At my university there is a film group that regularly shows movies. Today they showed “In die Sonne schauen.” I looked up some information on it beforehand and it intrigued me, so I decided to watch it.

The movie is rather long and it also feels slow. Further, the film focuses on the darker sides of being human: for example, close-up shots of flies, dead people, and amputation.

This also raises the question of how to understand the movie. I do not think it makes much sense to force a coherent interpretive narrative onto it. Rather, it should be viewed as a series of thematic impressions that fit together and paint a picture, but a picture that remains abstract instead of clear and graspable. In other words, Nietzsche would say this movie is Dionysian instead of Apollonian.

As I already stated, I do not think there is a coherent thematic narrative one can extract from this film, but there are certainly themes in it that I want to describe. The movie is best understood as a set of dichotomies:

• Coldness of death vs. warmth of life: Throughout the movie there are multiple scenes in which a character in the midst of life describes it as warm—be it the sand and stones on the beach or a penis being touched. This is contrasted with the lifeless coldness of death, shown through the dead deer or the dead grandmother.
• Unimportant sensual experiences vs. important memories: Another dichotomy concerns sensual experiences that seem trivial and unimportant, yet are direct and memorable, like the smell of water or fresh-cut grass, and can be recalled vividly. This is contrasted with important memories of loved ones, such as the dead grandmother, whose exact face we can no longer remember. In the movie, this is depicted by heavy bloom and film grain when a character remembers something, contrasted with the non-grain, non-bloom of direct life.
• Youth full of life vs. the wish for death: The film plays across multiple time periods in each of which young women are the focus, and in each period the youngest has a yearning for death. We thus have the contrast between a person full of life who simultaneously wishes to be close to death.
• Sexuality against women vs. sexuality from women: Another theme is sexual violence against women contrasted with sexuality coming from women themselves. For examle in one scene a maid is basically sold into sexual servitude or an older man stares at a young girl. This is contrasted with sexuality initiated by women, particularly in the modern time period and the one from the DDR period.
• Physical death vs. metaphorical death: Another contrast is physical death, depicted in the dead grandmother, the dead boy, the dead deer, versus a more metaphorical death. Many characters who have a death wish describe themselves as not knowing who they are. By acting and imitating the behavior of those around them, they forget who they are; even their own names sound strange to them. In a sense, these characters, by becoming so much like the ones they emulate, are already dead. They have killed themselves in the process. This fits well with their death wishes, the girl who wants to stop her heartbeat, or the younger girl who tries to drown herself. Subconsciously they know that they are already dead, and their bodies simply continue doing what they are supposed to do.
• Not controlling the body vs. controlling the body: This brings me to the final contrast. Throughout the movie there are characters who are not in control of their bodies: the mother who can only laugh when something sad happens, the woman who constantly gags because her stomach acts on its own, or the woman who loses the ability to walk even though her legs work perfectly fine. In all these cases the conscious mind cannot control something more unconscious. This ties into the previous contrast: they know they are already dead, and their bodies also want to die.

What irritates me about this movie, especially compared to other films that are meant to be interpreted more metaphorically than literally, like Angel’s Egg or No Country for Old Men, is that whereas those films both describe a problem (in Angel’s Egg it is faith; in No Country for Old Men it is evil), they also provide at least the beginning of attempts at solutions (Angel’s Egg: accepting or rejecting faith; No Country for Old Men: accepting evil, fighting evil, or refusing to care). This movie does not build anything. It asks questions and shows contrasts but does not even provide the beginnings of answers.

Perhaps instead of viewing this movie as an archetypal myth in the Nietzschean sense, it makes more sense to view it as a purely Dionysian depiction of aspects of the human condition.

Mom somehow never knew when to laugh. If something was funny, sh edidn’t laugh. But if some thing bad happened, she did. When somebody died, for example. Then she suddenly started laughing and laughing really loudly, and couldn’t stop

LENKA: I loooove when skin has that musty river smell.

CHRISTA: And the smell of a cellar. I know.

LENKA: I looove the smell of cellar. I’m addicted to it.

NELLY: And nail polish.

LENKA: Yeah, ..but not quite as much ascellar smella

I remember I got a diary for my 15th birthday. I never knew what to write in it, as if my thoughts somehow weren’t worthy. Whenever I tried to write, I thought that someone would find it and read it after my death, and what a shock that would be for my mom. But if she finds it after my death without me having written a single word, she might think that I didn’t like her gift, or that I was ungrateful or something. So I started writing down the opposite of what I was thinking, sentences that would make my mom happy when I was gone.

By the Platonic books I was admonished to return into myself.18 With you as my guide I entered into my innermost citadel, and was given power to do so because you had become my helper (Ps. 29: 11). I entered and with my soul’s eye, such as it was, saw above that same eye of my soul the immutable light higher than my mind—not the light of every day, obvious to anyone, nor a larger version of the same kind which would, as it were, have given out a much brighter light and filled everything with its magnitude.19 It was not that light, but a different thing, utterly different from all our kinds of light. It transcended my mind, not in the way that oil floats on water, nor as heaven is above earth. It was superior because it made me, and I was inferior because I was made by it. The person who knows the truth knows it, and he who knows it knows eternity. Love knows it.20 Eternal truth and true love and beloved eternity: you are my God. To you I sigh ‘day and night’ (Ps. 42: 2). When I first came to know you, you raised me up to make me see that what I saw is Being, and that I who saw am not yet Being. And you gave a shock to the weakness of my sight by the strong radiance of your rays, and I trembled with love and awe.21’ And I found myself far from you ‘in the region of dissimilarity’, 22 and heard as it were your voice from on high: ‘I am the food of the fully grown; grow and you will feed on me. And you will not change me into you like the food your flesh eats, but you will be changed into me.’ […] I heard in the way one hears within the heart, and all doubt left me.23’ I would have found it easier to doubt whether I was myself alive than that there is no truth ‘understood from the things that are made’ (Rom. 1: 20).

~ Confession, VII (16)

Spoilers ahead. I wrote while watching, so this is very stream-of-consciousness. Take care.

The actress is very cute, but holy this is so undeserved. Our protagonist destroys her whole life and she falls for him??? Also, suits with a hat and a long mantle are such a vibe. The movie looks gorgeous, I love its surreal aspects. It works a lot with perspective tricks, which is cool.

I wonder what this is about, a myth? Maybe a Jungian archetype? Something something, birth of tragedy? This guy’s undeserved lover, undeserved that he got saved, like how many people died to save him and why? He’s not even important. Is the ending meant to be him as some kind of Christ figure taking the debt of everyone onto himself?

Maybe it was a kind of dream all along, like the terrorist being some kind of multiple-personality disorder? Also why does this meme keep happening every 30 minutes where the FBI raids this one guy’s house? Anybody know what meme I’m talking about?

Maybe it’s a psychological thriller, like it’s all in his mind like the movie Boes is afraid? Also, am I the only one who thinks it has Dark Souls elements, with the huge samurai and the little guys with baby masks, holding chains in their hands? What is this ending?????

Oh, okay. It’s a tragedy. That makes it a lot better than the apparently happy ending where they drive off with their truck into nature. 7/10

Edit: I feel like the movie lends itself very much to a Nietzschean lens of interpretation. Maybe I’ll formalize this someday in more detail, but rapid-fire, some themes: Sam’s dream life as a slave-revolt of the imaginary; Jill as alter/inversion/value-transvaluation; bureaucracy as late-modern Apollo; ressentiment; Brazil’s bureaucracy as a Nietzschean “decadent culture.”

Brazil When hearts were entertained in June We stood beneath an amber moon And softly whispered ‘some day soon’

We kissed and clung together Then Tomorrow was another day The morning found me miles away With still a million things to say

Now When twilight beams the skies above Recalling thrills of our love There’s one thing I’m certain of

Return I will To old Brazil

So lange die Nützlichkeit, die in den moralischen Werth- urtheilen herrscht, allein die Heerden-Nützlichkeit ist, so lange der Blick einzig der Erhaltung der Gemeinde zugewendet ist, und das Unmoralische genau und ausschliesslich in dem gesucht wird, was dem Gemeinde-Bestand gefährlich scheint: so lange kann es noch keine „Moral der Nächstenliebe“ geben. Gesetzt, es findet sich auch da bereits eine beständige kleine Übung von Rücksicht, Mitleiden, Billigkeit, Milde, Gegenseitigkeit der Hülfeleistung, gesetzt, es sind auch auf diesem Zustande der Gesellschaft schon alle jene Triebe thätig, welche später mit Ehrennamen, als „Tu­ genden“ bezeichnet werden und schliesslich fast mit dem Begriff „Moralität“ in Eins zusammenfallen: in jener Zeit gehören sie

noch gar nicht in das Reich der moralischen Werthschätzungen — sie sind noch a u s s e r mo r a l i s c h. Eine mitleidige Hand­ lung zum Beispiel heisst in der besten Römerzeit weder gut noch böse, weder moralisch noch unmoralisch; und wird sie selbst ge­ lobt, so verträgt sich mit diesem Lobe noch auf das Beste eine Art unwilliger Geringschätzung, sobald sie nämlich mit irgend einer Handlung zusammengehalten wird, welche der Förderung des Ganzen, der res publica, dient. Zuletzt ist die „Liebe zum Näch­ sten“ immer etwas Nebensächliches, zum Theil Conventionelles und Willkürlich-Scheinbares im Verhältniss zur F u r c h t v o r dem Nä c hs t e n . Nachdem das Gefüge der Gesellschaft im Ganzen festgestellt und gegen äussere Gefahren gesichert er­ scheint, ist es diese Furcht vor dem Nächsten, welche wieder neue Perspektiven der moralischen Werthschätzung schafft. Gewisse starke und gefährliche Triebe, wie Unternehmungslust, Toll­ kühnheit, Rachsucht, Verschlagenheit, Raubgier, Herrschsucht, die bisher in einem gemeinnützigen Sinne nicht nur geehrt — unter anderen Namen, wie billig, als den eben gewählten — , sondern gross-gezogen und -gezüchtet werden mussten (weil man ihrer in der Gefahr des Ganzen gegen die Feinde des Ganzen beständig bedurfte), werden nunmehr in ihrer Gefährlichkeit doppelt stark empfunden — jetzt, wo die Abzugskanäle für sie fehlen — und schrittweise, als unmoralisch, gebrandmarkt und der Verleumdung preisgegeben. Jetzt kommen die gegensätz­ lichen Triebe und Neigungen zu moralischen Ehren; der Heerden- Instinkt zieht, Schritt für Schritt, seine Folgerung. Wie viel oder wie wenig Gemein-Gefährliches, der Gleichheit Gefährliches in einer Meinung, in einem Zustand und Affekte, in einem Willen, in einer Begabung liegt, das ist jetzt die moralische Perspektive: die Furcht ist auch hier wieder die Mutter der Moral. An den höchsten und stärksten Trieben, wenn sie, leidenschaftlich aus­ brechend, den Einzelnen weit über den Durchschnitt und die Niederung des Heerdengewissens hinaus und hinauf treiben, geht das Selbstgefühl der Gemeinde zu Grunde, ihr Glaube an

sich, ihr Rückgrat gleichsam, zerbricht: folglich wird man gerade diese Triebe am besten brandmarken und verleumden. Die hohe unabhängige Geistigkeit, der Wille zum Alleinstehn, die grosse Vernunft schon werden als Gefahr empfunden; Alles, was den Einzelnen über die Heerde hinaushebt und dem Nächsten Furcht macht, heisst von nun an böse; die billige, bescheidene, sich einordnende, gleichsetzende Gesinnung, das M i t t e l m a a s s der Begierden kommt zu moralischen Namen und Ehren. Endlich, unter sehr friedfertigen Zuständen, fehlt die Gelegenheit und Nöthigung immer mehr, sein Gefühl zur Strenge und Härte zu erziehn; und jetzt beginnt jede Strenge, selbst in der Gerechtig­ keit, die Gewissen zu stören; eine hohe und harte Vornehmheit und Selbst-Verantwortlichkeit beleidigt beinahe und erweckt Misstrauen, „das Lamm“, noch mehr „das Schaf“ gewinnt an Achtung. Es giebt einen Punkt von krankhafter Vermürbung und Verzärtlichung in der Geschichte der Gesellschaft, wo sie selbst für ihren Schädiger, den V e r b r e c h e r Partei nimmt, und zwar ernsthaft und ehrlich. Strafen: das scheint ihr irgend- worin unbillig, — gewiss ist, dass die Vorstellung „Strafe“ und „Strafen-Sollen“ ihr wehe thu, ihr Furcht macht. „Genügt es nicht, ihn u n g e f ä h r l i c h machen? Wozu noch strafen? Strafen selbst ist fürchterlich!“ — mit dieser Frage zieht die Heerden- Moral, die Moral der Furchtsamkeit ihre letzte Consequenz. Ge­ setzt, man könnte überhaupt die Gefahr, den Grund zum Fürch­ten abschaffen, so hätte man diese Moral mit abgeschafft: sie wäre nicht mehr nöthig, sie h i e l t e sich selbst nicht mehr für nöthig! — Wer das Gewissen des heutigen Europäers prüft, wird aus tausend moralischen Falten und Verstecken immer den gleichen Imperativ herauszuziehen haben, den Imperativ der Heerden- Furchtsamkeit: „wir wollen, dass es irgendwann einmal Nichts mehr zu fürchten giebt!“ Irgendwann einmal — der Wille und Weg dorthin heisst heute in Europa überall der „Fort­ schritt“.

~ Jenseits von Gut und Böse, §201