Brothers, Let Us Be Merry

As part of the 2006 Mozart Year, 28 Austrian filmmakers, including Ulrich Seidl, were commissioned to create a minute-long film featuring Mozart's music. Seidl decided on the slaves' chorus from Zaide: "Brothers, let us be merry and bravely defy adversity" rings out while two dimly-lit men give themselves over to purposeless pleasure. They masturbate mechanically and monotonously. Paper towels stand ready next to them, as if waiting for consummation, the climax. Nietzsche claimed that all pleasure seeks to be eternal; Brothers, Let Us Be Merry depicts the hangover left by this unfulfilled utopia.