Director: Julian Radlmaier
Release date: 2021
Contains spoilers
One that I had heard of but only recently sourced (the German DVD has English subtitles for those interested) this film runs from the metaphorical use of vampire in Marx: “Capital is dead labour which, vampire-like, lives only by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks” (Marx 1982 {1867}, 342). A gentle comedy, subjectively I didn’t find it uproariously funny but was pleasantly amused through the running length, this creates political satire by suggesting there was something less metaphorical about Marx’s point.
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| questions in the book club |
It is set in 1928 – the year the first five-year plan was adopted in the USSR and a year after Stalin took power – the film is set in a German seaside town. It starts with a book club on the beach. All the participants are factory workers, and they are reading Marx’s Das Kapital. One of the participants has a question however and reads from the book, quoting the vampire passage. The leader of the club, and others, suggests it is metaphor but the question is asked, what if it is literal?
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| the Baron |
The camera looks to the sea and we see the first of many idiosyncrasies (which I will dwell on later), which is what appears to be someone Kiteboarding – a sport thought to be invented in the 1970s and certainly not popularised until the 90s. On the beach is heiress Octavia (Lilith Stangenberg), her parasol held by her personal assistant Jakob (Alexander Herbst). She sends Jakob to a man, Ljowushka (Aleksandre Koberidze), a distance away, in formal dress, and receives a card that suggests he is Baron Kobersky. The Baron walks away from them.
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| Octavia and Jakob |
At a golf course we see Ljowushka walking across the greens. He gets to a tee where there are sandwiches and a bottle of champaign set out. He eats a sandwich and takes the champaign. Meeting Octavia again she assumes he is a noble who has escaped the soviets and invites him to her home, where they will have escargot (gathered by, and crawling over, Jakob). In the meal she notes that he does not know how to eat escargot but we notice something else. Jakob has a can of coke, Coca Cola did not use cans until the 1950s and the depress opening was much later still. Why would the filmmakers let this slip through?
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| on the beach |
Idiosyncrasies continue in the film, and I believe they were absolutely deliberate. There is nothing that shouts out as a symbol of capitalism than the Coca Cola distinctive packaging. The can is deliberately placed, in a way that resembles product placement. As the film progresses we get establishing shots (both of Germany and Leningrad) that feature modern vehicles, a very modern looking factory, a modern ship), we get the use of obviously cheap plastic fangs and Octavia rides a very modern motorbike. Radlmaier adds these as part of his satire and, in doing so, makes the capitalist vampirism timeless.
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| Aleksandre Koberidze as Ljowushka |
Ljowushka is caught, after taking money from Octavia’s purse, trying to open her safe. The truth comes out that he was from a Russian peasant village and ended up working in a factory (out of lust rather than economy) when he was “discovered” for a film (the actual film October (Ten Days that Shook the World)) by director Sergei Eisenstein (Anton Gonopolski), cast to play Trotsky. Unfortunately the political winds are harsh and all his performance ended on the editing room floor as Trotsky was erased. This left him both embarrassed and politically damned due to the association with Trotsky and he escaped the USSR and, whilst posing as a Baron, is trying to get passage to America and Hollywood.
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| biting Jakob |
The film then follows Ljowushka (still posing as a Baron, with only Octavia and Jakob knowing the truth) as he and Octavia try to make a short film – a vampire film – for him to use as a portfolio piece in America. However, there is rumours of an actual vampire (or maybe it’s fleas) feeding on the factory workers. When Ljowushka is caught by Octavia and Jakob, Jakob checks if the Russian has a reflection and we see her feeding on Jakob (though he has no memory of it). The film casts the bourgeoisie and shareholders as actual vampires. It also poses the proletariat as stupid and people like Jakob, a servant given the title personal assistant and asked not to call Octavia “miss” as an attempt to give the illusion of class elevation, as carrying a self-loathing of their class and a delusion that they are higher than other proletariat – the delusion going as far as his unrequited love for Octavia (Ljowushka, equally, has romantic delusions about Octavia, though she is physically attracted to him).
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| a film within a film |
Another thing the film introduces is racial Othering. In the film there is a Chinese character, Algensammler (Kyung-Taek Lie), a hard working, self-starting immigrant who is openly disliked for making a skin tincture that undercuts the factory’s product and who is the recipient of racist language. He is cast as the vampire in Ljowushka’s film and footage is shown of him biting Octavia (who plays the heroine) when the locals decide she is the real life vampire. This proves enough to convince the mob that she is innocent and Algensammler is the actual vampire and so also serves as an exercise in media manipulation of the populace.
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| checking reflections |
As you can tell there is much going on here, a film of layers that has, be aware, no real horror aspect. Rather it is a comedy drama, which is particularly quirky and offbeat in places. As I said at the head of the review, this was not an uproarious experience, but it was certainly enjoyable, humorous and the layers makes one think. The performances fit perfectly into the film, giving weight to the satire. Definitely worth your time, if you like a more intriguing use of the vampire figure. 7 out of 10.
The imdb page is here.
On DVD @ Amazon US
On DVD @ Amazon UK
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