Summaries

Synopsis

The film begins with footage of Germanys reunification celebration in front of the Reichstag, with no soundtrack but fireworks and an ominously tolling bell. Soon, a politicians speech begins, followed by the enormous crowd singing Germanys national anthem.After this point, the film cuts to a short set of credits, followed by a shot of a pickup truck driving by a woman who has lost the lower half of her body and is singing. The date is given as October 3rd. A series of titles explains that many East Germans left the former East after reunification, and that Today many of them live unrecognized among us. 4% never arrived. The films subtitle is The First Hour of Reunification.Now, the scene shifts to an apartment in Leipzig belonging to Clara (Karina Fallenstein), with more television footage of jubilant crowds. Claras husband (Susanne Bredehöft) comes home, announces that he has been given a job in the West, and asks Clara to have sex with him. After urinating in the bathtub, he tells her to get rid of that guy, presumably her West German boyfriend Artur (Artur Albrecht). As Claras husband gets undressed, he notices the corpse of a dog on the bed, and Clara stabs him in slow motion. Clara then vomits in the bathtub and removes a wig, revealing her natural hair.Clara then drives to the West, where she meets a group of unemployed former border guards who stop her to question her. Two of the guards have extremely exaggerated accents, and one leaps on the hood of Claras car, repeatedly yelling, We are the people! but Clara proceeds to drive off.More television footage of a large crowd follows, then the film cuts to a gas station, where Clara has stopped to call Artur. The attendant, Kurti (Reinald Schnell) offers Clara sausages, but she declines. While Clara is on the phone, a man in a mask is seen at the window, but the attendant frightens him off.Artur and Clara meet at a bizarre, barren industrial landscape, and Artur almost immediately tries to have sex with Clara and continues his attempts despite Claras objections. During this process, Hank (Volker Spengler), a man in a Wehrmacht helmet with sausages attached to it, is seen observing the interaction, and then, in another slow-motion shot, he is shown bashing Arturs head with a stone. Clara runs to a passing car for help, but the drivers refuse to recognize the severity of the matter or to stop. Clara finally wards off the helmet-man by cutting his hand with a knife. Are you crazy?! he yells with a lisp.Seeking help, Clara drives to a motel, and then CCTV footage shows first a meat-packing facility and then a man following a woman in a locker room, shouting Stasi pig! Stasi pig! When Clara arrives at the hotel, the proprietress, Brigitte (Brigitte Kausch) refuses to let her make a phone call, since Clara is not a registered guest. At this point, the vaguely vampiric Margit (Susanne Bredehöft) is introduced as well.The motel clans patriarch, Alfred (Alfred Edel), is then shown having a conversation with an unseen Father, whose voice Alfred provides. In the meat-packing facility, the driver of the car seen earlier, Dietrich (Dietrich Kuhlbrodt), is seen assisting Alfred and Brigitte in putting a human corpse into a tub of water. Meanwhile, Margit calls and wishes to retrieve Artur. Another conversation with the Father follows, and the father is shown in a wheelchair and wearing a Wehrmacht helmet. The Father commands the clan to retrieve Artur.Margit, in the meantime, has brought Clara into a basement where Margit wraps chains around her own neck and makes animal noises. Margit kisses Clara, crawls off barking like a dog, and leaves the basement to join the other clan members in their convertible. While left alone in the basement, Clara has a dream about the clan, all of which are either masked or in face paint. One wears a fascist-looking military uniform. A voiceover notes the importance of avoiding destabilizing behavior.In the next scene, Margit is shown chewing gleefully on intestines while the other clam members seek her, calling her an old dyke. Artur, however, is nowhere to be found, so the clan returns home, singing an out-of-key patriotic song. On the way, they encounter an East German couple driving along, and the clan runs them off the road while shouting Welcome! and then asking, How much do you weigh?! The East German woman gets out of the car to apologize for offending them, but the clan grabs hold of the woman. Alfred holds a knife to the womans throat and yells, This heres the free market, got it? He then masks the womans husband, and Margit strikes his head with a metal pole.Clara, meanwhile, escapes from the basement now wearing facepaint and encounters the sausage-helmeted man once again. This time, he holds her gently, kisses her, and brings her inside to show her something. They kiss again, and the film cuts to Dietrich chasing the screaming East German woman with a chainsaw. She yells, But we are one people! before she is killed. The rest of the clan then takes turns smashing the womans husbands head with poles. While doing so, they say, In a time when everything is possible, it is unimportant whether something is good or bad. Hank and Clara smoke what is presumably a post-coital cigarette, when Hank suddenly attacks her. Clara tears off his testicles.A bloodied Artur is then shown at the same gas station that Clara stopped at, but the attendant, Kurti, does not help him. Artur wanders into a meat closet, and Kurti suddenly begins chasing him with a sparking chainsaw, eventually disemboweling him. Kurti then loads Arturs body into a truck as Johnny (Udo Kier) arrives and begins singing Hey Big Spender. Johnny then pours liquor on his head and lights it on fire, dancing and singing, Johnnys burning! until Kurti puts the fire out. Then, a laughing Johnny chops off his own hand with a meat cleaver.Artur wakes up in the bed of the pickup, and Johnny makes the sign of the cross and then draws the peace symbol using the blood from his wrist. Johnny and Kurti run out the door of the gas station, though, once they realize that Artur has driven off in the pickup truck.Back home, the clan brings the bodies of the East German couple into the cellar. Meanwhile, Margit enters her trailer home, followed shortly thereafter by Clara, who, while apparently having sex with Margit, seeks information about Artur. The clan, upstairs, complains about having to listen to Margits sexual noises. Clara is then shown stabbing Margit in the buttocks with a kitchen knife, apparently killing her, which brings the clan running outside to mask her and smash her head with a board. In the chaos, Clara disappears and is revealed, by the camera, to be hiding under Margits trailer.Artur drives the pickup truck back to the motel, yelling Claras name. Brigitte runs out to greet him, thinking he is Kurti, but Artur hits her with the truck, severing her lower body. The interstitial title The Revenge follows.Brigitte then appears to die, and Kurti blames Dietrich. Kurti then accuses Dietrich of having committed incest with his sister, but Alfred, who is revealed as Dietrichs brother-in-law, repeats, In a time when everything is possible, it is unimportant whether something is good or bad.The next shot shows that Brigitte has not in fact died, and she yells out, Whose child is Johnny? and Kurti confirms that Johnny is the result of incest between Alfred and Margit, his daughter. So what? Alfred says. Were happy. And Father gave us his blessing. Kurti grabs Alfred, but then turns around, tells Dietrich to kneel, which he does, penitently, while Kurti cuts his head in half with a chainsaw.Alfred decides to consult the Father about the events at hand, and the Wehrmacht helmeted Father is revealed to be a skeletal corpse. Meanwhile, Clara is looking for Artur when she sees presumably the same CCTV footage as before, now shown to be live, of the Stasi pig! couple (the male member is Johnny), with whom she speaks via microphone, asking for help. Artur then bursts in the door, but Clara flees, and Artur chases her through an as of yet unseen wing of the meat-packing facility. Hank then appears to disembowels Artur, who still manages to live.Hank then drags Clara to the Fathers room, where Alfred also is, and Alfred reveals Hank to be Brigittes illegitimate child. Clara runs off, pursued by Hank, leaving Alfred and the Father behind. Clara leaps onto the back of a passing pickup truck and escapes, but when she looks into the window of the cab, she sees that the passengers are Alfred and the Father, and the driver Artur. The films final shot is the halved Brigitte singing an out-of-tune rendition of the German national anthem.