Shame and shamelessness in Oskar Roehler'sDie Unberührbare

Abstract

AbstractThis article makes the case that the life of Hanna Flanders, the protagonist of Oskar Roehler's filmDie Unberührbare(2000), is marked by a dialectic of shame and shamelessness that persists even into her death by suicide and indeed beyond it. Roehler based the film on the life of his mother, the writer Gisela Elsner, and he highlights the centrality of shame and shamelessness to his own enterprise—which could invite shame by publicizing the suicide of a family member but also risks shamelessly exploiting her death for financial gain—first, by maintaining a high level of ambiguity about how much of the film is true, and second, through an aesthetic approach that evokes both shame and shamelessness through a play of intimacy and distance. In doing so, he draws attention to the fact that the dialectic that characterizes his protagonist's life also shapes his film.