Händler der vier Jahreszeiten

I didn't find this film as accessible as 'Fox & his Friends' but it was a moving portrayal of a typical Fassbinder victim figure, the eponymous barrow-boy, Hans Epp, whose hopes and dreams are eventually crushed by stultifying conformity (family & society). Some of the scenes are exaggerated (the family confrontations) but I particularly liked the sequence where Hans is desperately searching for meaning & comfort; he tries to find some peace in natural surroundings, goes back to his first lost love in order to recapture past feelings (she's only interested in a quick fling before her husband returns) and visits his sister, perhaps the only person who has any degree of sympathy for him, only to find she's too busy with work.

A poignant story of a vulnerable inarticulate man crushed by his mundane surroundings and bourgeoise, middle-class German values obsessed with economic success and a upward mobility that conveniently papers over the cracks of its more disturbing past.