Word: herzog
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Aguirre: The Wrath of God. Many people don't like this Werner Herzog film, which is based on the true story of Aguirre the Madman, a mutinous conquistador who led an expeditionary force down the Amazon River on a disastrous search for gold and glory. Critics complain that Herzog treats his subjects too mechanically, and that the film is visually stunning but thematically vacuous. But such criticism misses the point: Herzog's relentlessly realistic re-enactment of the trip--of the assumption of power by a ruthless brute who rapidly develop into a raving megalomamac and whose subordinates lack either...
Stroszek. The latest film bearing the stamp of the trendy German director, Werner Herzog, is an appropriate exhibit of what happens when the filmmaker pours his innards into the camera and lets the script slide. This would-be saga abouty three losers who flee the slums of Berlin for the promise of America delivers some startling imagery all right, but the story's fascination with the daily trampling of a society's outcasts serves precious little creative purpose. Witnessing the humiliation and coldness meted out to whores and alcoholics does not do your head much good, and the gratuitous...
...Werner Herzog serves as a textbook example of this Teutonic "New Wave." His work demands a special kind of viewer, a sensibility that can accommodate the warped and the damned souls of this world. His 1972 film Aguirre: The Wrath of God suggested Herzog's affinity for dwelling on the sordid side of things; watching a demented Spanish conquistador in search of his El Dorado foam at the mouth for the better part of 90 minutes, one could sense a sublimated sadism at work in the movie...
...whereas Aguirre could be dismissed as the flawed effort of a young filmmaker who had seen one too many Bergman films for his own good, no such allowances can be or should be made for Stroszek. Five years of reflection and presumed growth have taken Herzog a painfully short distance, and this exercise in depression and squalor has mired Herr Werner still deeper in the quicksand of the art film syndrome. Stroszek is an aimless film about aimless people, society's losers who spend their lives groping for a promised dream that goes unfulfilled. Set in the slums of Berlin...
SETTING ASIDE an evening to endure this sort of film sounds bad enough in theory; the reality is even worse. Herzog does not film scenes, he leers at them, trying to extract every droplet of meaning and mood his flabby creative muscles can muster. And the sluggish screenplay gives little relief. You never get the feeling that much has been lost in the translation because there isn't much to be lost in the first place. That Herzog can summon the raw nerve to inflict this unredeeming and unredeemable trash on an audience speaks volumes about what obligations he feels...