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Der amerikanische Freund 29 April 05

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Categories: Film / dvd-mine

A forged painting is still a painting.

At the end, the forgery becomes truth and the truth of the true friendship born of forgeries cannot be escaped.

Zimmermann, the frame-maker, feels compelled to believe the forgeries of his blood tests and feels repelled by the authenticity of Ripley’s friendship. He judges Ripley for making a living from forgeries, but is willing to believe other forgeries to rationalize killing for money. Ripley lives from forgeries, but he thinks it is crazy to kill for hire. Zimmermann and Ripley are mirror images of each other, or more exactly reverse images of each other.

Even after Ripley had essentially saved Zimmermann’s life during the train killings, when the latter addresses him he still uses the formal Sie form. Ripley refuses any of the money for the “job” and says that all he could want from Zimmermann would be friendship, but that under the circumstances that isn’t possible. To which Zimmermann says: “That makes me feel very… comfortable” — sadly, tragically haughty.

The character, Ripley, who is most alienated from himself (a couple of lonely shots of his Hamburg villa look like the train in the forged Derwatt painting in the auction at the beginning — also like the child’s lamp next to his bed), who makes a living from organizing the sale of forged paintings, is the character who is most rooted in social reality. The character, Jonathan Zimmermann, who is most rooted in a somewhat alternative yet still rather staid German family life — from Ripley’s point of view probably a picture–perfect life* — is willingly drawn away from all of that by forgeries, the forgeries of his blood tests which anyone would have recognized for what they were: forged tests to manipulate him into killing for money. But he allows himself to be drawn into the deceit in order to break out of his life — he believes temporarily and without paying a price for it — and perhaps to live more intensely in the present. *(Framed was the working title of the film; Zimmermann means carpenter, the kind who builds houses; Zimmermann “frames” himself a couple of times in the film, visually, as he is fitting two halves of a frame together, and later in the film when Ripley picks up the etching he had brought to Zimmermann for framing, Ripley simply says: “framed.”)

The theme of reverse images, even of the intertwined neural circuitry of our hemispheres, is echoed in the film in other ways:

When Zimmermann hurts himself in Paris, falling and cutting himself above his left eyebrow near his temple, and escapes into a bar, he is approached by a friendly man (Jean Eustache, a French filmmaker; he committed suicide five years later in 1981) who gestures to his own right temple, referring to Zimmermann’s cut on his left. This — how people often indicate something on our face by pointing to the mirror image of it on their own face, not using left-right orientation in the sense of pointing to their left side to indicate that we have something on our left side — comes up a few times in the film;
When Ripley visits Zimmermann soon after the first murder, Zimmermann had just smashed a gilded frame: Ripley picks up a corner and, seeing the band-aid on Zimmermann’s head, uses the rounded, broken corner of the gold frame to trace a line on his own right temple. Ripley puts the corner down and Zimmermann picks it up and in a strange gesture he briefly uses the rounded gold corner, with his right hand, to trace over the cut above his left eye. As if to correct or complete the mirror image, or to somehow understand or identify with it;
Derwatt (Nicholas Ray) alternately covers his eyes, maybe comparing them, their weaknesses, or observing the parallax shifts;
Zimmermann, right-handed, speaks in his sleep: “not with the left hand.”

After writing the above I wanted to check the scene where Zimmermann speaks in his sleep and I instead came across the one where he was reading a book in bed with a penlight (the name K. B. Hathaway is listed below the text):

Ich fühlte mich, als hätte es mit mir nichts zu tun; es war nur eine Verkleidung. Aber es war nicht die Art von Verkleidung, die von der Person, die sie trägt, freiwillig angelegt wird in der Absicht, andere Menschen hinsichtlich ihrer Indentität zu verwirren. Meine Verkleidung wurde mir ohne meine Einwilligung oder mein Wissen angelegt, wie die Verkleidung im Märchen, und ich war dadurch verwirrt hinsichtlich meiner eigenen Identität. Ich sah in den Spiegel und war von Grauen gepackt, denn ich erkannte mich selbst nicht.

I felt as though it had nothing to do with me; it was only a disguise. But it wasn’t the kind of disguise that a person would put on with the intention of hiding his identity from other people. My disguise was put on me without my consent or knowledge, like the costumes in fairy tales, and I was the one who was confused about my own identity. I looked in the mirror and was horrified that I didn’t recognize myself.

Last viewing: article/321/-der-amerikanische-freund

Title: Der amerikanische Freund (The American Friend)

Directed by: Wim Wenders

Screenplay by: Wim Wenders

Based on the novel: Ripley’s Game by Patricia Highsmith

Starring: Bruno Ganz, Dennis Hopper, Lisa Kreuzer, Gérard Blain, Nicholas Ray, Lou Castel, Samuel Fuller, Daniel Schmid, Peter Lilienthal, Jean Eustache, Andreas Dedecke

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