Why does Herr Megatron Run Amok?
Transformers, Michael Bay’s curiously flat, big budget version of the 80s cartoon is the story a young man (Shia Le Boeuf) who finds himself at the centre of the battle between the Autobots and the Decepticons. It is, many ways, quite dissimilar from Michael Fengler’s documentary-style satire of the bourgeois Why does Herr R. Run Amok?, wherein a man (Kurt Raab) who can no longer bear the crushing nullity of his life kills his wife and young son. Perhaps the only connection is that I watched them both recently.
Here is a quick comparison:
One is mass culture; the other is minority culture.
One adheres closely to the action genre cliches; the other is outrageous in its lack of concern for conventions.
One is full of pop-culture jokiness; the other is deadly earnest and quite tragic.
One is inhuman, computer-generated and vulgar; the other all-too-human, realistic and quiet.
One is predictable and cliched; the other is bizarre and shocking.
One is pure escapism; the other unbearably real.
Can you guess which one is which? The world of Transformers is all about potency and power, Herr K. is all impotency and the the futility of all attempts to assert yourself within the confines of a bourgeois existence. I’m not sure which one I found more dispiriting.
