Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

InformationRap This is one of the few movies I've ever seen where the whole audience broke into spontaneous, loud applause a third of the way in.

Nayan Gough A great movie, one of the best of this year. There was a bit of confusion at one point in the plot, but nothing serious.

Portia Hilton Blistering performances.

lasttimeisaw Fassbinder's penultimate film, a Golden Berlin Bear winner in 1982, VERONIKA VOSS is a strikingly- looking black-and-white art-house vehicle loosely blueprinted on the tragic real life story of German film star Sybille Schmitz (VAMPYR 1932, MASTER OF THE WORLD 1934, TITANIC 1943).The time-line is set in 1955, post-WWII Munich, Veronika Voss (Zech) is an over-the-hill middle- aged actress, her career has remained stagnant for years, divorced by her screenwriter husband Max (Mueller-Stahl), now she lives in a psychiatric clinic governed by Dr. Marianne Katz (Düringer) and her assistant Josefa (Schade), where in Schmitz's story, they are a lesbian couple. They proffer her morphine for her addiction in exchange of her estate and fortune, it is a shady racket in broad daylight which ensnares many pain-afflicting addicts, once their clients are no longer affordable, they will discard them like insignificant pawns.Veronika is very close to this peril, will her be saved? The supposed knight in shining amour is Robert Krohn (Thate), a short, ordinary-looking sports journalist in his mid-40s, who has a stable girlfriend Henriette (Froboess) and doesn't even recognise her when they first meet during a downpour in the night, maybe this is a major reason why Veronika finds him special, deems him as someone who can simply treat her as an attractive woman, without all the celebrity halos. Their rendezvous evade any surreptitious pretences, Robert is fairly open about that and once Veronika even asks for his escort to her estate in spite of Henriette's presence. Veronika is a damaged good already, pompous, insecure and self-seeking, sees Robert as her last straw to revitalise her life and plans a dramatic return to the limelight, yet, all will fall flat since her Achilles heel is firmly clutched by the evil doctors, she cannot be saved, it is physically impossible, a fatalistic manifesto to those incorrigibly poisoned, corrupted and weak-minded. Zech manifests a telling facet of Veronika's jittery unstableness, holds great poise while inside she is beyond salvation.Thate's Robert, a common victim of an everyman's heroic fantasy, to fall for a damsel-in-distress, and rescues her from whatever evil force torments her. Only in Fassbinder's book, the reality is too gloom to conjure up a gratifying victory, Robert has to endure a bigger loss other than Veronika, Thate's performance brings about quite a subtle poignancy as the story goes into a more sinister twist. Annemarie Düringer, strikes up a whiff of frigid viciousness underneath Dr. Katz's usual professional persona, so is Froboess, her Henriette is the only innocent person in it, piqued by the blatant affair, but she doesn't counteract with resent or jealousy, on the contrary, she risks herself in Robert's plan to expose Dr. Katz's seedy business, unaware of the lurking danger. Innocence simply cannot reside in this corrupt world.Fassbinder's sleight-of-hand with lights and shadows infuses a nostalgic glamour to its texture; many a time, the camera moves like a serpentine, observing behind glasses like a voyeur, especially in the brightly white psychiatric clinic, extremely inhuman as if all the human trace has been sterilised altogether.As the second part of Fassbinder's BRD Trilogy, THE MARRIAGE OF MARIA BRAUN (1979) is the first one, and LOLA (1981) released one-year earlier than VERONIKA VOSS, is captioned as the third chapter, the film is a pessimistic probe into WWII residual affected on this one particular specimen, Veronika chooses to forget about the past and move on (it is implied she was in an affair with Goebbels), numbs herself with indulgence on drugs, one may argue that she is bringing all the trouble on herself, that's why, the ending is so cold and despondent, we cannot pretend nothing has happened, there must be consequences for those who are participated, whether actively or passively.

museumofdave In her own eyes,Veronika Voss is not really alive unless she retains her audience, unless she is loved and admired for her manufactured image. There are times in movies when Technicolor will not do, when the use of traditional black and white evokes evokes film noir, in this case referencing Billy Wilder's brilliant evisceration of and the pain of fading fame, Sunset Boulevard. The fine shadings of mood and atmosphere reflect the life led by Veronika under studio lights, just as the stark, unrelenting whites at her doctor's office blind her to reality during her visits for morphine injections.Veronika Voss is based on the life of an actual German actress who rarely came alive unless under the lights, depicting a harsh and unrelenting life lived vicariously; it is a harsh look at a cruel existence increasingly dependent on addictive drugs to soften the hard knocks that come with the loss of fame and inability to face simultaneous aging process; it is a film worth repeated viewings.

semiotechlab-658-95444 It is quite amazing that despite the huge literature about Fassbinder's work, there seems to be not one single monograph dedicated explicitly to the function of the epilogues in Fassbinder's movies.The most known of the "episodes" is the 2-hours long film "My dream of the dream of Franz Biberkopf", a summary and personal interpretation as well as continuation of "Berlin Alexanderplatz" (1978/79), published as part 14 of the mini-series. Characteristic of this all the other Fassbinder-Eplilogues are: Apocalyptic decoration, disruption of any possible plot lines and connections between the characters; transportation of a text spoken by a figure onto other figures who repeat that text, but in an other context; basic topics: religion, end of life, apocalypse, revelation, resurrection, connection between sexuality and church. A special function is given to the rather short epilogue, that is embedded in the film, in "Veronika Voss" (1982): After the former UFA-star has gotten a chance to celebrate her own "glamorous" farewell, she dreams the whole evening again and varies so-to-say the crucial moments: What would have happened if she had told Robert Krohn about her morphine-addiction? Was there a chance to still escape her destruction by her psychiatrist? To start a new life with Robert? To resume her career? Only through this epilogue it becomes clear why Veronika did not take her chance of escaping her addiction and imprisoning when she meets Robert for the first time in the Geiselgasteig forest, why she prefers to lie on herself instead of giving up her attitude which alone enables Dr. Katz to turn her into her propriety. Through the epilogue, we realize that Veronika Voss had started her "trip into the light" (Fassbinder) already a long time ago: a trip of no return. So, one is seduced to speculate that Fassbinder's last movie "Querelle" (1982) is nothing but an epilogue chosen by the dying director in order to interpret and reinterpret his life and his 66 films (every episode counted). Going back in time, changing the switches - and how would the present look then, now? Franz Biberkopf gets, pace epilogue, another change, turns back to life and spends his last decades in complete anonymity. Veronika Voss does not get a chance anymore, because she is one of Fassbinder's "light"-persons, like Herr R. in "Why does Herr R. run amok", Fox in "Fox and his friends", Lily Brest in "Shadow of Angels", Effi Briest in "Effi Briest", Herr Bauer in "Fear of Fear", Mother Küsters in "Mother Küsters' Trip to Heaven", Elvira/Erwin in "A Year with 13 Moons" - here one might also mention the persons who "survive" crippled or demented - like Martha in "Martha", Margot in "Fear of Fear", Peter in "I only want you to love me", Franz Xaver Bolwieser in "The Stationmaster's Wife" and many others of Fassbinder's universe. For Querelle and his friends, the question does not rise anymore, since the whole story is situated already in an imaginary future to which Zehetbauer's total artificial studio-set corresponds marvelously. The end of interpretations and reinterpretations as given in the "Epilogues" takes place only when the present Topoi have overcome and have been substituted by a future Ou-Topia.

dkbs Like many other Fassbinder films "Die Sehnsucht der Veronika Voss" tells about a decline and is very depressing. It is a visually stunning film that shows how much Fassbinder admired the classical Hollywood cinema and especially the films of Douglas Sirk. Like the films of his idol this film is stylish and artificial to an extreme extent which creates quite a distance between itself and the audience. Probably an even greater distance, since the style and the artificiality are used more consciously here, even as a instrument of alienation. So it is more fascinating than touching or even moving and might leave one even cold. Nevertheless the story is intriguing and it really tells something about the post war society in West Germany, so the film is interesting and even fascinating to watch. The scene where Rosel Zech as Veronika sings "Memories Are Made Of This" is very haunting, a gem.