This review is part of a series focusing on the MUBI DIRECTORS CUP. This informal online bracket competition pits films of various directors against each other, with the winner moving on to the next round with a different film. The only criteria for voting is that both films must be viewed.
Stroszek (1977)is an amazing film that keeps getting richer with repeated viewings. For a leisurely paced film of normal length, a hell of a lot is happening on a character, visual and thematic level.
Most striking is simply the fact of Bruno S. in the title role. He’s either pretty much playing himself or has given one of the all time great film performances. A little reading about Bruno reveals that, like his character, he’s been abused and is mentally challenged to some degree (although functional). What we are seeing in the film is apparently Bruno’s own unique, larger-than-life personality, including that wonderfully odd speech pattern. This is most purely seen as we watch Bruno singing and playing the accordion with such gusto in the alleyway. This, along with director, Werner Herzog’s own background as a documentary filmmaker, plus the use of non-actors in most roles, blurs the fiction/reality line and lends a sense of authenticity to every scene.
Werner Herzog has an uncanny ability to make any landscape he films look like an alien environment from another planet. That he can achieve this effect shooting the Amazon in Aguirre: The Wrath of God or Antarctica in Encounters at the End of the World is one thing, but making this location magic work for Wisconsin is impressive on a whole other level. Being from Chicago, my perception of Wisconsin has always been that it’s a bit boring, but generally normal. Of course, Herzog is from Germany, as are his characters, so regarding the American Midwest as a foreboding and exotic land gives a similar sense of cultural displacement that ended up prominently featured in Lost in Translation.
The main theme is an indictment of societies that do not care for its weakest members. Bruno’s band of outsiders, being himself (a retarded man), his prostitute sometime girlfriend and a strange old gent, are brought together more by surrounding hostility than real affection toward each other. As the trio try to make their way in America, we get a distinctly foreign impression of the American Dream. I’ve heard stories that my grandparent’s generation thought the streets here were paved with gold. That seems not too far off from Bruno and his friend’s expectations. What seems to really demoralize the group is not that life remains hard, but that the American Dream represented a promise that couldn’t even be hoped for in Germany. For Herzog, the outsider remains an outsider no matter where he or she goes.
This idea is repeatedly represented, both through dialogue and visually, by the motif of a never-ending circle. It comes to fruition in that unforgettable, funny, sad, whacked out and perfect ending. It’s so perfect that I don’t even want to describe it in case there’s someone reading who hasn’t already seen the film.
Hiroshi Shimizu’s entry also takes an outsider looking in point of view. This time, looked at through the eyes of children as they try to perceive the problems of the adult world. Nowhere near as ambitious as Stroszek, Children in the Wind (1937) is still successful in its depiction of two young Japanese brothers who must cope with their father’s firing, arrest and their subsequent relocation. The younger brother, Sampei, reacts by acting out (not that he wasn’t a handful to begin with), putting himself in dangerous situations and generally driving the relatives caring for him crazy.
The plot is very basic and, if it were made in Hollywood, would probably showcase the adorableness of the kids and milk the melodrama for all it was worth. Happily, Shimizu does not pander and his child performers are not cutesy, but naturalistic. Early scenes of neighborhood children running wild gave the impression that they were one plane crash away from going completely Lord of the Flies on each other. It’s been commented that the kids can be pretty annoying, which is true, but also true of many of their real life counterparts. The parents, however, remain strangely passive, preferring to teach by example, I suppose.
In addition to offering a perceptive view of family dynamics, Children in the Wind also has a strong visual sense. The framing, in particular, stands out. Look at the house scene where we see through a translucent drapery at the adults in the center of the frame, while the children are sleeping/listening from their beds in the bottom corner of the screen. Until they start to move, we could miss that they’ve been on screen the whole time. There are also plenty of humorous bits of business that keep the film lively, like the scene where Sampei attempts to reach his father’s hat hanging on the office wall.
I’m glad to have seen Children of the Wind, a film that normally would have escaped my notice, but my vote goes to Stroszek, a great work of true originality that I plan to keep revisiting.
