Der Angriff der Gegenwart auf die übrige Zeit

In Der Angriff der Gegenwart auf die übrige Zeit (The Attack of the Present on the Rest of Time), Alexander Kluge paints a sharp portrait of the Federal Republic of Germany in the 1980s – a society under the spell of efficiency, speed and economic thinking. At the centre is young Angela, who tries to assert herself in a world where feelings and history are supplanted by the logic of the market. Kluge combines elements of feature film with documentary and essayistic passages to create a dense reflection on time, experience and progress. With irony and melancholy, the film shows how the ‘now’ threatens to engulf everything else – and how memory becomes a form of resistance. (C.S.)