Nekromantik 2
Encyclopedia
NEKRomantik 2 is 1991 German horror
/splatter film
directed by Jörg Buttgereit
and a sequel of his 1987 film Nekromantik
. The film is about necrophilia
, and was quite controversial and was seized by authorities in Munich 12 days after its release, an action that had no precedent in Germany since the Nazi era. Today, it is regarded as a cult classic.
) heads to his as of yet unspecified job, and the film then cuts back to a scene of Monika undressing Rob. Mark’s job is thereupon revealed to be dubbing porn films, and this scene foreshadows the next, in which Monika has sex with Rob’s corpse. A fourth character, Betty (Beatrice Manowski), is then briefly introduced as she discovers, to her disappointment, that Rob’s grave has already been robbed.
Once Monika has cleaned Rob's corpse, she takes photos with him using her camera’s self-timer. Mark, meanwhile, makes plans to meet a friend (Simone Spörl) at the movies. Mark’s friend, however, is late, and Mark offers his ticket instead to Monika, who happens to be passing by. Monika and Mark hit it off and soon go on a carnival date, after which point Monika decides to break up with Rob, by sawing him into pieces and putting him into garbage bags, saving just his head and genitals. When Mark spends the night at Monika’s, though, Mark discovers Rob’s genitals in Monika’s refrigerator, and this discovery, combined with Monika’s desire to photograph Mark in positions that make him appear dead, plants doubts in his mind about the relationship. Consequently, Mark consults first his perennially tardy friend and then a drunk in a bar regarding his relationship with the perverse Monika.
Soon thereafter, Monika and her fellow necrophiliac friends have a movie night – the film depicts the dissection of a seal – at Monika’s apartment when Mark comes over with a porn video to watch with Monika (whose friends take an immediate dislike to Mark and leave). When Mark insistently asks what Monika and her friends had been doing, she reluctantly shows him the seal video, which disgusts Mark, who says it’s perverse to watch such a thing for fun, leading to a quarrel. The couple later speak on the phone and makes plans to meet at Monika’s and discuss the matter. In the meantime, Monika makes a trip to the ocean, where she contemplates what course of action to take. When Mark arrives the next day, they have make-up sex, during which Monika severs Mark’s head and replaces it with Rob’s decapitated head. In addition, Monika is finally shown climaxing, which suggests that she has chosen the correct lover. Finally, in the last scene, a doctor congratulates Monika on her pregnancy.
Furthermore, although he is commenting on the soundtrack to the original Nekromantik, Christian Keßler's observations about that film's soundtrack resonate in the context of the second film as well: "The excellent soundtrack by Lorenz, Hermann Kopp, and John Boy Walton accentuates this [Rob's unusual, charnel domestic circumstances] with a romantic leitmotif composed for a single piano that makes the gruesome environment seem like a protective case, shielding Robert from the reality that so torments him."
Though speaking of the first Nekromantik, in which a "beer-guzzling, oompah-listening fat-man" accidentally kills a man picking apples, Linnie Blake's comments are also relevant to Nekromantik 2 when she writes, "As Buttgereit makes clear, then, it is neither Rob nor Betty [the protagonists of the first Nekromantik] who has transformed the young apple-picker into a corpse. This has been accomplished by an ostensibly morally upstanding member of society who subsequently disappears from view, unpunished for his crimes. Buttgereit's mission, it seems, is to embrace that corpse, and in so doing to raise the question originally posed by Alexander Mitscherlich, Director of the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, as to why the collapse of the Third Reich had not provoked the reaction of conscience-stricken remorse one might logically expect; why, in Thomas Elsaesser's words, 'instead of confronting this past, Germans preferred to bury it'.
Horror film
Horror films seek to elicit a negative emotional reaction from viewers by playing on the audience's most primal fears. They often feature scenes that startle the viewer through the means of macabre and the supernatural, thus frequently overlapping with the fantasy and science fiction genres...
/splatter film
Splatter film
A splatter film or gore film is a subgenre of horror film that deliberately focuses on graphic portrayals of gore and graphic violence. These films, through the use of special effects and excessive blood and guts, tend to display an overt interest in the vulnerability of the human body and the...
directed by Jörg Buttgereit
Jörg Buttgereit
Jörg Buttgereit is a German writer/director known for his controversial films. He was born in Berlin, Germany and has lived there for his entire life.He is maybe best known for his 1987 film Nekromantik....
and a sequel of his 1987 film Nekromantik
Nekromantik
NEKRomantik is a 1987 West German horror film directed by Jörg Buttgereit. This frequently controversial movie, banned in a number of countries, has become a cult film over the years due to its transgressive subject matter and audacious imagery...
. The film is about necrophilia
Necrophilia
Necrophilia, also called thanatophilia or necrolagnia, is the sexual attraction to corpses,It is classified as a paraphilia by the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of the American Psychiatric Association. The word is artificially derived from the ancient Greek words: νεκρός and φιλία...
, and was quite controversial and was seized by authorities in Munich 12 days after its release, an action that had no precedent in Germany since the Nazi era. Today, it is regarded as a cult classic.
Plot
The film opens with the sexualized suicide of Rob (Daktari Lorenz), a.k.a. Robert, whose corpse Monika (Monika M.) retrieves from a church’s graveyard after the opening credits. Monika apparently evades notice while carrying Rob’s corpse into her apartment, where she unwraps him from his body bag. Meanwhile, Mark (Mark ReederMark Reeder
Mark Reeder grew up in Manchester, England. He is a musician and record producer. At a young age, Reeder became interested in progressive rock and especially early electronic music. In his teens, he worked in a small Virgin Records store in Manchester city centre.Reeder has been living and working...
) heads to his as of yet unspecified job, and the film then cuts back to a scene of Monika undressing Rob. Mark’s job is thereupon revealed to be dubbing porn films, and this scene foreshadows the next, in which Monika has sex with Rob’s corpse. A fourth character, Betty (Beatrice Manowski), is then briefly introduced as she discovers, to her disappointment, that Rob’s grave has already been robbed.
Once Monika has cleaned Rob's corpse, she takes photos with him using her camera’s self-timer. Mark, meanwhile, makes plans to meet a friend (Simone Spörl) at the movies. Mark’s friend, however, is late, and Mark offers his ticket instead to Monika, who happens to be passing by. Monika and Mark hit it off and soon go on a carnival date, after which point Monika decides to break up with Rob, by sawing him into pieces and putting him into garbage bags, saving just his head and genitals. When Mark spends the night at Monika’s, though, Mark discovers Rob’s genitals in Monika’s refrigerator, and this discovery, combined with Monika’s desire to photograph Mark in positions that make him appear dead, plants doubts in his mind about the relationship. Consequently, Mark consults first his perennially tardy friend and then a drunk in a bar regarding his relationship with the perverse Monika.
Soon thereafter, Monika and her fellow necrophiliac friends have a movie night – the film depicts the dissection of a seal – at Monika’s apartment when Mark comes over with a porn video to watch with Monika (whose friends take an immediate dislike to Mark and leave). When Mark insistently asks what Monika and her friends had been doing, she reluctantly shows him the seal video, which disgusts Mark, who says it’s perverse to watch such a thing for fun, leading to a quarrel. The couple later speak on the phone and makes plans to meet at Monika’s and discuss the matter. In the meantime, Monika makes a trip to the ocean, where she contemplates what course of action to take. When Mark arrives the next day, they have make-up sex, during which Monika severs Mark’s head and replaces it with Rob’s decapitated head. In addition, Monika is finally shown climaxing, which suggests that she has chosen the correct lover. Finally, in the last scene, a doctor congratulates Monika on her pregnancy.
Soundtrack
The soundtrack, by Hermann Kopp, Daktari Lorenz, John Boy Walton, and Peter Kowalski, is neither ironic nor campy, but rather is intended to generate genuine emotional response. The serious intent of the film in general is made clear in an interview in which Buttgereit discusses an audition in which actors performed the love scene with Rob's corpse: "Though they were all quite willing, none of them took it as seriously as we did."Furthermore, although he is commenting on the soundtrack to the original Nekromantik, Christian Keßler's observations about that film's soundtrack resonate in the context of the second film as well: "The excellent soundtrack by Lorenz, Hermann Kopp, and John Boy Walton accentuates this [Rob's unusual, charnel domestic circumstances] with a romantic leitmotif composed for a single piano that makes the gruesome environment seem like a protective case, shielding Robert from the reality that so torments him."
Critical response
"Jörg Buttgereit is the only person in Germany who manages to dedicate himself to these darkest of subjects with this much charm," writes critic Christian Keßler. Though some accuse the Nekromantik films of being "little more than 'disappointingly witless' and 'morbidly titillating' attempts 'to disgust the most jaded conceivable audience', these movies are not only more thematically complex and technically sophisticated than is popularly supposed, but share a set of artistic and ideological concerns more usually associated with the canonic authors of the Young German Cinema and the New German Cinema of the turbulent years of the 1960s and 1970s."Though speaking of the first Nekromantik, in which a "beer-guzzling, oompah-listening fat-man" accidentally kills a man picking apples, Linnie Blake's comments are also relevant to Nekromantik 2 when she writes, "As Buttgereit makes clear, then, it is neither Rob nor Betty [the protagonists of the first Nekromantik] who has transformed the young apple-picker into a corpse. This has been accomplished by an ostensibly morally upstanding member of society who subsequently disappears from view, unpunished for his crimes. Buttgereit's mission, it seems, is to embrace that corpse, and in so doing to raise the question originally posed by Alexander Mitscherlich, Director of the Sigmund Freud Institute in Frankfurt, as to why the collapse of the Third Reich had not provoked the reaction of conscience-stricken remorse one might logically expect; why, in Thomas Elsaesser's words, 'instead of confronting this past, Germans preferred to bury it'.