Stroszek

Plot synopsis:
Just released from a jail term of 2 1/2 years in Berlin, Bruno Stroszek goes through all of the formalities of being released and is given back all of his personal belongings: one sweater, one shirt, a pair of pants, a pair of socks, an accordion, five packs of cigarettes, a bugle horn, a keychain and his passport. Back in his cell, he bids farewell to his cellmates and they exchange gifts. One makes for him the smallest paper ship in the world and the other sets his flatulence ablaze. He then meets with the warden, who asks him if he has a place to live now that he is free, to which Bruno replies that his apartment had been taken care of by his neighbour, Herr Scheitz. He is then asked whether or not he'll go back to consuming alcohol since all of his past offences had been alcohol-related and that if he were to be caught again for similar crimes, that he'd be locked away for a longer period of time. Bruno seems uninterested and is then recommended that he clean himself up and once again, to stay away from bars and alcohol. He finally promises and is subsequently released.During his walk home, he stops at a bar called 'Bier Himmel' (Beer Heaven) and orders a beer. As he walks to sit at a booth, he sees his friend Eva, a prostitute. He attempts greeting her but is told to leave her alone by her pimps who were there trying to extort money from a former client of Eva's. She then starts crying on one of the pimps, telling him she doesn't want to be with any other pimp. He stands up and slaps her across the face, to which Eva starts crying and walks away towards where Bruno is sitting. He tells her to sit with him and tries to reassure her that everything will be OK. Eva asks him where he had been, to which Bruno responded: 'vacation'. She is still distraught and asks herself 'what she's going to do' and 'where she's going to go', to which Bruno responds by telling her she can stay at his apartment and that they can both start new lives together.As she sets up her belongings, Bruno is playing his pianos to see if they are still in good condition after not being played for so long. His favorite piano is a black grand piano he calls 'Schwarze Freund' (black friend). They notice how the apartment is dirty and Eva says she'd take care of everything by earning money. Bruno's neighbour, Herr Scheitz, arrives with his minah bird he had been taking care of in his absence. He then tells Bruno and Eva of his plans to move to America and stay with his nephew - but by ship, since according to Scheitz, airplanes are not built correctly. In the next scene, Bruno goes back to his ritualistic ways of playing his accordion in an alleyway to an audience of mostly children. When he arrives at his apartment, he sees Eva's pimps waiting for him outside his door and leaves running the opposite way. He finds Eva at a restaurant with her pimps and is quickly kicked out. He retreats back to his apartment and talks to Scheitz about what is happening with Eva, when at that moment, the pimps are dragging her up the stairs and into the living room, dump trash on her and break one of Bruno's accordions. Bruno helps her get up and into bed.The next day, Bruno is out buying some fruits and sees that the pimps are watching him, from whom he instantly runs away. While playing his piano at home, the pimps walk in and start harassing him. Now himself being distraught from the constant trouble the pimps are making, he sees his doctor and asks him for advice since he can't defend himself. The doctor tells him he should start off by getting a steady job and then takes him to the premature baby ward in order to further explain the concept of life and its many unanswered questions. He used a premature baby to symbolize how he could barely survive on his own but had such strong grip reflexes although considered weak.Back at the apartment, Scheitz is waiting for him to arrive and shows him what the pimps had done to Eva, which was to once again physically abuse her. Bruno asks her if she wants him to call the police to report it only to be told no and how they need to escape the whole mess. They decide to go with Scheitz to America and finance the tickets/Visas by Eva earning more money by selling her body a few more times. Scheitz reports back to them and informs Bruno that he can work as a mechanic at his nephew's auto shop and that Eva can work at a nearby restaurant at a truck stop.They arrive in America and Bruno's bird Beo gets confiscated by customs, to which he asks Eva and Scheitz: What kind of country is this that they take away my Beo? After a little sightseeing in New York, they purchase a used car and drive out to Railroad Flats, Wisconsin. When they arrive, Scheitz's nephew, Clayton, greets them with a misspelled sign in German, saying: Welcome. Meet & Greet time is followed by picture-taking and they learn how Clayton was once stationed at the US Air Force base in Ramstein. They get a short tour of the town by Clayton and are then told by him about the mysterious disappearance of a farmer who drove out into the woods on his large tractor never to be found again. He claims the wreckage is probably underwater in one of the nearby lakes and periodically searches for it with a metal detector when they're frozen over.Once settled in, they learn about the situation between two farmers nearby that patrol a stretch of land labeled: no-mans land and are told to stay away since both carry rifles and could potentially start firing at each other at any moment. The pre-fabricated house they had ordered arrives and is fully furnished. Scheitz is then seen outside performing electro-magnetic experiments on a fence and then on 2 American hunters on the side of the road- in German- to which of course they don't understand. He then tells Bruno and Eva about his animal magnetism theory and performs his testing on their skin. In the next scene, they are all seen on and around a frozen lake with a metal detector in their search for the lost tractor.Realizing that theyre falling behind on paying all of their bills, Bruno and Eva discuss this, to which Eva tells Bruno not to worry because she could take care of everything. She accomplishes this by sleeping with truckers that stop by her work. Soon after, theyre visited by a bank representative who informs them of their lack of payments and the possibility of repossessions if they continue to not pay. Eva hands him a wad of cash and is asked by Bruno how she had made so much money in that little time. In the next scene, Bruno shows Eva a model/schematic of his state of mind (which appears to be wood or metal that is intertwined). He tells her how their goals in the US cant be reached because he saw America as an opportunity to get rich quick. He also points out that shes acting differently around him, primarily by not letting him sleep in the same bedroom, it feels like prison he says, like a cage. At work, Clayton is making sexually suggestive comments about Eva and Bruno says he was better off in Germany and that he shouldn't have come to America to watch his world fall apart.The next day, Eva is with some truckers once again as Bruno looks for her at the restaurant. Not being able to find her there, he then tries searching around where the trucks are parked. He finds Eva in a truck with 2 truckers and is told to leave because she was going to Vancouver with them. Drinking his sorrows away at home, Bruno is once again visited by the bank representative and is told that the bank has to repossess everything and signs the house away. Soon after, the bank rep and an auctioneer arrive at the house and auction it off. Scheitz claims it is all a conspiracy and goes to the bank the next day with Bruno and a shotgun. Because the bank was closed, they enter a door next to it which happened to be for a barber. They take all of his money, twenty-five dollars, and walk across the street to a market to buy food. Once inside, the police arrive and arrest Scheitz, leaving Bruno and a frozen turkey he had just bought. He then drives back to Claytons house and leaves with his tow-truck, the frozen turkey, some cans of beer, and the shotgun.He drives until an engine fire starts in the truck at a diner. Once there, he stops to get a coffee with his last $3 and tells an American businessman who can speak some German all about his troubles and is told by him not to worry. When he leaves, he puts the truck in drive and leaves it driving itself in circles outside of the restaurant, and takes his gun and frozen turkey across the street to what seems to be some sort of mini animal amusement park. Inside are coin-operated machines which feature animals performing different things like one chicken dancing, one playing a piano, and a rabbit fire truck rider. Bruno starts some of them with the last of his change and then goes to the back of the facility, which has a chairlift. He turns it on and rides up the side of the mountain. At the second ascent, the frame of the camera shifts up, not being able to see Bruno any longer. At that moment, a loud noise is heard which is unclear where it comes from.Its been said that the noise is either from the sound of his shotgun from his suicide or the tow-trucks engine exploding. At the end of the movie, police are on the street and are reporting back to their headquarters stating: We've got a truck on fire, can't find the switch to turn the ski lift off, and can't stop the dancing chicken. Send an electrician.

Tags: cult, psychedelic

Review:
(THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER) as a Berlin street singer (in a role where he basically plays himself), who joins with his prostitute girlfriend Eva (Eva Mattes) and ageing eccentric friend Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz) to embark on a memorable journey, leaving modern Berlin, for the golden opportunities of America.
Fascinating, unique look at the American dream follows three German social misfits (Bruno S., Eva Mattes, Clemens Scheitz) as they travel to Railroad Flats, Wisconsin to seek a better life.
The unfortunate protagonist of the film, played by longtime Herzog protégé Bruno S., leaves for America with his friends to escape a brutal and oppressive existence in Berlin.
Bruno and his companions are just innocent enough to believe the old legend that in America the streets are paved with gold.The running commentary that Herzog has recorded for the recent DVDs of his films are among the most interesting and engaging I've heard, and they're one of the reasons I especially appreciate the DVD medium.
Herzog always has one or two bits of indelible imagery in his films; in Stroszek, we have the premature babies and the dancing chicken.
All 3 of the German transplants are shown to be highly intelligent and cultured beyond the hellish railroad town they are plopped down into, and the obvious solution would have been for Bruno to seek employment as a musician, as he is very talented in that regard, but the dramatic arc of the story demands that he lose everything including Eva, and blame America and the insipid characters he is forced to deal with, and do something drastic, which he does.
It is just amazing, the character of that tiny infant, and shows Stroszek the fundamental power that he lacks, the tenacious nature of humanity to hold onto not only fellow human beings, but also to life itself.The coin-operated live animals in the end represent not only cruelty and lack of compassion, but the obsessiveness of the American pursuit of entertainment.
Herzog hits upon one of the greatest endings to any film attempting to sum up the character of the US: it takes place at a roadside carnival of sorts, that features the antics of trained animals, who dance and play the piano on command (not nearly as impressive as it sounds, just like America)..
The prostitute works as a waitress, but falls back to her old patterns and abandons Stroszek and the elderly German man they were living with.There are certain messages in this film, and a probably important one is that it's hard to run away from trouble.
Herzog is one of those film makers that only come along once in a very very long time, And of course you all know about the ending.
The move to America finds rifles growing like corn stalks, and one even takes root in our anti-hero's hands.The film feels rife with symbolism, but I wonder how much of that is a fact that Herzog himself is a magnet for fools' gold.
And whereas the musings of Bruno did not ring true for me, his homespun, junkyard music certainly did.6/10I look forward to seeing other Herzog films, but I'm starting to wonder if I (or you) should see them in any particular order.
Werner Herzog's Stroszek intrigued me because of the film's journey from Berlin to Wisconsin.
Indifferent truth.The only movie I've seen that portrays emptiness and indifference to an utterly devastating degree, I can see how Ian Curtis could've committed suicide after watching this film, and Bruno's brilliant performance doesn't help either.
It's one of the best performances ever and he's not even an actor.I believe this is the most honest and truthful film there is, not interested in making you sad or happy it just is, just like the real world, also it's one of the most unforgettable endings I've ever seen.The goddamn chicken will haunt me for the rest of my life, they will also remind me to live a spontaneous life, void of routine..
A man's uncle, and said uncle's two dearest friends, an alcoholic recently released from prison and an abused prostitute, has come from Germany to live and work along w/him in Wisconsin.
Watching it, I couldn't help but wonder if it was meant as a winking homage to his two most celebrated peers in what was, in the '70s, referred to as the "New German Cinema"- Rainer Fassbinder and Wim Wenders.The first section of the film, which takes place in urban Germany, is classic Herzog.
I do mostly, and therefore wasn't tempted to jump off a bridge at the end of this movie, but I don't know that I'd go as far as to say it's "riotously funny," as its marketing poster suggests."Stroszek" tells the fictional story of a real man named Bruno Stroszek.
In other words, Stroszek plays himself in this eccentric film about a man who's released from prison, meets back up with his girlfriend and elderly buddy, and takes off for the fabled lands of....Wisconsin....to pursue the American dream.
What follows is a series of vignettes that place Bruno in increasingly desperate straits and ends in an ambiguous finale that involves a ski lift and dancing chickens.Welcome to the world of Werner Herzog, folks.
This struggle forces them to leave Berlin and head towards America which leads to the prospect of having to overcome further barriers in the form of cultural traditions and of course above all, the language.'Stroszek' is widely regarded as one of Herzog's best films, however from a personal standpoint I have to admit that on this first viewing, I was left feeling a bit underwhelmed as I admired the film more than actually loving/liking it.
it's certainly his most humane picture and in casting non-actor Bruno S in the title role he gets so close to the feeling of raw truth we may as well be watching a picture of Bruno S's life, (something he also achieved in "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" where Bruno S's performance as Hauser totally transcended acting to become the character).
Herzog transports them from Germany to America where Stroszek gets a dead-end job in the garage of Scheitz's nephew and Eva becomes a waitress, (in Berlin she turned tricks to earn the money for their trip and doesn't appear too anxious to give up that line of work).Nothing conventional happens but seldom on film has the mundane existence of ordinary people seemed so fascinating, (and Herzog's use of non-actors throughout only enhances this feeling of reality).
His continual casting of actors like Bruno S and Klaus Kinski has lead to a kind of alienation though, in Herzog's case, madness, like beauty may be only in the eye of the beholder with Stroszek no more to be pitied than Cool Hand Luke.
They go in search of the American dream, but what they find is very different.STROSZEK perfectly encapsulates Herzog's world view that the natural order of things is chaos and destruction rather than peace and harmony.
With "Stroszek" Herzog made a film tailored even more around Bruno S.
In the end were all a dancing chickens, bass playing ducks, rabbits riding fire trucks, and broken ski lifts going in endless circles, and that's Herzog's imagery from the films final moments, not mine..
He didn't come to USA to start a new life but only to stay with Eva. American dream is as meaningless to him as all the people and language around him..
In Berlin, an alcoholic man (Bruno S.), recently released from prison, joins his elderly friend and a prostitute in a determined dream to leave Germany and seek a better life in Wisconsin.The film came to my attention because of its being filmed in Plainfield, Wisconsin.
In Werner Herzog's unique and powerful Stroszek, three German misfits - an eccentric old man, a prostitute, and a mentally challenged street performer recently released from an institution flee from their brutal Berlin surroundings to look for the holy grail in the dairy-lands of northern Wisconsin.
The strength of the film lies not in only in Herzog's visionary power but in the completely natural performances of a non-professional cast consisting of colorful locals and the strange Bruno S., a prostitute's son who spent 23 of his first 26 years in a mental institution.
"A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free." – Nikos Kazantzakis "Amerika ist wunderbar!" - RammsteinMany of the films which comprise "New German Cinema", a period in German cinema which lasted from the late 1960s to the mid 1980s, explored and attempted to come to terms with the cultural colonisation foisted upon Western Germany by America in the aftermath of WW2.Wim Wenders, Margarethe Trotta, Rainer Fassbiner and Werner Herzog were the big names in this movement, with films like "The American Friend", "Kings of the Road", "Storszek" and "Fear Eats the Soul".
But while Herzog's "Storszek" may have been thematically typical of the movement, it's a bit of an anomaly in Herzog's own filmography, whose films, at least at the time, tended to be set in the past and were often structured as allegories or medieval fables."Storszek" opens with a mentally unstable musician, Bruno Stroszek, being released from prison.
This character is modelled on the life of Bruno Schleinstein, the actor who actually plays Stroszek in the film.
Typical of Herzog's work, "Storszek" thus effortlessly blends fiction and documentary, Bruno, who always seems uncomfortable in front of Herzog's camera, "acting as himself" in a fictional story based loosely on his own life.Like most of Herzog's films, the tale is told via several symbolic episodes.
More symbols and symbolic subplots are then revealed: the story of a local murderer and body snatcher, the fact that Bruno's new hometown was the hometown of Ed Gein, warring farmers who fight over a thin strip of land, obsessions with metal detectors, a crazy old man's insistence that people are magnetic and that the dead emit magnetic fields, dangerous walks on frozen ponds, salty pretzels, mobile homes, a ski lift etc etc.End result: by the film's final act, "Storszek's" faux-documentarian edge completely gives way to a kind of overt surrealism.
Realizing that the American dream is the German reality, Bruno shoots himself, committing suicide off screen.The film's final shot is of a solitary chicken, trapped in a fun-house, dancing (automatically, seemingly without thought) in a cage and making a fool of itself for bird-seed.
Even though the movies tells a story set in America, it is a film about Bruno S.
Many films from the wave of German movies of which Herzog's work is part and example have a hard look.
In fact, I'd say the last twenty-five, thirty minutes of this picture are the funniest, and even in these minutes there's a sense of sorrow to what has happened with Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S., sort of as himself, I suppose, the line between fiction and fact is so blurry that it's the only way Herzog can get things done) and how his girlfriend (Eva Mattes) leaves him, and his best friend and neighbor gets arrested after armed robbery of a, uh, store in a basement next to a bank, I guess.But whatever weirdness and sort of everyday mundane qualities that go hand in hand with the film Stroszek are given a greater context.
Of course, Herzog could never be one to induce the silly physical comedy that makes up the bulk of Chaplin's films, but there is a similarity that struck me, and helped make me really care about what was going on with these characters- Herzog, for all his showing the ultimate follies, loves Stroszek, or at least does not try and show him off as being a complete waste of life.
Not that the form of documentary, more than anything, peeks its head into the work.There isn't much story to report, aside from the bulk of what I've already mentioned- Stroszek, Eva and their elderly neighbor escape from the harsh and cruel state of being they're at in Berlin (a brief but interesting commentary on Germany too), only to find in the small-town Wisconsin life not much more in line of prosperity.
And a lot of the time (David Lynch mentioned this in an interview as he started watching the film in the middle) it's like watching a documentary of these people, showing in all the ordinary working-class ways how they get stuck and any chance of the "American dream" gets squashed.
While Herzog himself claims it to be a metaphor for something he can't place, a friend mentioned that it could be capitalism, or the chicken as a representation of Bruno Stroszek, or of an American in general.
The screenplay is original and unpredictable like life is, with magnificent lines and Werner Herzog uses also amateurish cast leaded by Bruno Schleinstein from "The Enigma of Kaspar Hause", who is the unwanted son of a prostitute that spent a great part of his life in mental institutions due to the severe abuse and beaten; therefore, the actor has some problems indeed and the beginning of the film is very similar to his real life.
Like many people in films before they believe America will be the place of their dreams where Bruno can rise to fame with his musical talent and they can earn money.
It is a tragic film that really captures the hopelessness of dreams and shows the characters trapped in a world that doesn't measure up to their dreams, much like the dancing and instrument playing animals at the end.
"Stroszek" is a German movie from almost 40 years ago and the second collaboration between Werner Herzog and Bruno S.
After some violent trouble with a pair of pimps, Bruno, his girl (played by Eva Mattes, who got a German Film Award nomination for her turn) and a friend move to the United States of America.
But despite a promising start, life soon degenerates to even worse levels in their new home in rural Wisconsin and their American Dream soon turns into a nightmare.This film was directed by Werner Herzog and, as is usually the case, this ensures that it's a fascinating look at unusual people living on the fringes of society.
Eva Mattes, who also worked with Herzog in Woyzeck, plays his girlfriend and Clemens Scheitz rounds things off as his elderly neighbour; both of these actors are also very good.The story is about how the American Dream is a false hope for most.
Herzog in fact first went there to work on a documentary on Gein but ended up being inspired by the desolation of the place to make this film instead.
For example, the man who plays Scheitz's nephew is a mechanic who in real life had worked on Herzog's car some time ago.
Stroszek is a simple story about a seemingly simple man, who leaves for America with an abused prostitute and an elderly neighbour, in the hope of starting a new life away from the violent and antagonistic Berlin underbelly, that they'd previously been caught up in.
As with that film, Herzog is here able to anchor the images of the film to that same sense of sadness and awe that is so central to Bruno's inner character, as he watches each scene unfold with wide, childlike eyes, completely curious and overwhelmed by what is happening, though, simultaneously, wracked with pain.
Three bizarre Germans, Clemens, Bruno, and Eva, leave their homes in Berlin and take a cheap shot at the elusive and ever popular American dream only to find changing continents can not change who you are.
The town of Railroad Flats, Wisconsin, although we as an audience can see it is nothing special, is shot by Herzog as if seen through the eyes of Stroszek and his friends.
The ideas that Brakhage expresses are perfect for thinking about film, but Herzog proves that it does not work in reality because no matter how hard we try to imagine "the beginning of the world", it was simply too long ago for any of us to remember..
Of course, when Stan Brakhage wrote the above words in his article "Metaphors on Vision" (1963), Herzog had only made one short film and was a long way off from making "Stroszek".
Herzog seems to ask the question: "what would happen if someone saw the world the way Brakhage described, but then was gradually overcome by the 'real' way the world is seen?"       The story concerns Stroszek and his two friends Eva and Scheitz.
Stroszek is one of the best films about the American Dream ever made, which is odd because a German made it.
That's probably because Herzog cast non actors to play the American roles and shot on location in Wisconsin.
Bruno cooperates rather well by going with whatever the pimps want.After Eva is brutally beaten it is decided that they all will go and start a new life in Wisconsin where Clemens' son lives.
However the ambiguity of this is brilliant, for it has made for one of the most fascinating and unique viewing experiences of my life.The only other Herzog I have seen up to this point is Fitzcarraldo, a great film with quirky, offbeat characters, an engaging story and jaw dropping cinematography.
From director Werner Herzog (Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man), I confess that I do not remember much of this German film at all, not even watching all of it, but I know I did see it because it is in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Basically Berlin street performer Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S.) has been warned to stop drinking after being released from prison, but he immediately goes to a bar, where he meets prostitute Eva (Eva Mattes), who he comforts as she is down on her luck, and later he ends up beaten up by the pimps.
Bruno and Eva decide to escape any more harassment from these people by escaping from Germany by moving to Wisconsin, America, and live with his American nephew Clayton (Clayton Szalpinski), so they start their journey, stopping off to do sight seeing in New York City.