In a Year with 13 Moons (1978) User Reviews

Brilliant, naturally, but very difficult to watch. (spoiler in first paragraph)

[the red duchess · 8/10 · 1 September 2000]

Part melodrama, part infernal parody of 'Candide', 'In a Year of 13 Moons' is one of Fassbinder's most moving films, without once relinquishing his icy formal control or savage cynicism. It achieves a remarkable effect whereby its protagonist's world seems to open up as the film continues - he begins alone, meets people, traverses a lot of places - but actually closes in, imprisons him, simply reinforcing the labyrinthine world of his own private hell, where the only escape is death.

When we first meet Elvira, the film's transexual heroine, she is dressed in men's clothing, trying to pick up boys in a dusky park. When her female appurtenances are discovered, she is beaten up by a group of thugs, left limping on a railway track, offering a promise of escape she cannot take up. Fassbinder's alienating method here is typical of the film as a whole. It is very difficult to make out what is going on, the scene is very murky. Fassbinder's editing and composition tend to fragment rather than establish

the action, leaving us with a montage of darkness and sinister figures, scored to Mahler in an ironic rejoinder to the passive gay fantasy of Visconti's 'Death in Venice'. To add to our confusion, Fassbinder's intertitles begin explaining the meaning of the title, making it difficult to follow both levels. Just as we've finally made out what's going on, and the film reaches what might be considered a dramatic or emotional crisis, forcing the viewer into the scene, Fassbinder hurls us back, framing it in long shot, and throwing screen-filling credits over it!

So, while I suggested the film was moving, it's with no help from the director. Elvira shares a narrative trajectory of decline similar to one of Fassbinder's most famous characters, Fox; indeed, here it is worse, she never begins with wealth and 'love', but is abused from the very start. The opening sequences reveal the extent of Fassbinder's despair. Elvira is beaten up by thugs, in the outside world. When she comes home, she is attacked by her so-called boyfriend, who abandons her, having savagely and interminably insulted her, mocking her alcoholism, her weight problems, suggesting her brain has shrunk - that it would be better for the world if she was crushed like an insect. Fassbinder's vision is not a reassuring one; there is no refuge from a brutal world, the violent poison infects home and outside alike.

So Elvira would seem to be a figure deserving of our sympathy. There is worse to follow, including being flung off her lover's speeding bonnet. In true melodrama fashion, her past is revealed onion-like, and her tragic quest to find the entrepeneur Anton Saitz, to apologise for insulting remarks made about him in an interview, inspires devastating revelations, as does a trip to the nunnery orphanage where she was brought up.

This mixture of emotional masochism and traumatic incident might suggest a film of overpowering pathos. But Fassbinder never uses the methods that would allow us get close to Elvira's plain, sympathetic music, or the close-up. Indeed, it is very difficult to make out the drama at all. Invoking his mentors, Sirk and Godard, Fassbinder does not foreground the drama; very often what is going on in the narrative is marginalised, squeezed into a tiny doorframe, so that what's privileged on screen is a door, or a wall, or the objects of a room; each scene is very lengthy, theatrical, like a self-contained episode, as, I suggested, in 'Candide', with lots of talk, stylised movements and positioning of character; at other times, you can barely make out characters in the dim lighting, who is actually speaking in a scene (this might be just my inability to differentiate German); even those scenes that seem to concern Elvira crucially, explanations of her past, for instance, have no room for her, characters talking about her as if she wasn't even there.

But, like Sirk, the film is shot through visually with Elvira's sensibility, her feelings of confinement, ironically, considering her apparent gender fluidity, a fluidity Fassbinder provocatively refuses to sentimentalise or celebrate. Elvira's vision is truly one of hell, where horrific scenes in a slaughterhouse offer a peaceful refuge to the human world; of confined, indoor spaces, of intrusive decor; or frightening emptiness; one scene, with the suicide, glows with a blazing red light, suggesting infernal fires. This is not a realistically rendered Berlin, but a living nightmare - there can barely be 20 people in this sparse dream landscape, even though Elvira seems to travel the whole city.

Naturally, such a bleak Fassbinder film is incongruously funny (the reunion scene is unbelievably flippant), but the humour turns back on the viewer, and we must ask ourselves, when we laugh, are we laughing at Elvira, sharing in her oppression. Is her lethargy, her paralysed will also sharing in her oppression? The film is full of lingering images of destruction (eg the primitive computer games).

Falling in a hole.

[dteil · 8/10 · 28 November 2007]

I watched this movie and after my first reaction wasn't that clear. sometimes boring perhaps? but then i was thinking about it, more and more and it touched me more and more and in a strange way i compared this one with the all time classic x-mas movie IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE from Capra. in the mood way. Interesting to say, that also in 13 MOONS there is an angel like in the x-mas Movie. It's the character ROTE ZORA. While Capra's angel had success, it's will know, it will not happen in 13 Moons.

of course while you will learn by the Frank Capra movie how important each human being is in the world we live in, Fassbinder gives you here the lesson how hopeless life can be. So while you have tears in your eyes by watching IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE, you see all the hope in this movie and you know there will be a happy end. From the first second on in this movie you know, there will be no happy end. And you will have no tears in your eyes at the end, but perhaps you will be a little bit speechless. From Hollywood a movie like this never will come. This movie don't want to entertain you in a Hollywood way. so be prepared!

This movie is the most personal Fasssbinder for sure. He lost some weeks before his boyfriend. then he wrote in three days the whole script. Unbelievable to tell that he ALSO was responsible for BOOK/EDITING/CAMERA (Michael Ballhaus was asked for, but he couldn't)/PRODUCING/IDEA/EQUIPMENT and of course DIRECTING it. The Music score is very good (classic meets suicide (the new wave band) meets sixties rock'n roll meets Connie Francis). A terrific Volker Spengler as the main character as also a stunning Ingrid Caven.

Almost impossible to understand the whole plot when you have to read the English subtitles, it's absolutely recommend when you can speak German.

Beginning with the written introduction about the 13 Moons, through the slaughterhouse scene (which is remarkable for the whole movie, because here he shows us the Life and the Death, the hopeless the movie is about in a short sequence), through the next scene where elvira is lying very depressed on the bed while the record player plays a x-mas song (it's a wonderful life......), but the song has a scratch (hopeless again) to the important scene where elvira tries to become erwin again (but failed), the two hours of this movie is very sensitive. It's not a movie to watch between Forrest Gump and Star Wars (...). It's a movie which brings you back to the ground of earth. So honest that you feel pain.

Everyone will have a time in life in which he falls in a hole. This movie is showing that. A tragedy. OR a horror trip.

A depressing yet riveting work of art

[kevinschwoer · 8/10 · 10 September 2008]

One could not watch Fassbinder's "In A Year With 13 Moons" and not feel something close to depression. He has captured the actual emotion itself in its raw and natural form, and transposed it onto the screen in the form of Erwin/Elvira. With the help of Volker Spengler's uncanny performance, Fassbinder has forever changed the way film will deal with disintegration of the human spirit.

The opening scene depicts the main character being beat up by men after trying to have sex. This horrible situation paints the perfect image of the main character who is the epitome of being a victim. The tragic character of Erwin, a meat worker, fell in love with one of his coworkers Anton. Upon revealing his feelings to Anton, Erwin is told it would be fine if he were a woman. This begins the fall of Erwin. He goes to Casablanca and gets a sex change in hopes of being with Anton.

Elvira, Erwin's new identity, is just as much of a slave to Anton's wishes as Erwin was. Though Anton was only the first, Elvira's life is full of uneasy relationships where, in the end, Elvira finds herself alone and depressed. She had changed her whole life for Anton and when he finally finds out, he could care less. One can not help but feel for Elvira and her struggle to live happily.

There is a scene of cows being slaughtered while there is a long monologue by Elvira. The cows hang there helplessly as the butchers slit their throats and the blood flows freely. The scene is very hard to watch yet, one could not help but relate the kinship of Elvira and the cows. Elvira seems powerless to stop others from controlling/ruining her life and much like the cows Elvira is helpless as the world bleeds her of her life. The cows are stripped of their skin and thus their identity which is precisely what Anton has driven Erwin to do.

The most telling scene in the film, however, is one where Elvira watches a man hang himself in Anton's building. The man is another victim of Anton's and he believes that suicide is not the forfeit of ones life because there is no will to live, but rather it is the will to live that causes one to reject this life to live free of its oppression. This man shows Elvira a reflection of herself in another which perhaps she never thought of before due to living her life for others.

Truly depressing, "In A Year With 13 Moons" is absolutely a work of art with hints of melodrama, comedy, and character study. The collaboration of great acting and directing has brought life to the tragic Elvira and will evoke feeling in even the most close minded of viewers.

Fassbinder's darkest and most punishing examination of personal exploitation

[ThreeSadTigers · 24 June 2008]

Many, if not all of Fassbinder's films focus on weighty, emotional issues and characters plunged into personal despair, but none more so than the torturous and overpowering melodrama of In a Year of 13 Moons (1978). Here, Fassbinder created a film that is completely miserable in both tone and content from the first frame until the last; with the director taking the personal loss over the suicide of his lover Armin Meier and turning it into a suffocating chamber piece of pain and humiliation. Like his earlier masterpiece, Fox and his Friends (1975), the film focuses on the personal exploitation and persecution of a sensitive character at the hands of the people that he loves, as he finds himself cast against a cruel backdrop of the grimy and oppressive homosexual sub-culture of 1970's Frankfurt. However, unlike Fox and his Friends, the spirit of Meier's death and the guilt that we assume Fassbinder was suffering from at the time of the film's conception have here removed any prevailing notion of hope or the promise of escape that hung-over the character of Franz - the lottery winning carnival worker from the aforementioned "Fox", as he sought an end to his cruel suffering - and replaced it with a continually degrading emphasis on shame and deprivation.

Fassbinder establishes the pitiless tone of the film right from the start, with an opening vignette showing our central character, dowdy transsexual Elvira Weishaupt, dressed as a man and wandering through a park in the early hours of the morning looking for trade. After successfully managing to hook-up with a suitably butch male-prostitute, her secret is soon discovered and the 'john', alongside a couple of similarly macho friends, beat and mock Elvira, leaving her as a shivering, crying wreck, half-naked on an disused train-track. From here, Elvira limps home to her cramped apartment only to be plunged into a torturous, violent argument with her ex-boyfriend, which again, leaves her used and humiliated. The film continues in this episodic approach as we follow Elvira over the course of a few days and eventually find out more about her true character and personality and the events in her life that led to the eventual creation of the person that she is when we first discover her. These events are no less cruel and humiliating to the character of Elvira - who has clearly made a number of mistakes, either as a result of naiveté, arrogance or blind stupidity - as we discover the process that turned a handsome young man with a wife and infant daughter into an overweight, alcoholic wreck, abused and betrayed by the various men in her life, and the social pariahs that hang on the periphery.

As ever with Fassbinder, the presentation of the film underpins the feelings of the character and the world that she inhabits perfectly; with the cramped spaces of her apartment made even more prison-like and oppressive by the director's claustrophobic use of staging, design and composition. Fassbinder undertook the role of cinematographer himself here and shot the film on grainy 16mm, which again, adds to the stark and colourless feeling that the film conveys. The ugliness of the cinematography, with its dimly lit rooms, fragment composition and awkward camera movements could be seen as either amateurish on the part of the filmmaker, or as a deliberate attempt to distance the viewer from the characters and the emotional subtext in a manner that is reminiscent of Brecht; or, more appropriately, Godard's cinematic appropriation of Brecht and his theatre of alienation. As with the subsequent political satire, The Third Generation (1979) - once again, shot by Fassbinder himself - the unconventional approach to cinematography is combined with further elements that attempt to similarly disarm us and make the process of viewing the film as difficult as possible. The opening scene itself is emblematic of this approach, with Fassbinder obscuring the frame with large titles and an opening text that scrolls slowly over the entire frame before continuing with his use of obscured images and fragmented mise-en-scene.

Fassbinder also uses jarring cuts, with scenes seemingly beginning during the middle of a conversation or after the context of the scene has already been established, whilst sound and the disorientating way in which the director has characters talking over one another while music plays disconcertingly in the background all continue this idea of deconstruction and emotional distraction. The ugliness of the film fits perfectly with its tone; with the legendary scene in which Elvira and her friend wander ghost-like through an actual slaughterhouse, where cows are dispatched in graphic detail, whilst a monologue is recited to give us the entire back-story of this truly tragic figure. Whether or not Elvira is an extension of Fassbinder or the personification of Armin Meier is unknown, though there is certainly that element to the interpretation. I'd imagine that there is also some of the director in the portrayal of manipulative antagonist Anton Saitz, who recalls the depiction of Fassbinder in the director's own segment of Germany in Autumn (1978). Regardless, In a Year of 13 Moons is a fascinating if entirely difficult work from Fassbinder; one that brims with an uncomfortable feeling of personal confession and searing self examination that is grotesque, repellent and utterly draining, whilst also standing as a powerful and passionately realised piece of work that is both remarkable and affecting.

Brutal, honest, excellent:

[Galina_movie_fan · 10/10 · 29 August 2006]

The movie should have been called "Despair" had Fassbinder himself not made the film with that title just before "In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden" (1978) which was very personal for the writer/director who had to come to terms with his lover's suicide. This drama follows the last few days in the life of Elvira - Erwin Weisshaupt. Several years back, Ervin underwent the sex change operation in hopes to win love of the man he loved. It did not help him to make Anton love him and it did not make him happier. It may sound beautiful, "I'll do anything for love, I'll be anything you want me to be" but by trying to be someone else, a person simply loses his/her own identity, becomes lonely and desperate and has no way out.

The movie is the most touching, moving, powerful and devastating Fassbinder ever made - it is impossibly difficult to watch at times but it does not make it a bad movie. The acting is fantastic by everyone; the directing is tight and Fassbinder is always in control taking movie from its melodramatic roots to the heights of pure tragedy, never been over-sentimental and even providing some humor. The choice of music with the references to "Death in Venice" (eternal and never fulfilled longing) and to Fellini's "Amarcord" (looking back at one's life trying to find the roots in the childhood, to understand how and why the things happened the way they did) makes the film even more compelling.

Warning: there is a scene in the slaughterhouse which is almost unbearable to watch. It is the very important scene but be prepared for it. It does not spare any details of the job done and in its emotional impact is as horrifying as "The Blood of the Beasts" (1949), the short documentary by Georges Franju.

hijincks of GID

[buyjesus · 6/10 · 22 November 2001]

Fassbinder have have drilled the nail into the coffin of art film, forever establishing it as a genre in which only 1 person out of a thousand will actually like, enjoy, or want to study. One of those people happened to be my narrative avant-garde film proffessor. while this story of a man who switched genders...."just because" is deatheningly depressing and bloatedly long, there are redeeming qualities. This is appears to be a crystal clear message of struggle and love letter to the suffering of existence by Rainer Fassbinder, a homosexual who lived a short life and probably wrote this about an ex-boyfriend of his who committed suicide in his apartment.

The greatest moments in this film come when the storyline completely veers off center about 2/3 of the way through the film when we confront the bill gates-esque anton saitz, who has been a mythically obtuse figure up until this point. the director's wonderful gift for presenting the postmodern shows up first when elvira meets a man who mysteriously knows everything about anton s"ai"tz. "that's anton with a-i. that's the important thing" Next, we are treated to some wonderful dialogue between a suicidal janitor and Elvira which can only be described as highly surreal. Elvira reports the janitor's behavior to a hard-of-hearing secretary-like woman who may easily have been referenced in Being John Malkovich, who shrugs it off to look through a mysterious keyhole.

Apart from this, Fassbinder's film is heavy on human emotion, which is curious taken Fassbinder's philosophy that emotions are lies. surely, Elvira is not a character that the film itself is sympathetic with (this is not melodrama or 'boys don't cry'-like message sending), but one can sense the pain and confusion within her undoingdespite her being such a pathetic creature. so much so that it's difficult to even watch.

my love for the mid-section of big business is also unfortunately my source of dismay at this movie. it's violently uneven. and i have a hard time with film directors who can get away with this 'avant-garde' crap by taking simply playing around with the medium, wherein with any other form (literature, poetry, television, music) that jumping around would just seem like you didn't know what you're doing.

In the Year of 13 Moons is a wonderful movie for study, but it's not for enjoyment or amusement- as with so many films that have followed it.

Virtuoso Film-making

[cstotlar-1 · 9/10 · 23 March 2011]

As some others have written or implied this film is absolutely exhausting. It doesn't abandon its character or his life at any time although at times we almost WANT relief. Mahler's music in films has been dutifully noted. It can be almost as depressing in concert version. As for Nino Rota's "happy" music, or "life just continues (joyfully)" score, the irony isn't lost either. This is a one-man job and therefore takes risks that few producers or companies would tolerate under normal circumstances. I was profoundly moved by the film; I just don't plan to see it again for a while.

Curtis Stotlar

Powerful Stuff

[gavin6942 · 7/10 · 25 March 2017]

This drama follows the last few days in the life of Elvira (formerly Erwin) Weisshaupt. Years before, Erwin told a co-worker, Anton, that he loved him. "Too bad, you aren't a woman," he replied. Erwin took Anton at his word. Trying to salvage something from the wreckage love has made of his life, he now hopes that Anton will not reject him again.

At this point (2017), I have seen most of what Fassbinder has made. And, indeed, the vast majority is really good. Some have said this is his best work. While I am not sure I am ready to jump on that train, I am also not willing to deny the possibility. Even the content alone deserves praise. This is 1978. I am no expert on transgender history, but I cannot think of any films that tackled such a heavy subject this far back.

If anything, the film seems even more topical today as transgender issues are more front and center. The mainstream is ready to stand up for the rights of these folks, and films like "13 Moons" should really be re-examined by the film community.

Transcending one's personality

[hasosch · 10/10 · 21 January 2008]

While "Depair. A Trip into the Light" (1977) shows the decrease of mind of Hermann Hermann, "In a Year of 13 Moons" illustrates the decrease of matter of Erwin/Elvira Weishaupt. Both persons try to change their identities: Hermann Hermann by taking over the identity of Felix Weber, Erwin Weishaupt by changing his sex and becoming Elvira. Both persons share their desire to transcend their personality by which action they trap themselves and get into a maelstrom of events out of which there is no other escape than insanity in the case of Hermann Hermann or death in the case of Erwin/Elvira. In both cases, despair may be seen as the causing motive of the process of self-destruction. "Despair is the only condition of life I can accept", director R.W. Fassbinder said in an interview. It seems as if each person is given a certain role, which he or she has to play and which displays this person's personality as perceived by society. Maybe everybody is surrounded by an infinite number of empty but already reserved personalities that will be taken by future persons. If somebody transcends his personality, he thus steals one that was already determined to someone else, an action by which the equilibrium of subjectivity in this world is disturbed and for which therefore a transcending person has to be punished. And the mechanisms of punishment work in the two forms of destruction or self-destruction, the latter possibility is enabled by guilt, a concept that transfers the position of the executor from the society to oneself. Moreover, once changed one's own personality, there is not return anymore. When Elvira cuts her hair and dresses again with men's clothes, he is not accepted anymore by his wife and his daughter as Erwin, although Elvira is still recognized as Erwin by Anton Saitz, for whom he once changed his sex. He/she is thus neither Erwin nor Elvira, thus both persons or somebody between both persons and therefore in any way taking the position of a third person, which again means transcendence and has to be punished by society which paradoxically turns out to be a strictly immanent concept of organization, while persons tend to be transcendental.

Works thanks to tremendous lead performance

[Horst_In_Translation · 6/10 · 6 July 2016]

"In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden" is a West German German-language film from 1978 written and directed by German auteur Rainer Werner Fassbinder. This is a movie already from the last 5 years of his career and sadly also his life. At 120 minutes, it is one of his longer works and it is also in color like most other of his films. The lead actor here is Volker Spengler and he worked with Fassbinder on several films. This one here, however, is his great moment in the spotlight. The other roles he had were considerably smaller. Fassbinder is known for picking some of his regular cast members as lead characters to give them their well-deserved attention and like I said here it is for Spengler. Another example would be Zeplichal in "I Only Want You to Love Me". Fassbinder is also known for elaborating a lot on smaller characters and giving them screen-time, but here it is really almost everything about Spengler's Erwin/Elvira. And his performance is also what carries this pretty long movie and what makes it work. I can imagine that many other actors may have done a worse job and because of that I would have given a lower rating. Spengler, however, is really convincing. It is also good that Fassbinder kept the absurdities fairly low in terms of quantity this time, which he sometimes fails to do and it can destroy a serious movie like "The Third Generation". And as I said "serious movie", it needs to be noted that this film is 100% drama and tragedy about a severely struggling soul and how he pulls some of the people around him into his misery. There may be some situational comedy at times, but this is always true with Fassbinder and still nobody should see this as a funny film. As a whole, this is definitely among my more preferred Fassbinder films. There some films from him that I like even more, but not too many as I felt that this one here rarely dragged despite its massive runtime. And there is certainly a handful Fassbinder films that I found a lot less interesting. I recommend the watch here. "In a Year with 13 Moons" is a quality film that once again includes several of Fassbinder's regular actors, not only Spengler, but also Caven, Kaufmann and John only to mention a few. Go check it out. And one final note, this is a very personal film for Fassbinder as he made it to deal with the suicide of a beloved one. You can look for details yourself if you care about the background story.

I couldn't finish it

[bemersonslp · 1/10 · 28 September 2020]

I wanted to watch this but I did not become interested enough in the character to stay with it. The dialogue was boring to me. The cow slaughtering was almost the end of it for me. I even forwarded over it and tried to watch more but lost interest.

Fassbinder's best

[Igor-18 · 9/10 · 12 February 1999]

Fassbinder's genius is making you feel as trapped and desperate as Elvira, you really feel empathy for the character. Only the visit with her family is there a brief respite from her pain. Kudos for Fassbinder for his good taste in using Suicide's "Frankie Teardrop" on the soundtrack--a song about a man who feels trapped, but directs his anger outward, rather than inward, like Elvira.

well that was a movie...

[DarkSpotOn · 7/10 · 19 October 2023]

The story the idea of this movie, is amazing. It really does showcases how somebody that went through extreme child trauma being isolated, lonely, sad, wanted love from a male figure, and that was not possible from the one he-she wanted. It really is a fascinating story.

However, i have a huge problem with this movie and that's the pacing. I can assure you that 40 minutes or so could of been removed from this movie, and we'd have a better paced movie.

Minus the pacing, everything here works. The acting is alright, the camera work is okay, the story is alright. Everything here works. Minus the pacing.

The cow slaughtering scene was completely out of left field. Yes yes, our main character our star, worked as a butcher. But the problem with that is, this whole movie is a tragic, depressing drama. And out of no where, we just get cow murder exploitation? Why??? It really did not have to be in this movie at all! We had a tragic drama, and we added cow murder for no reason! It's so out of field, it pulls you out of the story completely, and it felt like i was watching FACES of DEATH again. Ludacris.

Another problem i got is, the suicide scene of that man. It has nothing to do with the story it's just added there so the movie gets longer and padded. This entire movie could of been better if stuff that have nothing to do with the movie aren't here. Also the prologned television scene, it took them ages for that to finish.

Ultimately yes i enjoyed this movie, but at the same time it is a chore to get through it really is. Also i think i have to rewatch this probably 2 - 3 time to actually get all the details. There's many details in this that are really hard to follow.

I mean if you are into drama misery films like JACOB's LADDER, you'll probably enjoy this.

Fassbinder's self-indulgent tale of the last days of a transvestite.

[Sdicht · 5/10 · 13 May 2002]

This is a confused and incoherent mess of interminable scenes of boring dialogues and monologues. That is no exaggeration: you have to make a tremendous effort to even try to become involved with it.

I sincerely thought Fassbinder would make something interesting in order to tell why does Erwin/Elvira suicides at the end, but instead of this, in every scene somebody is trying to explain: "when he was young, this happened..." and "he just came back from Casablanca and ordered to cut everything down there...", etc.

Soon in the movie, Erwin/Elvira is in a slaughter house talking with a friend prostitute (certainly a slaughter house is the best place for a pleasant little chat), and while telling her the story of Elvira's life, Fassbinder shows the killing of one cow after the other. It is difficult to choose between giving attention to the disturbing images or what the transvestite is saying. Of course we come to the very forced and coarse symbolism of "I have suffered much in my life, and am about to die".

In one of the sparse moments where actually happens something, Erwin/Elvira encounters a former lover, that only after performing a extremely gay choreography with two other guys (as if going for the necessary level of homosexuality) is that he recognizes Elvira.

There are some interesting shots and ideas, I must admit (such as when the nun tells the story of the young Erwin), but everything on the movie is wasted due to Fassbinder's self- indulgence.

One of the Best

[spazyouth · 5 March 2006]

I found this movie difficult to watch the first time I saw it, and after the initial shock faded, I found myself drawn back into this tragic tale of a desperate human being. Elviras character has to be one of the most pitifully human in the history of cinema, and the recounting of her last few days alive are rife with powerful imagery ( especially the haunting slaughter-house scene...not for the weak of stomach! Vegans beware!) to convey an extraordinarily beautiful, heart-wrenching tale. The story is loosely based on one of Fassbinder's own lover who committed suicide, and perhaps it is that personal background that infuses the film with a palpable sense of reality... few films have felt more true to me than In a Year of 13 Moons.

Fassbinder's approach in this film is a little different than in say, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, there is less dialog, perhaps to convey the loneliness and hopelessness of Elvira in her final moments. The acting is superb, and the characters will stay with you long after you turn your TV off. I would recommend the Criterion edition for anyone interested in the film, its chock-cull of extra features, and a really cool introduction by Austin filmmaker Richard Linklater.

One of Fassbinder's most daring and experimental works.

[velvethighpeace · 8/10 · 27 July 2005]

"...Every 7th year is a Year of the Moon. Certain people, whose existence is predominantly determined by their feelings and emotions, are afflicted by unusually severe depressions in these Moon Years, comparable with those they suffer in years with 13 new moons, albeit less intense. And if a Moon Year coincides with a year of 13 new moons, they can often suffer major personal disasters. In the 20th century, there are six years when this dangerous conjunction occurs. After 1978, the year 1992 will again jeopardise the existence of many human beings...Frankfurt is a place whose particular structure virtually provokes biographies like this one -or at least doesn't make them seem particularly unusual. Frankfurt is a town where you run into all the general contradictions of society at every street-corner, incessantly. Or at least, if you don't stumble over THEM immediately, the contradictions that are being fairly successfully ironed out everywhere else" (RWF)

The story of a person with a missing identity

[elisereid-29666 · 9/10 · 25 April 2020]

First of all, I would not call this a trans-or LGBT-themed film. Elvira, the main character, may have had trans surgery, but the plot makes it clear that they aren't a trans woman, that they made a mistake having the surgery. But it's also clear that the main character isn't a man, either-they are a person with a lack of identity. So it's a mistake to classify this one with the stories of trans men and women, it's about something very different.

Elvira's lack of identity surfaces in the fact that they can't remember their childhood at all, and when they search for details on it, the results are even more frustratingly ambiguous. They think that loving someone else gives them an identity, and it is this part of falling in love that they love the most-not so much being with another human being, but what it turns them into. That's why they undergo the surgery-because they think it will make them something when they are starting out as nothing. The surgery is just another turn of the screw for them-just another way of groping for an identity that isn't there. It's a much bleaker and more existential story than any trans-themed film I've ever seen.

The film leaves us with more questions than answers, which is how it should be. The characters speak in long monologues that raise lots of questions but no answers. They're more riddles than statements, and it's maddening. Maddening because the more Elvira searches for answers, the more they slip away from them. It's like a horrible taunt for Elvira, and we, in the audience, are not spared one moment of the terrible ambiguity of it all. Fassbinder's compositions add to the confusion, showing us a world that is as unclear to us as it is to Elvira.

For anyone going into this film looking for an LGBT story, you will be disappointed, as you will be if you like a story with a solid resolution. But for those who tolerate ambiguity and frustration-and, indeed, see how they can be virtues in art-you may well be dazzled and hypnotized.

Slaughterhouse World

[XxEthanHuntxX · 8/10 · 5 December 2021]

"[...] And Elvira opposes this idea to her that she found in the novel Welt am Draht and which, for the moment, seems very reasonable and relevant to her: the world in which she finds herself is only the model. Of a higher world where reactions are tested by means of seemingly real living beings. " - Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Synopsis of The Year of the Thirteen Moons.

With this cited description, I think its safe to say that Fassbinder perceives and consider the world, as a wretched hell deprived of any order and justice. In the time of making the picture at least.

The film begins by stating that the years with the 13 moons are inextricably linked to personal tragedies, seeming to erode his faith in individual drama as a result of fate and the movements in our stars. Most definetely affected by an emotionally challanging event within his own personal relations. On May 31, 1978, Armin Meier, a young actor and lover of the director, commits suicide by drinking a cocktail of sleeping pills and alcohol, after four years enduring the despotic treatment of Fassbinder and after he write him a letter ending their relationship and offering him a monthly allowance and the apartment they shared in Munich. Six days later, after the discovery of Meier's body by the building's doorman due to the strong stench emanating from the apartment, Fassbinder refuses to attend the funeral of his ex-lover (in view of the general scandal and in his own words,A year with thirteen moons, an exercise of atonement that will lead to the most personal and heartbreaking work of his filmography *.

He almost contemplated leaving filmmaking altogether, however realizing the only way he could get through the suffering and make sense of it all, - was making a film. To explore and his own experience, and conquer his reality. The themes; loneliness, alienation and being a true outsider of this world. He delivers, then, with "The Night with the 13 Moons", one of the most heartbreaking ode to the individual need for acceptance and to the uninterrupted ping-pong between bodies and needs.

It renders so well the heartfelt pain of suffering in life. When everything has gone to hell and a futile try for acceptance becomes fatal. The emotional exhaustion of tearful aggression and anoyance towards the absurd and incomprehensible world. And the fact that this is supposedly what was going on in Fassbinder's life, elevates the film and makes it more profound: this was an artist in despair and trying to find some redemption through his art.

The film isnt directly gratifying in an ordinary cinematical way, - its terrifyingly horrible. And targeted in an confrontational way towards whoever in the audience whom want to accompanie him on this downward spiral death-trip. In that sense it's a boldly experimental film. This is a film that may be most daring in juggling tone. The Year of the Thirteen Moonsis is structured in resemblance to acts or episodes of a biblical story, almost theatrical but manages to hold on to the film medium.

The most brutal and ferocious passage remains the sequence of the slaughterhouse: against a background of Handel, Elvira declaims Goethe while on the screen, we bleed, slice, open and skin cattle. I suppose it would symbolize a thesisical metaphor on suffering, how's it feels: the Hurt.

Fassbinder casts on Erwin / Elvira the traits of his unfortunate lover, Armin Meier, while he unfolds himself into the multiple characters that will cause the protagonist's descent into hell: The unpredictable will /movement of our bodies. Fassbinder have chosen a transgender and sensative martyr to attend this role. In his desperate search for love, the protagonist renounces himself and his own masculinity to find nothing but rejection and loneliness. And Volker Spengler sensitively embodies this jaw-dropping role of a heavy angel, almost antipsychological. Its an interpretation -probably- taken from the soul and freed from all forms of paper and false emotion, Fassbinder finds the ideal incarnation of man in the moment of absolute and self-destructive need for acceptance of the present self. Fassbinder is only partially interested in the story of his main character's suffering. He puts one obstacle after the other in the way of a possible empathy on the part of the viewer. The director watches his protagonist burn without hesitation and intention of interfering.

Volker Spengler plays it as a narcissistic and passive aggressive wreck, who speaks autistically to itself in plaintive singsong and presents itself to its tormentors as a grateful target for attack. Seemingly, on the surface, naive, but one can't help to offer ones symphaty and understandment when you have heard his life story.

Sometimes Fassbinder takes his figure by the hand, accompanies it a little and shows understanding. But then he pushes her away again to watch her despair from a distance.

There comes a time when the people who forsake or hurt Elvira don't do it out of spite but out of indifference. Anton Saitz sums up these contradictions: destroyed by Nazism, he destroys others, manages brothels like concentration camps. Feared and hoped for like the big villain of the film, he turns out to be totally childish, preferring to replay a scene from a Jerry Lewis comedy.

The vexating and tricky problem I have is, however, first of all the familiar theme. Life's suffering isnt exactly a new theme of a film but it is on the other hand universal and eternal. Though the envoirment and the characters are in this type of vulgar and astethical style - unique. The film is also, while an enjoyable film experience, as I said, quite ungratifying and anti-climatic. Which creates a irritational odd ball and thought that the film could be more giving.

Fassbinder's worst?

[Progbear-4 · 1/10 · 9 April 2000]

If Fassbinder has made a worse film, I sure don't want to see it! Anyone who complains that his films are too talky and claustrophobic should be forced to view this, to learn to appreciate the more spare style he opted for in excellent films like "The Bitter Tears Of Petra von Kant". This film bogs down with so much arty, quasi-symbolic images it looks like a parody of an "art-film". The scene in the slaughterhouse and the scene where Elvira's prostitute friend channel-surfs for what seems like ten minutes are just two of the most glaring examples of what makes this film a real test of the viewer's endurance. But what really angers me about it are the few scenes which feature just Elvira and her ex-wife and/or her daughter. These are the only moments that display any real human emotion, and prove that at the core of this horrible film, there was an excellent film struggling to free itself. What a waste.

repellent

[planktonrules · 2/10 · 22 April 2006]

It's funny. I've seen a bunch of Fassbinder films and I have found some to be extremely creative and interesting, while others are repellent and self-indulgent messes--like this film. For me, it ranges from great to crap--without much in the middle. I know he has a lot of fans among the "sophisticated", but I can't help but think that a lot of his appeal is pure hype. From my point of view (and I know I will get a lot of negative ratings for this), he made too many movies too quickly and was too self-indulgent. His gay or gender-bending films (like this one) tend to be really bad--sloppily done, sometimes quite boring (such as QUERELLE and THE BITTER TEARS OF PETRA VON KANT) and sometimes just gross (like this film). Couldn't his message about acceptance of a person's gender-confusion be handled better than showing him get slapped around or watching cows being gruesomely slaughtered? Show some sensitivity for the subject matter and make your characters more human and sympathetic--then, maybe, I'd care about the films.

I'm honestly at the point after watching this film that I might not bother with any more Fassbinder films--the bad seems to be out-weighing the good.

boring but thought provoking

[Gordon-11 · 3 February 2003]

This film effectively dealt with emotions. The emotions that the actor felt was conveyed to the audience effectively. For example, when the transsexual woman cried in the game shop, she was crying because of despair. She was alone and helpless. There were two men who went up to her, but they only looked at her and did not help her. This was an effective scene which conveyed a variety of emotions from sadness, despair to the cruelty and indifference of the people in the world.

However, there were times when the film became boring. The scene where a prostitute friend of his flipped the channels of the TV was very long. It was probably about 10 minutes long! The woman aimlessly look at the television, changed the channels, and a minute later changed the channel again. This went on for so long that I did not understand why the scene had to be so long.

Also it was strange that she had to watch a man hanging himself, without intervening. Normally, if you see someone trying to kill himself, you would stop him. This is the natural response. However, in that scene, she did not stop the man, but totally ignored him and let him kill himself. I tried to analyse why there was such a response. Maybe it was because the director wanted to increase the level of sadness, that the woman in the film felt so sad that she could not care about anyone.

The part revealing the woman's past life was touching. I felt sad when they said that she could not be adopted from the orphanage because her biological mother did not approve of this. She was afraid of letting her husband know that she gave birth to a child without his knowledge. Because of this selfishness, she missed a chance of getting real love from her adopted parents.

In short, I think there are lots to think about from the film. It is highly thought provoking.

awful fare

[flowerboy · 2/10 · 24 May 2005]

As if the storyline wasn't depressing enough, this movie shows cows being butchered graphically in a slaughterhouse for all of five minutes while the protagonist is narrating her early life as a butcher. Weird stuff. Then there's the core premise of the hero/heroine who goes and cuts his dick off because a he's besot-ten with at work says he would have gone with him if he was a girl. Is this person a psycho, a masochist, just a doomed queen who takes things too far? And what sort of traumatic childhood did he have? Just that he didn't get adopted and had to live it out with nuns who at first loved him and then later hated him because he was unruly. He tries to explain to us the reasons he did what he did, but it's really really so hard to empathize. Such sad and unusual self destruction. Was it supposed to be funny? What was it all about really?

Nino Rota / 13 Moons

[cineaste-4 · 23 February 2007]

I have to save my comments for later...I began watching this film last night and, as disturbing as the slaughterhouse scene actually is, I was only able to make it halfway through. I will return. It amazes me when a film disturbs me so much that I cannot watch it in one sitting. I had similar reactions to both Pasolini's "Salo" and to Cronenberg's "Crash".

But I'm curious to learn from anyone who might have a clue why Nino Rota's theme music from "Amarcord" (original orchestration) was put in this movie's first half and yet isn't credited on IMDb's list of "combined details".

Anybody who might offer some insight on this omission....thanks for posting it here....