Fabian: Going to the Dogs

""Fabian oder Der Gang vor die Hunde" is a German melodrama set in the 1930s during the Weimar Republic, providing an incredibly detailed historical context. The main character is Fabian, a young bohemian who spends his nights searching for a freedom that is slowly being extinguished by the rise of Nazism. The film functions as an intense character study, and the relationships that surround him. Fabian has conflicting views, and his hypocrisy condemns him and pushes him into psychological prisons, bringing chaos and anguish to his life. He falls in love with an actress and, as her career begins to take off, the protagonist is increasingly overwhelmed by his insecurities and repressed morality. The aesthetic model of the film is loaded with irony and visual sarcasm, subverting the roots of a genre historically based on formality, and inserting into it a personality that reflects the character in a cohesive way. A great work of contemporary German cinema, and an excellent historical and social portrait."