STROSZEK Movie Review

Three unlikely friends, all misfits to varying degrees and all fed up with the brutal and uncaring Berlin neighborhood they live in, decide to chuck it all for a shot at the American Dream in rural Wisconsin. Eva Mattes (Céleste) stars with Clemens Scheitz and the enigmatic Bruno S. (The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser) in Werner Herzog's bizarre, hilarious, and tragic portrait of a culture clash so extreme that it seems positively interplanetary. For every easy laugh and cheap shot in Stroszek—and there are more than a few—there is an equally strange and wonderful moment of sheer, inspired visionary power. These can show up in the form of everything from a frozen turkey to a dancing chicken, and somehow they all add up to a remarkably coherent, melancholy road movie—a visionary glimpse of a universe spinning hopelessly out of control. Stroszek’s assistant director was Errol Morris (whose great Gates of Heaven would debut the following year) and the soundtrack features remarkably appropriate music by Chet Atkins and Sonny Terry.

NEXT STOP … The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser, Gates of Heaven, Stranger than Paradise

1977 108m/C GE Eva Mattes, Bruno S, Clemens Scheitz; D: Werner Herzog; W: Werner Herzog; C: Thomas Mauch; M: Chet Atkins, Tom Paxton. VHS NYF, FCT