Stroszek (1977)

Director: Werner Herzog

Born in Munich in 1942, Werner Herzog is a German director, documentarian, screenwriter and actor. He is considered as one of the most influential directors inside the Arthouse cinemasphere. Herzog grew up inside a divided and devastated Germany, which was slowly recovering from World War II. People of his generation reached maturity during the 60s, and most of them started a great wave of protests and riots that reached a prominent peak in 1968.

Herzog’s generation was frustrated because West Germany struggled very hard to be in good terms with its past. The protestors were leftist, but they also distrusted the authoritarian communism that was spreading on the other side of the Berlin Wall. The famous “Frankfurt School” was an incentive that inspired the protestors. The school had its bases in the theories of modern Marxism. The protests became increasingly violent with a wave of RAF-terrorism striking over the country, but they were gradually decreasing. However, the turmoil and rage of West Germany crafted the movement known as New German Cinema.

Directors such as Wim Wenders, Volker Schlöndorff and Rainer Werner Fassbinder were making very complex and deeply personal films. This movement criticized, analyzed and discussed many of the problems of contemporary Germany. Herzog’s cinema eluded every expectation, although he also criticized some problems of German society, his films have a different nature.

In order to recognize a Herzog film, the first sign is the bizarre personality of its main characters. The Herzogian anti-hero lives immersed in his own universe, and he is usually an absolute loner. His protagonists have a serene calm on the outside, which is often crushed by an uncontrollable storm happening on the inside. This rage usually explodes in the most unexpected and bizarre ways.

Stroszek (1977) is unique, one of the oddest and most fascinating films of all time. The audience is unable to decipher the plot twists or anticipate the ending. The story of Bruno Schleinstein (who plays himself inside the film under the name “Bruno Stroszek”) is the main plot that enhances the psychological background of the film. Herzog met Bruno Schleinstein while doing a documentary on street musicians, and was fascinated with his performance. He casted him for the film The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974). Bruno was uncannily right for the role, and even more so for Stroszek, which Herzog wrote in four days.

Bruno Schleinstein was the illegitimate son of a prostitute, he suffered severe physical abuse throughout his life. Just three years old, he went to a children’s home and spent the next 23 years in reformatories and mental health institutions, and yet was not mentally ill according to Herzog- the blows and indifferences of life had shaped him into a man of intense concentration, tunnel vision, and narrow social skills.

Stroszek begins with the introduction of Bruno Stroszek, an alcoholic that just got out of prison. As soon as this happens, Bruno goes out to explore the streets of Berlin and quickly enters a bar. There he meets Eva (Eva Mattes), a prostitute who is constantly mistreated by her pimp.

Bruno offers her shelter in his apartment, which has been protected by the peculiar old man Mr. Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz). Soon, Mr. Scheitz announces to Eva and Bruno that his nephew has invited him to live at Rainroad Floats, Wisconsin, USA. Driven by the idea, Bruno decides that a new life must begin. Things seem to get better; Eva raises money through prostitution to pay for the trip. Later, the three are living prosperously on a mobile home in Wisconsin.

Herzog and the American documentarian Errol Morris had become fascinated by the story of the serial killer Ed Gein, who dug up all of the corpses in a circle around his mother’s grave. That’s why they decided to film in Gein’s hometown in Plainfield, Wisconsin.

The three outcasts in Stroszek share the same desire of finding a ‘promised land’, easy opportunities and fortune. Initially, they experience an ephemeral happiness there, a balm for the crudeness that dominated their lives in Berlin. Bruno finds a job as a mechanic and Eva as a waitress in a fast-food restaurant. However, ‘the promised land’ and the American Dream will vanish very soon when difficulties, obstacles and problems start to get in the way.

The main theme of Stroszek is human exploitation, and the different ways in which it imposes on people. Herzog makes a brilliant discernment about how human beings succumb to different forms of exploitation in order to survive (economical, governmental, artistical and sexual). On the other hand, Stroszek works as a pseudo-biography of Bruno Schleinstein. According to many reports, the real Bruno Schleinstein suffered many physical abuses during most of his life, executed by his mother and the various people in charge of him during his detention in multiple psychiatric institutions during the Third Reich. Bruno Schleinstein is not acting in the film, he is his natural self and projecting an extremely disturbing sincerity on screen.

The final minutes of the film involve a burning truck, a frozen turkey, a ski lift and a dancing chicken; all these insane metaphors are up to massive interpretations. Herzog once said: “Look into the eyes of a chicken and you will see real stupidity. It is a kind of bottomless stupidity, a fiendish stupidity. They are the most horrifying, cannibalistic and nightmarish creatures in the world.”

Stroszek is beauty, humor, cruelty and human devastation; a totally original psychological trip, away from all kinds of conventions or preconceived ideas. If you did not know him, welcome to the universe of Mr. Werner Herzog. It is an enigmatic and complex place, in which we are partakers of brilliant eccentricity and fiction.

Finally, in Herzog’s words:
“You must live life in its very elementary forms. The Mexicans have a very nice word for it: pura vida. It doesn’t mean just purity of life, but the raw, stark-naked quality of life. And that’s what makes young people more into a filmmaker than academia. ”

by Octavio Carbajal Gonzalez