Anselm (2023) Movie Script
1
The Women of Antiquity
Octavia, Poppaea, Julia Maesa ...
We may be the nameless
and forgotten ones,
but we don't forget a thing.
Uriel...
Gabriel and ...
Raphael.
And there is Michael.
Ladybird fly home,
your father is at war,
your mother is in Pomerania,
Pomerania has all burnt down,
so sleep, baby, sleep.
BAD CHILDREN'S CELL
For P.C. and M.H.
Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger.
Templum,
that means: language
the House of Being.
1 spilled the night out of a pot,
it wasn't night in there enough
for Paul Celan
Wolf's-bean' by Paul Celan
You flowers of Germany,
oh, my heart becomes
crystal incorruptible,
in which light tests itself.
Lock the door.
There are roses in the house.
There are seven roses in the house.
In the Ukraine,
where they murdered
my father and mother:
what flowers were there?
What flower, Mother,
hurt you there with its name?
You, Mother, who said 'wolf's-bean',
not 'lupine'.
Mother, whose hand did I clasp
as I went with your words to Germany?
Mother, murderers live there.
Mother, they're silent.
Mother, they're writing poems.
Mother,
no one silences the murderers!
How difficult
it must have been for Paul Celan,
a jewish poet, to have to
write in the German language!
After all, both mother and father
fell victim to the Holocaust.
Death-Fugue
Black milk of dawn
we drink you evenings
we drink you at noon and on mornings
we drink you at night
we drink and we drink
we dig a grave in the winds
where one lies at ease
A man lives in the house
who plays with the snakes
who writes
who writes when it darkens
to Germany
your golden hair Margarete
he writes it and steps
in front of his house
and the stars glisten
and he whistles his dogs to come
he whistles his jews to appear
lets a grave be dug in the earth
He shouts stab deeper
into the earth you there
you others
play on for the dance
he grabs the gun in his belt
he draws it his eyes are blue
stab deeper your spades there
you others play on for the dance
Black milk of dawn
we drink you at night
we drink you at noon and on mornings,
we drink you evenings
we drink you and drink
aman lives in the house
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamit
he plays with the snakes
He calls out play death more sweetly
death is a master from Germany
he calls
scrape those fiddles more darkly
then as smoke you'll rise in the air
then you'll have a grave in the clouds
there one lies at ease
Black milk of dawn
we drink you at night
we drink you at noon
death is a master from Germany
we drink you evenings and mornings
we drink and we drink
death is a master from Deutschland
his eye is blue
he strikes you with lead bullets
his aim is true
aman lives in the house
your golden hair Margarete
he sets his dogs on us
he gifts us a grave in the air
he plays with the snakes
and he dreams
death is a master from Germany
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamit
This is the Martin Heidegger book.
Here you see
the brain of Martin Heidegger
in my attic in Hornbach,
and these are
all poisonous mushrooms
which then cause a cancer
to grow in the brain.
Now there is already
a slight darkening,
and here you see
how the cancer is spreading.
It becomes bigger,
almost taking over half the brain.
And now the cancer is all over.
Heidegger,
I could have even met in person,
when I was studying in Freiburg.
He taught there at the same time.
Paul Celan met with him once,
in the mid-60s,
in his remote cabin
in the Black Forest.
What did he expect from the visit
with the German thinker?
Some explanation
of his Nazi past?
Into the guest book, Celan wrote:
In the cabin book,
with a view of the fountain star
and a hope in the heart
for a word to come
25 July 1967.
But such a word never came.
Nothing but silence
from the great philosopher.
Nothing about his errors.
The whole of society was silent then,
all failed to grasp the unimaginable.
I myself lived among people
who had all been around
and didn't want to talk about it.
Now we try this one.
Let's take off the fern,
the big one at least.
This one we bring to the front.
Ludwig, across like that.
Wiestaw, alcohol...
Ok, good.
Careful.
At the bottom!
SKY...PAINTING...EARTH
Dear Josef Beuys,
Thank you
for your quick reply to my letter.
I'm glad you agreed
to look at my paintings.
I'll soon be on my way
from the Odenwald
to you in Diisseldorf...
Joseph Beuys,
at the Dusseldorf Academy,
had many
subsequently successful students.
As early as 1972, he wanted to
save the forest with them.
Here, with the young Anselm Kiefer,
whom he quickly made
a master student.
Mr. Kiefer, you live
deep in the Odenwald,
far from the hectic pace
of everyday life.
Is this a better way to work,
a kind of retreat?
I live here because I need
the landscape for my work.
I work with the landscape.
Of course, it's also beneficial
that it's peaceful here,
and that I have few disruptions.
I can occupy a big house
which would be
more difficult in the city.
At the Biennale Anselm Kiefer
is representing
the artistic position of the FRG.
This choice is
a big misunderstanding.
The museum director maybe thought
he had found another Neue Wilde',
as the German
neo-expressionists are called.
But with his history slander,
that isn't what Anselm Kiefer is.
At most he is a new reactionary.
Ways of World Wisdom'
is written on a giant woodcut.
And what are these ways called?
Kiefer's German nationalist answer:
The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest".
Grabbe is surely not suspected
to be a German nationalist
or a chauvinist.
Yes, but the subject was so strongly
utilised by the Nazis...
- Yes, totally abused.
But that's just why,
because I was born in 1945,
I have the chance to take up
this subject again.
There's no use in suppressing it,
just because the Nazis abused it.
POPPY AND MEMORY
This is beautiful,
Ludwig! It's getting there!
BED MEMORY
Herr Kiefer, a little lower?
Lower, so it doesn't splash so much.
But I want it to splash, at first.
America has a new superstar:
Anselm Kiefer.
The start of his retrospective
in Chicago
was celebrated
as the art event of the year.
An international Kiefer symposium
simply added to the success
in Los Angeles.
The MoMA in New York
will now bestow the greatest honors.
85 paintings, books and drawings
are included in the show.
Palette with Wings', 1985,
a symbol of liberation
alluding to the greek figure of Icarus,
and Wieland the Smith,
the dangerous mage
of Norwegian legend.
A hall of honour modelled on
prominent Nazi architecture
such as the Reich Chancellery
by Albert Speer.
While Kiefer pushes a painful
boundary for his fellow Germans,
foreigners welcome him
as a bold taboo breaker.
It is perhaps easier to completely
surrender to the spell of his art,
than to observe it with detachment.
With Kiefer, in a most shocking way,
landscape painting is possible again.
"You can't just paint a landscape when
tanks have driven through it", he says.
Now!
I remember, almost 20 years ago,
I was disturbed
by a performance
which you called Occupations'.
You performed the Nazi salute
on European sites.
What was that about?
Was it just a provocation?
BETWEEN SUMMER
AND AUTUMN 1969,
I OCCUPIED SWITZERLAND,
FRANCE AND ITALY.
A FEW PHOTOS:
It wasn't a provocation,
at least it wasn't meant to be.
Not a provocation
just for the sake of it.
I did what I thought
was absolutely necessary at the time.
In hindsight, I think
this act was very important.
It was during a time, 1968/69,
when the whole subject of
World War Il,
fascism, the Third-Reich
was not addressed at all.
In school, we had it for three weeks
and that was it.
At this time,
it was very important
to bring this all back into memory
and work on it.
I held a mirror up to everyone's face.
"The Argonauts were
the most famous Greek heroes.
Jason called them together
to accompany him
on his great journey.
To do so,
he had the fastest boat built
to ever sail the seas:
The Argos, equipped with 50 oars.
With this ship
and his friends" help
he wanted to bring the Golden Fleece
back home from the end of the world.
Like a god,
Jason strode across the field of Ares,
took the dragon's teeth
from his helmet
and sowed them in the furrows.
And the Argonauts watched
from the end of the field
as behind Jason
a whole army of warriors
arose from the ground.
Art and mythology
are different forms of recognition.
Myth provides answers
to the questions
of where we come from,
where we are going,
what we are.
You are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
Over your cities grass will grow.
The greatest myth
is the human race itself.
Lilith...
has always preoccupied me.
In Jewish mythology,
she was Adam's first wife,
like Adam,
created from the dust of the earth.
She felt equal to him and did not see
why she should be inferior to him,
or lie beneath him.
The first marriage dispute
was already a myth.
Lilith has been demonized ever since.
She's said to have fled
from the Garden of Eden,
a restless demon of vengeance,
threatening women in childbirth.
She's said to rob men of their semen,
in order to conceive
her demonic children.
Nothing but horror stories from men,
trying to discredit her...
To some like a winged demon
of war and destruction,
to others,
the patron goddess of a world
from which the sacred has retreated.
Petrified fighter planes
exhibited at Berlin's
Neue Nationalgalerie
are among Kiefer's
most striking works.
Frighteningly relevant at the time
of the second Gulf War in 1990/91.
The history or the wars
that are happening nowadays,
are impossible
to understand by rational means.
Such absurd
and impossible things happen there,
no one can grasp them
with pure logic or reason.
The Nationalgalerie in Berlin,
has opened one of this season's
most stunning exhibitions with Kiefer.
On his latest trip to America,
Kiefer was distinguished as
most important
contemporary artist'.
The world Kiefer shows
isn't perfect
with its morbid landscapes
and environments.
A master of subtle irritation.
He produces large format myths.
You were accused of
your way of dealing with history,
now you are accused of
escaping into myth.
How do you feel
about this contradiction?
There's no such thing as
escaping into the myth'.
Because the myth is present.
Myths represent another way
of understanding history,
beyond the simply rational.
FOR PAUL CELAN:
SECRETS OF THE FERN
Everyone who falls has wings.
The Morgenthau Plan
Anselm, time's up!
Thank you, Auntie Jung.
With pencil and sketchbook,
but most of all with good ideas,
Anselm Kiefer from Rastatt
has received an important award:
the Jean Walter Prize.
It is the first time for
a German graduate to receive it.
Anselm Kiefer wanted to follow
the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh
Starting in the Dutch city of Arnheim.
Anselm Kiefer suggested
this study trip
to CIS, the school organisation.
Many send applications,
only a few are accepted.
Anselm Kiefer was among them.
He followed van Gogh's life
to Arles in the south of France.
Since 1962 Rastatt High School
is part of the organisation CIS
and could therefore present
it's first applicant, Anselm Kiefer,
who carried out this journey
in the summer of 1963,
and has now, for being
the best central European applicant,
received the Jean Walter Prize.
Anselm Kiefer returned with
over 300 drawings.
These show his painterly talent.
People search for lightness,
because they shy away from burdens,
the abyss.
Fundamentally,
they don't want to see it.
That's why this lightness exists.
If you take a look at the entire
history of the world,
the geological, cosmological history,
then what we are
is not even a drop in the rain.
We're less than a drop,
we are an atom.
Then you can obviously say:
"We are very light'.
The unbearable lightness of being...
Being is an absolute part of Nothing.
Or you could also say
that Nothing is part of Being.
They are tied together,
there is always a simultaneity,
no chronology.
That's reassuring, of course,
because if you plan something big,
then you know that failure
is already part of it.
A dead person am I,
who wanders
no longer registered
anywhere.
Unknown in the prefect's realm,
superfluous in the golden cities
and the verdant country,
dismissed long ago
and bequeathed nothing
but wind,
and time and sound.
1, who cannot live among people.
1, with the German language.
This cloud around me
which I keep as my house,
drift through all languages.
Oh, how it darkens,
those dark ones,
those rain sounds
only a few fall
In brighter zones
it then carries the dead up.
I don't feel like
I have arrived at all.
Actually, I sill feel
... banished.
Banished, and...
not really on the run,
but always on the way.
I can't stop it.
At the long tables of time
the tankards of God are carousing...
"At the long tables of time
the tankards of God are carousing...
They guzzle the eyes of the seeing
and the eyes of the blind,
the hearts of the ruling shadows,
the hollow cheek of evening.
They are the mightiest of boozers:
they raise to their lips the empty
as well as the full
and don't spill over like you
orl
Childhood is an empty space
like the beginning of the world.
The Women of Antiquity
Octavia, Poppaea, Julia Maesa ...
We may be the nameless
and forgotten ones,
but we don't forget a thing.
Uriel...
Gabriel and ...
Raphael.
And there is Michael.
Ladybird fly home,
your father is at war,
your mother is in Pomerania,
Pomerania has all burnt down,
so sleep, baby, sleep.
BAD CHILDREN'S CELL
For P.C. and M.H.
Paul Celan and Martin Heidegger.
Templum,
that means: language
the House of Being.
1 spilled the night out of a pot,
it wasn't night in there enough
for Paul Celan
Wolf's-bean' by Paul Celan
You flowers of Germany,
oh, my heart becomes
crystal incorruptible,
in which light tests itself.
Lock the door.
There are roses in the house.
There are seven roses in the house.
In the Ukraine,
where they murdered
my father and mother:
what flowers were there?
What flower, Mother,
hurt you there with its name?
You, Mother, who said 'wolf's-bean',
not 'lupine'.
Mother, whose hand did I clasp
as I went with your words to Germany?
Mother, murderers live there.
Mother, they're silent.
Mother, they're writing poems.
Mother,
no one silences the murderers!
How difficult
it must have been for Paul Celan,
a jewish poet, to have to
write in the German language!
After all, both mother and father
fell victim to the Holocaust.
Death-Fugue
Black milk of dawn
we drink you evenings
we drink you at noon and on mornings
we drink you at night
we drink and we drink
we dig a grave in the winds
where one lies at ease
A man lives in the house
who plays with the snakes
who writes
who writes when it darkens
to Germany
your golden hair Margarete
he writes it and steps
in front of his house
and the stars glisten
and he whistles his dogs to come
he whistles his jews to appear
lets a grave be dug in the earth
He shouts stab deeper
into the earth you there
you others
play on for the dance
he grabs the gun in his belt
he draws it his eyes are blue
stab deeper your spades there
you others play on for the dance
Black milk of dawn
we drink you at night
we drink you at noon and on mornings,
we drink you evenings
we drink you and drink
aman lives in the house
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamit
he plays with the snakes
He calls out play death more sweetly
death is a master from Germany
he calls
scrape those fiddles more darkly
then as smoke you'll rise in the air
then you'll have a grave in the clouds
there one lies at ease
Black milk of dawn
we drink you at night
we drink you at noon
death is a master from Germany
we drink you evenings and mornings
we drink and we drink
death is a master from Deutschland
his eye is blue
he strikes you with lead bullets
his aim is true
aman lives in the house
your golden hair Margarete
he sets his dogs on us
he gifts us a grave in the air
he plays with the snakes
and he dreams
death is a master from Germany
your golden hair Margarete
your ashen hair Shulamit
This is the Martin Heidegger book.
Here you see
the brain of Martin Heidegger
in my attic in Hornbach,
and these are
all poisonous mushrooms
which then cause a cancer
to grow in the brain.
Now there is already
a slight darkening,
and here you see
how the cancer is spreading.
It becomes bigger,
almost taking over half the brain.
And now the cancer is all over.
Heidegger,
I could have even met in person,
when I was studying in Freiburg.
He taught there at the same time.
Paul Celan met with him once,
in the mid-60s,
in his remote cabin
in the Black Forest.
What did he expect from the visit
with the German thinker?
Some explanation
of his Nazi past?
Into the guest book, Celan wrote:
In the cabin book,
with a view of the fountain star
and a hope in the heart
for a word to come
25 July 1967.
But such a word never came.
Nothing but silence
from the great philosopher.
Nothing about his errors.
The whole of society was silent then,
all failed to grasp the unimaginable.
I myself lived among people
who had all been around
and didn't want to talk about it.
Now we try this one.
Let's take off the fern,
the big one at least.
This one we bring to the front.
Ludwig, across like that.
Wiestaw, alcohol...
Ok, good.
Careful.
At the bottom!
SKY...PAINTING...EARTH
Dear Josef Beuys,
Thank you
for your quick reply to my letter.
I'm glad you agreed
to look at my paintings.
I'll soon be on my way
from the Odenwald
to you in Diisseldorf...
Joseph Beuys,
at the Dusseldorf Academy,
had many
subsequently successful students.
As early as 1972, he wanted to
save the forest with them.
Here, with the young Anselm Kiefer,
whom he quickly made
a master student.
Mr. Kiefer, you live
deep in the Odenwald,
far from the hectic pace
of everyday life.
Is this a better way to work,
a kind of retreat?
I live here because I need
the landscape for my work.
I work with the landscape.
Of course, it's also beneficial
that it's peaceful here,
and that I have few disruptions.
I can occupy a big house
which would be
more difficult in the city.
At the Biennale Anselm Kiefer
is representing
the artistic position of the FRG.
This choice is
a big misunderstanding.
The museum director maybe thought
he had found another Neue Wilde',
as the German
neo-expressionists are called.
But with his history slander,
that isn't what Anselm Kiefer is.
At most he is a new reactionary.
Ways of World Wisdom'
is written on a giant woodcut.
And what are these ways called?
Kiefer's German nationalist answer:
The Battle of the Teutoburg Forest".
Grabbe is surely not suspected
to be a German nationalist
or a chauvinist.
Yes, but the subject was so strongly
utilised by the Nazis...
- Yes, totally abused.
But that's just why,
because I was born in 1945,
I have the chance to take up
this subject again.
There's no use in suppressing it,
just because the Nazis abused it.
POPPY AND MEMORY
This is beautiful,
Ludwig! It's getting there!
BED MEMORY
Herr Kiefer, a little lower?
Lower, so it doesn't splash so much.
But I want it to splash, at first.
America has a new superstar:
Anselm Kiefer.
The start of his retrospective
in Chicago
was celebrated
as the art event of the year.
An international Kiefer symposium
simply added to the success
in Los Angeles.
The MoMA in New York
will now bestow the greatest honors.
85 paintings, books and drawings
are included in the show.
Palette with Wings', 1985,
a symbol of liberation
alluding to the greek figure of Icarus,
and Wieland the Smith,
the dangerous mage
of Norwegian legend.
A hall of honour modelled on
prominent Nazi architecture
such as the Reich Chancellery
by Albert Speer.
While Kiefer pushes a painful
boundary for his fellow Germans,
foreigners welcome him
as a bold taboo breaker.
It is perhaps easier to completely
surrender to the spell of his art,
than to observe it with detachment.
With Kiefer, in a most shocking way,
landscape painting is possible again.
"You can't just paint a landscape when
tanks have driven through it", he says.
Now!
I remember, almost 20 years ago,
I was disturbed
by a performance
which you called Occupations'.
You performed the Nazi salute
on European sites.
What was that about?
Was it just a provocation?
BETWEEN SUMMER
AND AUTUMN 1969,
I OCCUPIED SWITZERLAND,
FRANCE AND ITALY.
A FEW PHOTOS:
It wasn't a provocation,
at least it wasn't meant to be.
Not a provocation
just for the sake of it.
I did what I thought
was absolutely necessary at the time.
In hindsight, I think
this act was very important.
It was during a time, 1968/69,
when the whole subject of
World War Il,
fascism, the Third-Reich
was not addressed at all.
In school, we had it for three weeks
and that was it.
At this time,
it was very important
to bring this all back into memory
and work on it.
I held a mirror up to everyone's face.
"The Argonauts were
the most famous Greek heroes.
Jason called them together
to accompany him
on his great journey.
To do so,
he had the fastest boat built
to ever sail the seas:
The Argos, equipped with 50 oars.
With this ship
and his friends" help
he wanted to bring the Golden Fleece
back home from the end of the world.
Like a god,
Jason strode across the field of Ares,
took the dragon's teeth
from his helmet
and sowed them in the furrows.
And the Argonauts watched
from the end of the field
as behind Jason
a whole army of warriors
arose from the ground.
Art and mythology
are different forms of recognition.
Myth provides answers
to the questions
of where we come from,
where we are going,
what we are.
You are dust,
and to dust you shall return.
Over your cities grass will grow.
The greatest myth
is the human race itself.
Lilith...
has always preoccupied me.
In Jewish mythology,
she was Adam's first wife,
like Adam,
created from the dust of the earth.
She felt equal to him and did not see
why she should be inferior to him,
or lie beneath him.
The first marriage dispute
was already a myth.
Lilith has been demonized ever since.
She's said to have fled
from the Garden of Eden,
a restless demon of vengeance,
threatening women in childbirth.
She's said to rob men of their semen,
in order to conceive
her demonic children.
Nothing but horror stories from men,
trying to discredit her...
To some like a winged demon
of war and destruction,
to others,
the patron goddess of a world
from which the sacred has retreated.
Petrified fighter planes
exhibited at Berlin's
Neue Nationalgalerie
are among Kiefer's
most striking works.
Frighteningly relevant at the time
of the second Gulf War in 1990/91.
The history or the wars
that are happening nowadays,
are impossible
to understand by rational means.
Such absurd
and impossible things happen there,
no one can grasp them
with pure logic or reason.
The Nationalgalerie in Berlin,
has opened one of this season's
most stunning exhibitions with Kiefer.
On his latest trip to America,
Kiefer was distinguished as
most important
contemporary artist'.
The world Kiefer shows
isn't perfect
with its morbid landscapes
and environments.
A master of subtle irritation.
He produces large format myths.
You were accused of
your way of dealing with history,
now you are accused of
escaping into myth.
How do you feel
about this contradiction?
There's no such thing as
escaping into the myth'.
Because the myth is present.
Myths represent another way
of understanding history,
beyond the simply rational.
FOR PAUL CELAN:
SECRETS OF THE FERN
Everyone who falls has wings.
The Morgenthau Plan
Anselm, time's up!
Thank you, Auntie Jung.
With pencil and sketchbook,
but most of all with good ideas,
Anselm Kiefer from Rastatt
has received an important award:
the Jean Walter Prize.
It is the first time for
a German graduate to receive it.
Anselm Kiefer wanted to follow
the footsteps of Vincent van Gogh
Starting in the Dutch city of Arnheim.
Anselm Kiefer suggested
this study trip
to CIS, the school organisation.
Many send applications,
only a few are accepted.
Anselm Kiefer was among them.
He followed van Gogh's life
to Arles in the south of France.
Since 1962 Rastatt High School
is part of the organisation CIS
and could therefore present
it's first applicant, Anselm Kiefer,
who carried out this journey
in the summer of 1963,
and has now, for being
the best central European applicant,
received the Jean Walter Prize.
Anselm Kiefer returned with
over 300 drawings.
These show his painterly talent.
People search for lightness,
because they shy away from burdens,
the abyss.
Fundamentally,
they don't want to see it.
That's why this lightness exists.
If you take a look at the entire
history of the world,
the geological, cosmological history,
then what we are
is not even a drop in the rain.
We're less than a drop,
we are an atom.
Then you can obviously say:
"We are very light'.
The unbearable lightness of being...
Being is an absolute part of Nothing.
Or you could also say
that Nothing is part of Being.
They are tied together,
there is always a simultaneity,
no chronology.
That's reassuring, of course,
because if you plan something big,
then you know that failure
is already part of it.
A dead person am I,
who wanders
no longer registered
anywhere.
Unknown in the prefect's realm,
superfluous in the golden cities
and the verdant country,
dismissed long ago
and bequeathed nothing
but wind,
and time and sound.
1, who cannot live among people.
1, with the German language.
This cloud around me
which I keep as my house,
drift through all languages.
Oh, how it darkens,
those dark ones,
those rain sounds
only a few fall
In brighter zones
it then carries the dead up.
I don't feel like
I have arrived at all.
Actually, I sill feel
... banished.
Banished, and...
not really on the run,
but always on the way.
I can't stop it.
At the long tables of time
the tankards of God are carousing...
"At the long tables of time
the tankards of God are carousing...
They guzzle the eyes of the seeing
and the eyes of the blind,
the hearts of the ruling shadows,
the hollow cheek of evening.
They are the mightiest of boozers:
they raise to their lips the empty
as well as the full
and don't spill over like you
orl
Childhood is an empty space
like the beginning of the world.