Stroszek 1977

Stroszek: Werner Herzog's intimate glimpse at the shimmery mirage of the American Dream through the eyes of German immigrants in the 1970s. Bruno S. portrays alcoholic ex-con Bruno Stroszek, Eva Mattes plays Eva the prostitute, and Clemens Scheitz renders Scheitz, an elderly paranoid whose nephew lives in Wisconsin, USA, which from the strange trio's troubled Berlin vantage point seems like the promised land. As many in America are now experiencing in 2008, this crew has a hard time scraping by in their new digs or in any digs.


I've seen this movie several times over the years. While on a smaller scale it's as bleak as The Grapes of Wrath and Tobacco Road, it's strangely more compelling and mystical. There is no doubt about it: this is a Werner Herzog film.


Eva: Better to be a waitress, a prostitute, or a combination? Depends on the monthly bills, I suppose.


Bruno stares at the lot where his trailer used to be.

Stroszek ends in Cherokee, North Carolina, with a Cherokee tribal deputy on the radio to a dispatcher: "We have a 10-80 out here, a truck on fire, we have a man on the lift. We are unable to find the switch to turn the lift off, can't stop the dancing chickens. Send an electrician, we're standing by."

Unless you've already seen the ending or can otherwise fill in the imaginary blanks, I suspect there's little need for a spoiler alert here . . .

Today's Rune: Movement.