A Specific scene

  The last poor performance of the magician and Rath was a result of Lola’s dominance on Emmanuel in the movie. Once on scene Rath could not perform because he was more focus on how other men were talking to his wife Lola. His jealously made him speechless and crazy. Moreover, Rath did not care about the audience and the magician even frightened him to break his neck. At certain point the ex-teacher could not take the pressure anymore and decided to walk away from the scene because he saw a man who was kissing his wife. He attacked his wife and the man and Lola almost got killed. People rushed downstairs to save Lola from a catastrophe. Ruth was chained and put in a little room like a prisoner. Rath was later on freed by the magician decided to leave the cabaret for the school where he was a teacher. Ruth was found dead a moment later.

  The interpretation that I can give to this particular scene of the movie is that the pressure that the teacher got from Lola is similar to the oppression that Germans received from their government during the two world wars. Ruth who did not want to perform or do anything could be assimilated to a Nihilist attitude. The teacher looked lost and nothing made sense to him at that moment. Freud was right by saying that an individual attitude is a result of a social pressure. Ruth could not handle this kind of life because he came from a middle class that had different values. For instance a wife should be respectful and loyal to her husband. But it was not in Lola’s case because she was from another group of the society that allows certain behaviors in life. For example it was normal for Lola to have more than one man at the same time. The opposite values could not help Rath’s marriage as well. The life in the cabaret was a mess because it was a place where most men of that town were going to find a woman who could fulfill their sexual needs. In counterpart this activity was a source revenue for women that worked in the cabaret. In addition, when the teacher fled from the cabaret to the school was one of symbols for Nihilism. We can refer this act to “le voyage dans la lune”. Rath left his middle class society once he got fired for the cabaret thinking that he could have a better life with Lola. However, he had to run away from the cabaret to his old world like these people who went to discover the moon had to run for their lives also.