Thursday 27 November 2014
Werner Herzog | USA, 1977 | 103 mins | Cert 15
This fascinating portrayal of alienation in an increasingly hostile world is on many film critics ‘must see’ lists. Herzog skillfully depicts the pathos of everyday survival in this brilliant tragicomedy, which is enhanced by the casting of mainly local people.
After Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S.), a Berlin street performer, is released from prison he befriends Eva (Eva Mattes), a prostitute down on her luck. Bruno, who is living back in his old apartment in the slums of Berlin, asks Eva to move in with him. The two misfits are regularly harassed and humiliated by Eva’s former pimps, so they decide to leave Germany with Bruno’s eccentric elderly neighbour Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz), in a move to Wisconsin. Instead of finding the American Dream the trio encounters life in the ‘bleak flatlands of poor white America’ where their stories unfold.
Herzog was inspired by the personal history of Bruno S. who was the son of a prostitute. As a result of suffering severe physical abuse Bruno S. was placed in a mental institution at the age of three until he was twenty-six. However, Herzog did not consider him to be mentally ill; it was more that the blows and indifference of life had shaped him into an extremely vulnerable individual; someone who always expected the worst to happen.
This bleakly funny film is an example of extraordinary seventies German filmmaking, that must have the most bizarre ending in cinema history. Mesmerising!