WOYZECK Movie Review

Georg Büchner's play, written in 1836, told of an ordinary soldier (Klaus Kinski) who became a victim of the German obsession with militarism. Harassed by his commanders, experimented upon, pushed well beyond reasonable limits of human endurance, Woyzeck finally snapped and turned understandably homicidal. Werner Herzog has made a tense, terse, 82-minute film out of this material, and while there's nothing really wrong with it, the whole project just feels a little superfluous. Additionally, it's hard to imagine Klaus Kinski as a slowly ticking time bomb when he always looks completely demented to begin with. In Woyzeck, it's not startling when he finally blows his stack—you just wonder what took him so long. Apparently, Kinski wondered too. In his amusingly titled biography, All I Need Is Love, he wrote of filming Woyzeck: “I don't have to rehearse or listen to Herzog's rubbish. I tell him, I warn him, to keep his trap shut and let me do what I must. He complies.” Wouldn't you?

NEXT STOP … Stroszek, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Full Metal Jacket

1978 82m/C GE Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann, Josef Bierbichler; D: Werner Herzog; W: Werner Herzog. VHS NYF