| Cast: | Hanna Schygulla, Angela Winkler, Peter Striebeck, Christine Fersen |
| Genre: | Drama |
| Director: | Margarethe von Trotta |
| Screenplay: | Margaretha von Trotta |
| Cinematography: | Michael Ballhaus |
| Composer: | Nicolas Economou |
| Runtime: | 105 minutes |
Margarethe von Trotta likes to show two seemingly opposite women turning out to be halves, at least for a while as friendship has an amazing power to heal as well as destroy. Olga (Hanna Schygulla) is a beacon of strength, a secure successful outgoing romantic literature professor. Ruth (Angela Winkler) is a shy vulnerable outsider who was traumatized by her artist brother’s suicide, giving up her teaching job and withdrawing almost completely into his world of painting and (attempted) suicide.
There’s immediately something between the two women, which is rare for Ruth who has become scared of human contact, so her husband Franz (Peter Striebeck), a colleague of Olga’s, encourages Olga to befriend her. As usual, people come to resent what they wished for or “created”. Franz, a character reportedly based on von Trotta’s then husband Tin Drum director Volker Schlondorff, turns out to only want Ruth’s improvement if he’s the primary source of it. He fears her success because he’ll lose his superior standing and she won’t need him anymore.
Olga is separated from her husband, and that seems to be the source of her self-confidence. Though a new world is opened to Ruth that, with Olga’s support, brings her out of her shell, Olga’s independence gives way to a mutual psychological and emotional dependence. The women get along better with each other than with men because they don’t complain about everything the other does, but ultimately their relationship is something like a (sexless) marriage. Their demands don’t need to be stated because they understand each other’s needs better, and the needs are mutual and more similar. But they are there just the same.
No one tries to understand Olga & Ruth’s bond. Rather than be happy for what their loved ones have gained they are blinded by their fear of losing possession of them, and thus try to destroy the friendship. The focus is more on the female bond - portrayed intensely and lovingly - than the usual they won’t let us be happy stuff. It’s a serious restrained psychological study, a sensitive subtly emotional film.
I prefer this intimate work to the other Von Trotta I’ve seen because she focuses her energies on the women’s stories, which she does very well, rather than trying to overtly meld them with political activism. Sheer Madness still has some politics, but it’s more on a private vs. public level, and thus doesn’t create more of a parallel story like in The Second Awakening of Christa Klages where the characters happen to be modern day Robin Hoods.
Von Trotta elicits excellent performances from the women by focusing on scenes that show their special chemistry, which is so powerful it’s polarizing. Winkler is superb in showing that Olga is like another life form to her. There’s human beings, a hurtful species she hides from as best as she can, and then there’s Olga who is always the best and thus Ruth ignores everyone else to be with her constantly.
I find Sheer Madness to be very refreshing in its ordinariness. Everyone has had beneficial friendships jealous “left out” friends or relatives fought, but it’s rarely depicted on the screen, especially with this kind of nuance toward the primary characters (though little is offered for the thin supporting players) and keen observation of behavioral details. It seems like the few movies that features women these days are either a zany soap operas by Almodovar or yet another film where friends can only wind up being “special”. In the former the “issues” tend to be meaningless because they just throw tragedies at the wall rather than delving into one or two of them. The latter tend to be too predictable to be of interest.
Several people hate von Trotta’s film because the women are dynamic while the men are clinging nuisances. Von Trotta’s women aren’t exceptional, at best they have talent and the capability to do something with it if given the opportunity and support anyone deserves. Make ten million movies where the women are little more than sex objects and hardly a man protests, it’s just more accepted misogynistic sexism, but make one where they are selfish one dimensional creatures, and even though there are women such as Ruth’s mom (Agnes Fink) who also protests the friendship, out come the feminist haters. Von Trotta is one of the best at portraying what it’s like to be a woman, even if that sometimes comes at the expense of understanding what it’s like to be a man. If 98% of the directors were female I’m sure I’d value her less and the few that gave me an idea of what it was like to be a man more, but I don’t think we have to worry about that.
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