Das ferne Land Utopia (1983)

Das ferne Land Utopia: Directed by Sohrab Shahid Saless. With Manfred Zapatka, Imke Barnstedt, Gundula Petrovska, Gabriele Fischer. A treatise on love and desire tainted by harsh reality of capitalism, in which submission to the laws of lust-as-commerce is played out by five prostitutes and their pimp, who pits them against one another so that they are incapable of standing up to him collectively.

“My first film by the Iranian great, this is one of his works after he shifted to German language. And its a harrowing film. It is more than 3 hours long and for its entire duration it is a devastating, bleak, crushing movie. No wonder this has been compared to Salo, but there is no physical violence here. The story is about a brothel run by a ruthless, cruel and disturbed Manfred Zapatka and the five girls under him who have nowhere to go, who work with him sacrificing themselves every day just for a distant future, that too getting increasingly lost by the day. It lacks the physical force of Salo but its depressing mood will get to any viewer. And the thing is the movie doesnu0026#39;t sag for even a minute, there is always an unseen tension hovering in the air. Manfred Zapatkau0026#39;s powerful, controlled and sculpted-in-stone performance is the only reason behind that. Salessu0026#39; technique is very Fassbinder-ish, the movie looks like one too, and the way he slowly unveils his frames is great. The background score is seeped in melancholy and its expert use at important moments lend an universal appeal to the movie, making you writhe in pain for the fate of the characters. And the strangest thing is its all so real that you wonu0026#39;t feel you are watching a movie, its all too vivid, too candid and the acting by all 6 is exactly to that tune. And what a conclusion, you got to watch this I say, because after 150 minutes of harrowing, great film-making, the conclusion takes this to a cathartic level, and again the acting, the sense of timing is what makes the sequence a poignant knockout. Awesome movie, heavily recommended.”