Last night a strikingly well done German movie on art channel, dealing only tangentially with the Kennedy assassination. Perfectly and metaphorically done, visually perfect’
It is very much done in the manner of post modern expression, whenever one tries to dig deeper, to try to unearth some grain of relevance of continuation, one is immediately thrown back into a despair of revolving madness, the madness a tautology, of an ever recycling , and unanswered question : Why can not there be an emergence of reality, why the relentless associations lead back to a very dark premiss?
The story revolves around parallel themes: a trip to Africa, a murder/suicide of a beloved son, the profitable power industry surrounding the Aids epidemic, and the coverup of where the Kennedy brain disappeared to after his assassination , as possible sub-plots.
There never is clear linkage and as he story unfolds, it devolves into more and more into the kind of massive pathos reminiscent of classical tragedies. But as in those, there are some reclamation, and solution, here, there is none of that, only the faintest whisper of innuendo and allusion toward something even more hidden and forlorn.
The suicide is a young man whose lifeless body is discovered by his grieving mom, who is beside herself, and visits to the police have absolutely no avail, as to their participation to uncover what happened to the young man.
She takes it upon herself to do detective work on her own, and as a result a series of montage and location changes take place. First , a visit to the father, who is hermeneutically sealed on an island, living in a subdued glass house. They have been married many years, separated 25 , and oddly, has seen his only son 1 and only time in his life. His regrets are deep, and he decides to accompany his wive's private investigation. From here things descend rather quickly to some very incongruous actions based on seemingly unrelated facts and photographs, and it is left to the viewer to connect these, as they see fit.
Some of these have to do with payouts to underworld shady characters for important news, and this latest costs the father $30,000, having to do probably with JFK's brain. Then a fact emerges, that the condo that the son lives in South Africa belongs to the father, and there is only a certain photograph of a woman which can conceivably connect the son even being there.
The couple end up in Mozambique, and shadow the woman, who simultaneously denies, then accedes to having known of the young man. Finally, she is kidnapped, but perhaps it was done for appearance's sake, to throw off the local cops, finally the father is murdered, after the trail heats up, due to having found some computer blogs, written by the son,on a computer owned by the father, in his own apartment.
The woman is warned to go back to Germany immediately by the African police, and as she is about to board her plane, she has a sudden change of heart, and changes her schedule to fly to Tanganyika, a place indicated by the German girl working in South Africa, who allegedly made yearly trips there.
Of course the mother is murdered there, and the film ends. The central pathos to me was the role of the father, in all this, and it seems as if both parents were going on a suicide mission.
The thesis of the murder of the son, countered with the official view of suicide, leads down a blind alley, a place of irresoluteness, wherefrom no one emerges. That place is the darkness, the heart of which is reminiscent of Joseph Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. All is needed is a sign proclaiming , “Beware to All those, who Enter Here”