.

      For if nothing else, Fabian does have friends in Bene (Tilman Pörzgen) and Richard (Jan-David Bürger) who carouse the streets each night. They are not necessarily “bad” boys. Their major action seems to be running and simply “hanging out” late, drinking a little. But at one point, aroused by an evil act of someone (in retrospect we perceive it to be the bully Borschwitz [Philipp Gerstner]) who sets a car afire, they race off almost as if intoxicated by the act. But their evening ends simply with them feeding apples to some llamas they have discovered in field surrounding a manor house.    

     We do quickly recognize, however, that Bene and Richard behave like most of their peers as homophobes. We see early signs when one of the two asks Fabian in the high school bathroom a question about dreaming that he is being sucked off by beautiful woman only to awaken to realize he was being blown by a guy; the question being, would he push him away or sit back and enjoy a perfectly good blowjob. When Fabian pauses, he quickly calls him a “homo.”

       Soon after, Richard and Bene decide to bully Jakob, not because he demonstrates any homosexual behavior, but because he is separate from them and passive when it comes to their constantly menacing actions. During their first go-round with Jakob, they threaten him, but basically don’t harm him as Fabian stands to the side. But a few moments later, when Jakob on his way home meets up with the truly brutal Borschwitz, he is not only taunted but knocked to the ground.

      Another night when Fabian and his friends discover where Jakob lives and see him through the window with a quite beautiful mother, they push their taunts a bit further, ringing his doorbell and proclaiming to his mother that they are his good friends come to visit her son.

      The surprised mother (Barbara Sotelsek), almost pleased to finally discover than her son is not the loner he appears to be, allows them to enter, Jakob obviously a bit terrified by their sudden intrusion but also fascinated by their unknown motives in finding entry to his bedroom, where they immediately call up Borschwitz to join them, forcing Jakob to provide them with his exact address. They begin to taunt their new “friend” in a manner than can only be described as similar to the way in which Mrs. Danvers in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1940 film Rebecca tried to convince her mistress to commit suicide. Bit by bit they mock his worthiness of living, even the “beat beat beat” of his heart, attempting to demonstrate his purposelessness, presumably because of his seemingly passive nature. Finally, Bene even begins to brutalize him physically demanding answers to his to his obscene rhetorical questions.

      The scene, shot in the near claustrophobic quarters of the boy’s bedroom as the two terrorize him at the very same moment when his mother joyfully arrives with cookies for her son’s friends might almost be out of a play by Harold Pinter or a black comedy by Joe Orton. Jakob has no control over his life even in his most inner sanctum.

      Fabian attempts to speak out against his buddies’ brutality a couple of times, but he is immediately silenced. And although he does not participate in any of the torture, his very presence represents him as a silent participator in the terrifying psychological torture of this young man.

      At the very moment when you imagine things might truly turn even worse, they do, but not from within the room, but in the from an exploding sound from outside, followed by a bright light, all of them moving quickly to the window as they watch Borschwitz running off after setting Jakob’s mother’s car on fire. Even Bene and Richard are somewhat appalled by the turn of events, and quickly seek to leave, attempting to pull Fabian with them.

      But he refuses, standing beside Jakob in utter shock. Bene attempts to pull him away again, but Fabian answers “Nah.” And again, with the same response. When the two demand that he hurry away with them—“Are you with us?”—he finally delivers a strongly voiced “Nein,” forcing them to realize that he is breaking with them forever and blaming them for the totality of events. They curse him as they escape.  

     Fabian puts his hand upon Jakob’s shoulder, and a moment later hugs the other boy to him in a sympathetic embrace. It hardly matters whether the embrace is sexual, for it represents a different Fabian from before, one who now stands by Jakob with love and a sense of protection, as well hinting of a new identity, a new life for the previously confused young man. It is the essence of what gay films describe as “coming out.” Whether or not Jakob will now except that love is open to question.

     I can now add Jetzt Jetzt Jetzt to the growing list of my favorite LGBTQ films of the second decade of the millennium, continuing my inventory of the first decade favorites as articulated in my review of Craig Boreham’s short film Drowning (2009).

 

Los Angeles, December 12, 2022

Reprinted from World Cinema Review (December 2022).