The Right Way

Der Rechte Weg/The Right Way 1983
Dir. Peter Fischli and David Weiss

Best known for their chain reaction sculpture film "The Way Things Go" , we must admit to greatly preferring another facet of the film career of art stars Peter Fischli and David Weiss -- namely that in which, over the course of two films, this and the inferior "Point of Least Resistance," they follow two men dressed as a Bear and a Rat through vaguely allegorical narratives.



A man in a bear costume wanders through the wilderness; he claims he can call down lighting and thunder. He meets a rat, who lives with his goat and claims he can speak to roots. They visit a cave, which the rat calls a giant root, and in which there may be the eggs of unborn animals. They agree it's a forbidden place.



Soon they are swept away, over a water fall, and lost in the wilderness.



They quarrel; have a falling out. They make friends with a pig and butcher it; the rat vomits violently after. There are strains of mordant humor; they save a turtle which has fallen on it's back, congratulating themselves for their kindness. Soon they pass a bleached skull; "we're too late for that one," they say.

Eventually the film reaches a kind of close, and the two animals discover music , together.



Questions of partnership and the creative act run through the whole work; the sense of counterpoint between the landscapes and the human/inhuman figures is the most overwhelming aspect. We admire this film for many reasons, but most specifically, we admire that it picks such a clear, transparent premise, and sticks with it through a series of variations, always trusting the native sense of fascination within that choice. An hour of a bear and a rat walking through the wilderness may sound long, and the film may seem long at times; its strength may be found in the fact that, if we were told that the film nonetheless repeated itself in one thousand and one installments of similar material, we would not be surprised in the slightest.