The Thinking Machine #61

In their series The Thinking Machine, critics Cristina Álvarez López and Adrian Martin create a new video essay for Filmkrant every month.

Werner Schroeter’s extraordinary The Rose King (1986) – shot while his beloved superstar Magdalena Montezuma was dying of cancer – is a richly poetic film that intertwines three characters (one woman and two men, each with their own desires moving at cross-purposes) in a queer web of multiple iconographies, mythical references, and cultural (especially musical) associations. Every new image echoes, reverses, extends and complicates many others. A rearranged montage can aid in finding our way through this semantic wonderland.