Friday, January 23, 2009

Stroszek

I'm really going to try to keep this about the film. One thing I'm finding out about Herzog is that the story behind the making of his movies can be nearly as interesting as the movies themselves.

If you've been talking movies with me this year, you might know I'm on a Werner Herzog kick. I've been chipping away at his canon and I can't wait to get into some of his more obscure films. I think I'll write a little bit about what i'm thinking of Herzog in a bit, but let's go over this film.

Although this is a story about an alcoholic, a prostitute, and an old man coming to Wisconson to make it in America. I thought that a perspective of these characters brought America into a view that I don't get as someone who has been living here all my life. there was the mix of wonderment of the size as well as the emptiness of the struggle it takes to make it here 9or anywhere, this is a human type story).

that being said Herzog has a great eye for the bizzare. He loves eccentric people, and the strange things that we do. He also loves to see how far a person has to be pushed by their envioroment before they lose their mind. Bruno, the main character, is a sad guy to watch. The final twenty minutes of the movie, he is the opposite of heroic desperation (think Dog Day Afternoon), and he is just insanely desperate.

All that aside, I wasn't as engaged with this movie as I was with Aguirre or Fitzcarraldo. The ending is worth the wait however. I didn't even know the things he recorded even exsisted, let alone in Indian Resevations.

I think the thing that really moves me about Werner Herzog's movies are his stubbornness to shoot what is interesting instead of what is "correct." Also even in his highly produced movies (something like Rescue Dawn), there is this strong documentary feel. Ironically his documentaries feel like they are produced.

i can't wait to throw another Herzog movie on the list. He hasn't failed me yet.

2 comments:

  1. ok...reading about the movie.

    The star of the movie was beaten so severly as a child that he was in a mental institution from 3 - 26.

    All the locals in Wisconson were non-actors and actual locals. The town they shot in was the hometown of Ed Gein, the serial killer that inspired movies like 'Psycho' and 'Texas Chainsaw Massacre.'

    The reason he was in the town was because Herzog and Errol Morris were going to shoot a documentary about digging up the bodies that Ed Gein buried. Morris never showed up and Bruno was going to be off so Herzog wrote the script in four days.

    Herzog's crew was so disturbed by the final sequence that he shot it himself.

    Herzog rocks.

    ReplyDelete
  2. i thought you didn't like GRIZZLY MAN

    ReplyDelete

Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.