Despair

A movie based on a Nabokov novel and directed by Fassbinder strikes me as one of the stranger collaborations possible for either of the two. Nabokov is the writer, who, more than perhaps any other artist ever, considered any art worthy of the name the solitary endeavor of an isolated genius. Fassbinder's method, dictatorial as it may have been, is collaborative in the extreme, and it's hard to see how he would have accomplished anything without creating an environment charged with power dynamics that were often quite simply destructive. Despair works surprisingly well, although its exceedingly slow pace probably won't work for most viewers. Despair's place in Nabokov's oeuvre isn't as well fixed as Lolita, or even a Russian masterpiece such as The Gift, but it is (in my opinion) a very good novel that harbingers certain aspects of Lolita, such as the allure of solipsism, split personality, and murder. Not to mention loneliness and, of course, despair. The film's place in Fassbinder's total output isn't very well fixed, either. It has the odd distinction (with 1982's Querelle) of having been filmed in English, the script having been written by Tom Stoppard. The acting by Dirk Bogarde and some of the regulars from Fassbinder's troupe all do a fine job, and the sets are wonderfully lush. Visually the film fits right in with others made during this period, such as The Stationmaster's Wife. Which is to say it looks very good indeed: shots of water dripping on eggshells, images doubled in a pane of etched glass, and the repetition of the action in a gangster movie within the movie as the plot reaches its climax all make for a complex creation in which the anxiety and distress (and definitely the boredom) can be felt even when the story becomes hard to follow. I think it's worth following.