Stroszek
analysis by Philip Brubaker
Werner Herzog's Stroszek (1977) is a film both in German and English. The three main characters flee Germany for the promise of opportunity in America. In Berlin, they find themselves victims of vicious brutes, who prostitute Ewa, Stroszek's friend. Stroszek himself is just released from a mental institution. The two outcasts hook up with an eccentric old man and decided to move to Wisconsin, where the old man's nephew lives. Stroszek has been called Herzog's most accessible film, a distinction due to it's time-worn fish-out-of-water premise. But the archetypal humor of the situation turns black as Ewa begins to revert to her promiscuous ways, and the group's double wide gets impounded and auctioned off by the bank. Stroszek's life is falling apart, so what does he do? He attempts to rob a bank.
The failure of the American Dream is the story of every criminal in the United States. By turning to crime, the criminal hopes to regain the hope of being rich, by any means necessary. The American Dream failed Stroszek, and this idea is represented by many striking images.
The most overt symbol in the film are the two farmers who mow their grass toting shotguns. The tractor-riding farmers are both watching over a strip of land in between their properties, making sure neither one is attempting to mow it, and therefore claim it as their own. The scene is played for laughs, but it is a pointed reference to Stroszek's hometown of Berlin, with it's harsh division by the Berlin Wall.
The Native American character is the ultimate symbol of America. He is both a foreigner and a native. A stranger to the white man's culture, a culture of European immigrants. When Stroszek makes his farewell ride to the Indian Reservation town of Cherokee, he drives right into the heart of the American dilemma. Here he is surrounded by the last vestiges of American Indian culture, now warped and perverted into a tourist attraction, an example of American grotesquerie at it's lowest low. An old-timey holler is heard on the soundtrack and our hero ditches his car and climbs onto a chair lift ride with his shotgun. As the camera tilts up to his slow ascent up a tall mountain, a shot rings out. Did Stroszek take his own life? Appropriately, Herzog leaves this ambiguous. His rise upward on the chair lift is symbolic of the ascent to Heaven, Shangri-La, Eldorado and every dreamed mythical place that foreigners imagine America to be. He is going home.
analysis by Philip Brubaker
Werner Herzog's Stroszek (1977) is a film both in German and English. The three main characters flee Germany for the promise of opportunity in America. In Berlin, they find themselves victims of vicious brutes, who prostitute Ewa, Stroszek's friend. Stroszek himself is just released from a mental institution. The two outcasts hook up with an eccentric old man and decided to move to Wisconsin, where the old man's nephew lives. Stroszek has been called Herzog's most accessible film, a distinction due to it's time-worn fish-out-of-water premise. But the archetypal humor of the situation turns black as Ewa begins to revert to her promiscuous ways, and the group's double wide gets impounded and auctioned off by the bank. Stroszek's life is falling apart, so what does he do? He attempts to rob a bank.
The failure of the American Dream is the story of every criminal in the United States. By turning to crime, the criminal hopes to regain the hope of being rich, by any means necessary. The American Dream failed Stroszek, and this idea is represented by many striking images.
The most overt symbol in the film are the two farmers who mow their grass toting shotguns. The tractor-riding farmers are both watching over a strip of land in between their properties, making sure neither one is attempting to mow it, and therefore claim it as their own. The scene is played for laughs, but it is a pointed reference to Stroszek's hometown of Berlin, with it's harsh division by the Berlin Wall.
The Native American character is the ultimate symbol of America. He is both a foreigner and a native. A stranger to the white man's culture, a culture of European immigrants. When Stroszek makes his farewell ride to the Indian Reservation town of Cherokee, he drives right into the heart of the American dilemma. Here he is surrounded by the last vestiges of American Indian culture, now warped and perverted into a tourist attraction, an example of American grotesquerie at it's lowest low. An old-timey holler is heard on the soundtrack and our hero ditches his car and climbs onto a chair lift ride with his shotgun. As the camera tilts up to his slow ascent up a tall mountain, a shot rings out. Did Stroszek take his own life? Appropriately, Herzog leaves this ambiguous. His rise upward on the chair lift is symbolic of the ascent to Heaven, Shangri-La, Eldorado and every dreamed mythical place that foreigners imagine America to be. He is going home.