Sometimes you do not even get the slightest teeny tiny objective and the arc it tries to take from a film. Despite its lauds, it would be an excruciating exercise of accumulating frustration and withering of patience when it pursues scene by scene with its snail pace. What is it with this movie? What are these characters jumping out from desolated muddy streets doing the oddest thing possible one could not even imagine in this film? What is Wernor Herzog thinking or what was running on his mind when he made this film? What the heck is “Stroszek” meant to be? I am left with question marks and a passed time of vain.Apparently Herzog being a naturalistic director casts Bruno S. a real life street musician in two of his films, “The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser” and this being the second one. Not that the acting is unsuitable rather it is more than natural for the character, the film is painful exercise on strange uneventful actions. Bruno Stroszek, an alcoholic and a weird personality is released from prison. In his first encounter he comforts a prostitute Eva (Eva Mattes) from the hands of two rogue and sociopathic pimps. He lets her stay in his apartment which has been guarded by his old neighbour Mr. Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz). These three flee off from Berlin in the fear of being tortured and humiliated by the pimps. Off they go to US of A into the state of Wisconsin where Scheitz’s nephew lives. And you have half the film in hand till this point.
May be I am numb to these eerie screen because I always have similar reaction to movies of Tarkovsky. I do not see poetry in the making but a careful precise attempt in constructing emotional emptiness through characters. They operate like a keyed toy and never stop as they keep on running the momentum of boredom in chains of diligent mundane not in the things they do but the way they carry it. Sure we cannot see or may not even imagine these three strange personalities traveling away from home to a strange land with nil communication (except for Eva who becomes a predictable opportunist). But what is there to meditate in their miserable state? It happens in an utterly lethargic motion of scenes tumbling upon one after another.
Does it mean their sufferings are not justified or to be indifferent? Definitely not. I get the melancholic situation of people in a fix with no clue about their life. Stroszek in my opinion is a troubled person who seems to do nothing but move and talk in uncorrelated sentences. Eva on the other hand is suffering in living with this personality whom she initially has a feeling of being a pet and a temporary cajole factor till she gets her head up above the water. And Scheitz is a grown up Stroszek only to be neater but still muddled in this wonderland behaving chaotically for them. These three does not create sympathy nor do we able to empathize with their situation. It is indeed tragic but the film does not put forth it in a manner which stains us with heavy emotions for these helpless and unpredictable characters.
There are some poetic shots. The inverted reflection of a water filled suspended jar in a prison is one of them. But the ending with dancing chicken cannot be more annoying (mildly entertaining in the start though). Are these the surreal images he wanted to create? It has no effect on its uneven pictures but beats us on what do we need to get out of it. Films are not a straight arrow shooter to unravel the answers and have a purpose or message in it. It is the pleasure of an experience regardless of its end or beginning. It is the movement of the camera amongst the people and the nature surrounding it to provide an opportunity to view a prism of minds on the characters we would miss to meet and the ambience we would not live to see. And understanding it completely, I say that “Stroszek” does not provide it. Beyond the fact of not meeting characters and not seeing those places, it is plainly blunt and irritatingly indifferent.
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