Word: stroszek
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...Stroszek. At the Orson Welles Two, daily...
...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...
...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...
...shared sense of degradation drives an abused prostitute (Eva Mattes) into Stroszek's well-meaning embrace, but the alcoholic simpleton can offer her little protection against the periodic brutality meted out by two utterly depraved pimps who enjoy yanking her around Stroszek's flat by her frizzed hairs. A whimsical old man (Clemens Scheitz) turns up with the all-too-familiar notion of moving to the United States to escape the misery, and this implausible threesome sets off together in search of The Better Life. Predictably enough, their Midwestern El Dorado proves as illusory as Aguirre...