How can anyone even begin to like this film is really beyond me.<br /><br />The idea? It has none. "A guy fell apart". That's the idea. Wow. An environment was slowly killing him... now THAT's original and worth watching.<br /><br />This is the first Fasbinder's film I've seen... I've heard that he's a genius of mise-en-scene, but I've seen student films with more attention, inspiration, idea, and craft than this... this.... this nothing. It has nothing!<br /><br />Each and every shot is too long. There's so much emptiness in them... The acting's horrible. You can see the actors had no preparation at all, no understanding of their roles, not even an attempt at showing emotions... it's so... superficial... The lines are so explicative that you could removed 90% of them and still have the same crappy film. Tempo? Who cares about it. Atmosphere, dynamics, that's for pussies! One shot per scene, 80% of the time people staring unrealistically, having no idea how to represent emotions and importance of the moment besides hollow staring at the camera or one another... EDiting? All rules of editing have been disregarded with no pa pay-off of any kind... Photography? Half of the shots have reflection in them, and crappy lighting with no stylization of any kind. Shadows, play of shadows... who needs that? We need a guy pissing, drinking, hitting his wife like he's... like he's acting. We need a bunch of close ups of a not-so-beautiful woman... we need an amateurish climax of his capture by an unconvincing arabian torturer... This film has so much wrongs that it isn't worth the no-budget it had.<br /><br />Frankly, I haven't seen a film this bad since American Pie 5. Yup. That bad.<br /><br />I've just started watching his "Veronica Foss" movie, which seems much better, based on the first 15 minutes (since it does have a hint of directing and artistic idea, unlike this crap), so I won't argue that Fasbinder's clueless.... but this.... this film SUCKS!