Mother Kusters Goes to Heaven

This film constitutes perhaps Fassbinder's most politically coherent film. Mother Kusters is an aging housewife who receives news that her husband for many years has just murdered his boss at the factory and then killed himself. The film seems to be about a couple of things: the way that various organizations attempt to explain these kinds of actions through their jobs (the media claims that he was tyrant at home -- a violent man waiting to snap; the communists claim that he was a heroic revolutionary fighting back at those would seek to exploit him after years of capitalist oppression), and the way that people and organizations opportunistically use tragedies to further their own ends. Mother Kusters is a slightly naive woman (like many Fassbinder protagonists) who, at first, merely wants to clear her husbands name. The media hounds them, her daughter uses the publicity to start a second rate singing career, a reporter uses it to write a sensationalistic story, the communist party uses it promote their agenda and bring Mother Kusters into the party. Fassbinder, it seems, is clearly fighting explotiation from all sides. It's one of his best, and in some ways, one of his saddest films.