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Customer Reviews of In a Year of 13 Moons

Brutal, honest, excellent
The movie should have been called "Despair" had Fassbinder himself not made the film with that title just before "In einem Jahr mit 13 Monden" (1978) which was very personal for the writer/director who had to come to terms with his lover's suicide. This drama follows the last few days in the life of Elvira - Erwin Weisshaupt. Several years back, Ervin underwent the sex change operation in hopes to win love of the man he loved. It did not help him to make Anton love him and it did not make him happier. It may sound beautiful, "I'll do anything for love, I'll be anything you want me to be" but by trying to be someone else, a person simply loses his/her own identity, becomes lonely and desperate and has no way out. <
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>The movie is the most touching, moving, powerful and devastating Fassbinder ever made - it is impossibly difficult to watch at times but it does not make it a bad movie. The acting is fantastic by everyone; the directing is tight and Fassbinder is always in control taking movie from its melodramatic roots to the heights of pure tragedy, never been over-sentimental and even providing some humor. The choice of music with the references to "Death in Venice" (eternal and never fulfilled longing) and to Fellini's "Amarcord" (looking back at one's life trying to find the roots in the childhood, to understand how and why the things happened the way they did) makes the film even more compelling. <
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>Warning: there is a scene in the slaughterhouse which is almost unbearable to watch. It is the very important scene but be prepared for it. It does not spare any details of the job done and in its emotional impact is as horrifying as "Les Yeux sans visage" ("The Blood of the Beasts" (1949), the short documentary by Georges Franju. <
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A bleak and crude vision of the multiple facets of love!
Just only a very few filmmakers in cinema ' s story have had the supreme virtue of treat th human being with such load of affection, respect and indulgency no matter the circumstances of religious, social, racial or psychological orders we talk. <
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>Fassbinder literally embraced and loved the human being, and he dared to present many unsaid realities of universal repercussions. This awful and penetrating movie deals around a sex change of a man who tries to please his male lover, and then to be abandoned and deal with this stigma against the world. <
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>An awful and incisive film which demands all your possible attention. It is not an easy going picture which anticipated itself by far to many actual issues. <
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What no one seems to be mentioning is the humor
Yes this film is full of hard-to-watch scenes like the slaughterhouse sequence, but what has not been mentioned is the wit and humor of the piece. Beginning with the openning scene in which a bunch of hustlers beat up the heroine because she is not a gay man, Fassbinder pulls a series of reversals and twists on what is expected. There are also amusing visual incongruities such as Elvira and Zora in their full femme outfits visiting slaughterhouses and convents. <
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>The strong emotional impact of this film cannot be separated from Fassbinder's usual humor, which puts the character's pain into a larger perspective.