Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 12/07/17

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Thursday, December 7, 2017

Stroszek (Werner Herzog, 1977)

Clemens Scheitz and Bruno S. in Stroszek

Bruno Stroszek: Bruno S.
Eva: Eva Mattes
Scheitz: Clemens Scheitz
Pimp: Wilhelm von Homburg
Pimp: Burkhard Driest
Mechanic: Clayton Szalpinski
Indian: Ely Rodriguez
Warden: Alfred Edel
Scott: Scott McKain
Auctioneer: Ralph Wade
Doctor: Vaclav Volta

Director: Werner Herzog
Screenplay: Werner Herzog
Cinematography: Thomas Mauch
Film editing: Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus
Music: Chet Atkins, Sonny Terry

Stroszek is Franz Kafka meets Mark Twain. Or maybe it's Alice in Wonderland if Alice had been a middle-aged ex-con with a history of institutionalization for mental illness. Or it's The Wizard of Oz with Stroszek/Dorothy accompanied by a prostitute and an elderly man instead of a scarecrow and a tin man. Or Stroszek is Don Quixote, or any other wandering naïf of myth and literature. Those analogues give the adventures of Bruno Stroszek the resonance they need to rise above the gritty absurdity of what happens in Werner Herzog's film. In any case, it's a film that's more than what some would reduce it to: a satire on the American dream. To be sure, Stroszek and Eva and Scheitz set out for Wisconsin certain that America will offer something better than the bleakness of lower-class Berlin. Scheitz has a nephew there who owns a garage and can offer a job to Stroszek while Eva can leave her abusive pimps -- who also torment Stroszek and Scheitz -- and get a job as a waitress. And for a while all is well, except for the language barrier and Stroszek's companions' belief that they can get a mobile home and a color TV on credit without making payments. As a consequence, Scheitz goes to jail and Eva, resuming her old life, this time as a truck-stop hooker, goes to Vancouver. Stroszek ends up literally going in circles, the tow truck he has stolen madly chasing its tail in a parking lot until it explodes while Stroszek rides a ski lift around and around, up and down the hillside, and a dancing chicken in a "roadside attraction" continues its mindless scratching. Herzog's real forte is documentary, and his precise and even witty choice of locations, plus his ability to employ real people instead of actors -- and to make them remain real instead of just amateurs reading lines -- gives Stroszek its grounding, even as the film's narrative goes wildly loopy. It's a film of richly strange and strangely rich details.