Director:
Alexander Kluge
Cast:
Maria Sterr
Vincenz Sterr
Sigi Graue
Henrike Fürst
Hajo von Zündt
Silvia Forsthofer
Hark Bohm
Hannelore Hoger
Amon Düül II
Plot Synopsis:
Outer space in 2034 is run by greedy corporations in a rundown bureaucracy. In the first century of the third millennium, a galactic civil war is raging between governments, industrial giants and space pirates. Run for your lives!
Two astronauts, who are not very smart, make their way with shady dealings, smuggling and spaceship wrecking. captain Douglas, the pirate couple Sterr, a space admiral and countless other characters trying to eke out a living in the cosmos. But whenever they get anywhere, they find they've been beaten to it by monopolist enterprises.
Meanwhile, back on the planet, the rich and poor nations are locked in battle.
This German political comedy with science fiction overtones is based on The Monopole Capitalism, by Baran and Sweezy.
The Milky Way is in a mess.
After seven failed galactic revolutions and six lost wars, the Suez Canal Company is in total control of all means of transport and communication and, therefore , of all commerce and, consequently, of the social order. Some small entrepreneurs still work the more dangerous trade routes with aged spaceships amd a few smugglers do good busines wrecking other spaceships and selling them for scrap or making deals with insurance companies. Everybody is at war, the sharpest form of competition, with everyone else, but on the terms of the monopoly, which is also planning intergalactic military campaigns to acquire more raw materials and power. The film is marvellously acted, especially by Graue whose idiosyncratic way of rolling and biting the sounds of the German language is perfect for conveying the image of an ordinary bully (Douglas, the trigger-happy anxiliary pilot, trained in the air force), whose brain processes more scientific information than Einstein ever dreamt of but whose intelligence is that of the normal "company man". This combination of extreme technological competence and stunted intelligence offers a telling portrait of technocratic officials (astro/cosmonauts and the like) in the making. The space technology used is the exact opposite of that idealized in 2001: A Space Odyssey: spaceships are computers housed in ramshackle contraptions that look as if they were designed by cowboy plumbers. At last a film that puts the space heroes in their place: neither robots nor adventurous geniuses but people who realize that the values of shady shopkeepers, administered by military and other bureaucrats of social control - people who are the slightly dim-witted but competent servants of a system that exploits and ultimately destroys them - are those that rule the world. In the meantime, life goes on...
File Name .........................................: The.Big.Mess.1971.avi
File Size (in bytes) ............................: 941,389,824 bytes
Runtime ............................................: 1:29:20
Video Codec ...................................: XviD 1.2 SMP
Frame Size ......................................: 528x400 (AR: 1.320)
FPS .................................................: 25.000
Video Bitrate ...................................: 1351 kb/s
Bits per Pixel ...................................: 0.256 bpp
B-VOP, N-VOP, QPel, GMC.............: [B-VOP], [], [], []
Audio Codec ...................................: 0x0055 MPEG-1 Layer 3
Sample Rate ...................................: 32000 Hz
Audio Bitrate ...................................: 44 kb/s [1 channel(s)] VBR
No. of audio streams .......................: 1
Language.........................................: German
Subtitles...........................................: English, Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese
DVD Extras:
Triebwerk-Husten aka Engine Cough
Alexander Kluge, Germany 1996
Cast: Alfred Edel, Uwe-Karsten Koch
Runtime: 15 min
With subtitles in English, Spanish, French, Russian, Chinese
Learning Processes With a Deadly Outcome
Alexander Kluge, Germany 2006,
Runtime: 1 min
Many thanks to mvanilli for ripping this German Film Museum release!
ed2k links:
ed2k: The.Big.Mess.1971.avi [897.78 Mb] [Stats]
Multi-language subs:
ed2k: The.Big.Mess.1971.idx [157.0 Kb] [Stats]
ed2k: The.Big.Mess.1971.sub [13.73 Mb] [Stats]
English only:
ed2k: The.Big.Mess.1971.ENG.srt [50.0 Kb] [Stats]
DVD Extras:
ed2k: Engine.Cough.avi [150.00 Mb] [Stats]
Multi-language subs:
ed2k: Engine.Cough.idx [32.6 Kb] [Stats]
ed2k: Engine.Cough.sub [2.42 Mb] [Stats]
English only:
ed2k: Engine.Cough.ENG.srt [8.8 Kb] [Stats]
ed2k: Learning%20Processes%20With%20a%20Deadly%20Outcome.avi [30.01 Mb] [Stats]
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