Thomsen builds a fascinating film around a fascinating man, but never, despite his evident deep affection for him, allows it to fall into hagiography.
75
The Film Stage
The Film Stage
Offers enough fine material and organizes them with enough intelligence to create a many-pieced psychological portraiture of one of the most intriguing filmmakers who’s ever lived.
70
Village VoiceMelissa Anderson
Village VoiceMelissa Anderson
Thomsen culls wisely from Fassbinder's filmography to illustrate the kino-giant's abiding themes, patricide and masochism among them.
The access to Fassbinder that the relationship provided was a boon to the film, but a disadvantage as well because the close-up view results in a patchy portrait rather than a coherent biography.
Students of the astonishing body of films won’t find much that enhances their understanding, yet Thomsen’s footage offers more than mere scraps from a great career, and deserves inclusion in the corpus.