A Pep Talk from Rainer Fassbinder
In Rainer Fassbinder’s film, Despair, based on the Nabokov novel of the same name, the main character witnesses the fascists terrorizing his town’s Jewish population. The Nazis are smashing windows and people are running, clutching their grocery bags to their chests. Intercut with these images is a shot of the main character, Hermann Karlovich, in the act of almost mailing a letter. He stands facing an old fashion public mailbox out on the sidewalk, the windows being broken nearby. Hermann lifts his hand to deposit the letter into the mail slot, but stops short. He holds his hand right on the precipice of action.
Fassbinder intercuts these images with a specific purpose, I believe. We are made to feel—or at any rate I was made to feel—that mailing the letter stood in for or represented the irreversible aspect of acting, of taking action. If he mails that letter he won’t be able to take it back. When you make a decision or when you take an action, the universe bifurcates. What you do becomes reality and actuality, whereas what you might have done, could have done but did not do, becomes a path too but only a possible path, one not actually taken.
Mailing the letter or actually not mailing the letter stands in for taking action against the Nazis or actually not taking any action against the Nazis. The scene of these intercut images ends with Hermann still poised on the precipice of action. The Nazis continue to break windows and start arresting the Jewish shopkeepers. Hermann is stock-still. He does not mail the letter, nor does he not not mail the letter. The scene fades to black.