KASPAR HAUSER Movie Review

The circumstances behind the real Kaspar Hauser—a man who mysteriously appeared in a Nuremberg town square in 1828 without the ability to talk—have been the subject of speculation for more than a century. At the conclusion of Werner Herzog's Every Man for Himself & God Against All, also known as The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, a functionary at Kaspar's autopsy notes something strange about the shape of one of Kaspar's organs. “At last we have an explanation for this strange man,” he pronounces, and wanders off into the distance as the film fades out. Herzog's movie gave us a Kaspar who was a holy innocent, and as his ironic ending shows us, Herzog was less interested in the hard, scientific realities of Kaspar Hauser than in the spiritual substance of his legend. And now we have another Kaspar Hauser film, this one by German director Peter Sehr, and wouldn't you know it—it could have been made by that little man who triumphantly reaches his conclusions at the end of Herzog's film. This Kaspar Hauser is based on speculation as to who Kaspar may have actually been, and how his society might have used him for nefarious political purposes. Sehr concocts as good an explanation as any, but it's fiction, and it's hard to care if it's true or not (not that we'll ever know). Herzog's movie, as naive and soft-hearted as much of it is, is based on a far more universal truth—an emotional one—and it leaves this vast, handsomely photographed conspiracy theory in the dust.

NEXT STOP … Every Man for Himself & God Against All, The Wild Child, ?. ?.: The Extra-Terrestrial

1993 137m/C GE Andre Eisermann, Jeremy Clyde, Katharina Thalbach, Udo Samel, Uwe Ochsenknecht; D: Peter Sehr; W: Peter Sehr; C: Gemot Roll; M: Nikos Mamangakis. VHS KIV