Mr. Raab is an ordinary drafting technician living a boring, routine life. He is married, has a kid, lives in an apartment and often endures long, accosted conversations with his mother-in-law when she drops by for visit. His life is uneventful: he goes to a store to ask for help in identifying a song he heard on the radio; his boss nags him; he and his wife are summoned in school because a teacher found their son lacking in concentration and comprehension skills; their neighbors drop by to chat. One evening, a woman drops by and talks loudly with Raab's wife. Raab cannot hear the TV from her and has to adjust the volume. Finally, Raab suddenly snaps, takes a candle holder and uses it to hit and kill the woman, his wife and their son. At work, the police discover Raab hanged himself in the toilet.
"Why does Mr. R. Run Amok?" stirred up quite a hype during its premiere by covering a dark topic of an ordinary everyman who seemingly leads a routine, average life until he suddenly snaps and goes on a killing spree, thereby contemplating about the ever unpredictable impulses of violence hiding in human subconsciousness, since they can resurface anywhere without warning. The movie was credited as being directed by both Michael Fengler and Rainer Werner Fassbinder, even though by some accounts Fassbinder spent only two days on the set, while an alternative source even claims that he didn't contribute to the film at all. Either way, it is a movie that is deceivingly static and quiet for 90 % of its time—except for the last 10 minutes in which the murders happen in the apartment, and thus this contrast between the peaceful and the violent creates a certain dose of anticipation, since the viewers know something bad is going to happen near the end.
The movie is filmed in long takes, with the camera "circling" to encompass a room, and there are only some 30 cuts in the entire film, thereby giving a sense of naturalism and an unbearably grey, uneventful routine. However, there are two problems with this concept. Firstly, these ordinary and boring dialogues are themselves ordinary and boring, and thus the viewers start losing interest after a while, since some richer director's intervention would have been welcomed. Secondly, the authors failed to give a sufficient motivation for Raab's action in the finale. While his life is indeed boring and lifeless, it is not enough to make his actions in the finale seem like a natural conclusion, and thus his "outburst" seems as if it came from a completely different movie. The only scene where his interior is explored is the one where his son reads a homework in which he observed a hawk in a Zoo, claiming the bird seemed "sad and trapped", while the camera lingers on Raab's face. Unfortunately, the story was not convincing in exploring the modern dysfunctional, destructive society since it failed to show a clear oppression, pressure or Raab's dream life that he would rather be in compared to the life he actually has. For example, in "Dead Poets Society", Neil studies to be a doctor, but his dream is to be an actor, and thus when his father forbids his dream, Neil commits suicide. Raab is nowhere as clear as Neil, and thus remains a rather vague character.
Grade:++
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