Highfalutin

“Do you know what a Liberal is? A Nazi without a spine!”, Volker Spengler once said. This story is told at one of the tables of Berlin’s Diener Tattersall, where the filmmakers have gathered several of the celebrated actor’s companions. Over the course of the film, these people – actors, directors, musicians, and leading figures of the film, performance and theater scene – tell anecdotes about Volker Spengler, reminiscing of their first encounters and embarrassing moments, their admiration and irritation. It remains unclear as to who is sitting with whom. The montage by and large creates a cinematic space of its own in which everyone can potentially talk to and listen to everyone else. This space always seems to exist a little outside of time, or indeed, in its own mythical between-time. Many memories linger on: the fact that he always smelled nice; his paradoxical potential to be very tender and yet massively rude; his uproarious, rasping laughter; that he was no liberal.

(Sixpackfilm)