MOTHER KÜSTERS GOES TO HEAVEN Movie Review

Mutter Kusters Fahrt Zum Himmel

Mrs. Küsters's husband is a frustrated factory worker who flips out and kills the factory owner's son and himself. Left alone, Mrs. Küsters (Brigitte Mira) discovers that everyone is using her husband's death to further their own needs, including her daughter, who uses the publicity to enhance her singing career. Savagely criticizing a modern media-mad world in which politics, journalism, and personal agendas all intersect at the point of personal gain, Rainer Werner Fassbinder's darkly funny and searingly angry film is, at heart, the story of Mrs. Küsters's heroic efforts to rise above the muck. Its politics earned the film expulsion from the Berlin Film Festival, which alone makes the picture worth a look. Brigitte Mira, gloomy veteran of Fassbinder films such as Ali: Fear Eats the Soul is splendid. (The film's original title, Mutter Küsters Fahrt zum Himmel, has also been translated as Mother Küster's Trip to Heaven.)

NEXT STOP … The Merchant of Four Seasons, Ali: Fear Eats the Soul, Patty Hearst

1976 108m/C GE Brigitte Mira, Ingrid Caven, Armin Meier, Irm Hermann, Gottfried John, Margit Carstensen, Karl-Heinz Boehm; D: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; W: Rainer Werner Fassbinder; C: Michael Ballhaus. VHS NYF