treywillwest I think this to be one of Herzog's better movies, and also one of his least Herzoian. Watching it, I couldn't help but wonder if it was meant as a winking homage to his two most celebrated peers in what was, in the '70s, referred to as the "New German Cinema"- Rainer Fassbinder and Wim Wenders.The first section of the film, which takes place in urban Germany, is classic Herzog. The chaotic, sometimes sinister, lifestyles of the country's outcasts are given a romantic, almost mystical depiction. The "common German" is discarded by the nation, but in their marginality discover the inner Truth of the nation. The most deeply German of the three above listed directors, Herzog's vision is the most otherworldly, and perhaps, the most underliningly fascistic.Our outcast-heroes leave behind the thuggish world of the contemporary German city for the supposed freedom of rural America but find instead only a more insidious, buerocratic thuggishness. Herzog was not as influenced by Americana as Fassbinder and Wenders, the former in the form of Hollywood cinema, particularly the subtly subversive melodramas of Douglas Sirk and Nicholas Ray, the latter by the American ideal of the open road and the vehicle as a source of transcendent freedom. When coming to America to film for the first time, Herzog seems to base his narrative on the style of Fassbinder, and his imagery on that of Wenders.

Robert J. Maxwell At the climax of this somewhat tragic tale, Bruno, a German immigrant whose quest for happiness in America has failed, goes on an amateur, what-the-hell crime spree, turns on all the exhibits in a barren mid-winter Indian tourist trap, and climbs aboard a cable car for a final trip to the mountain top, carrying a shotgun and a frozen turkey. One of the exhibits he activates is a piano-playing chicken who hammers out an impeccable version of Schubert's Scherzo in B Minor. Another is a dancing chicken. The chicken walks out into a glass case, plucks a piece of string, and begins scratching atop a slowly revolving round table the size of an old record player. The Tribal Police arrive and examine the scene of the crime, which includes a burning truck and a recently robbed grocery store. One of the cops is on the squad car's radio. "We got a single passenger on the lift and an electrician's on his way out. Somebody turned on the electricity and we can't stop the dancing chicken." The director, Werner Herzog, lingers on that chicken, scratching away over and over on a revolving platter, his head completely empty of thought. What are we to make of all this? Except that we are all dancing chickens manipulated by some deranged outer force.If it isn't that, then I'm lost.A good case could be made that this movie is utterly pointless. Bruno, a shabby caricature of a man, is released from an institution and returns to his apartment in Berlin, where he has two friends. One is an elderly eccentric and the other an abused whore. The pixy-like old man carries on about how easy it is to get rich and live happily in America. The whore saves up her money and the three of them travel to a truck stop in Wisconsin. They buy a mobile home and a television set and things look bright for a while, until they fall behind in their mortgage payments.Sick of it all and desperate, the hooker takes off in one of the trucks for Canada. The old man goes bonkers and believes it's all a conspiracy, so he and the not-too-bright Bruno hold up a barber shop, run across the street, and begin buying groceries. The old man is arrested for armed robbery, Bruno steals a truck, takes off on his own, and finally runs out of money and gas at the Indian tourist trap.My old German grandpappy had a saying: "Ein Mann hat das Bodel und ein Mann hat das Gelt." Some people have money and others wind up with the bag. Bruno and his friends -- and even his enemies -- are losers from beginning to end. It's a long, slow story of social suicide. All three end up worse than they began, as bad as that was.And when I say "long", I mean "long." Herzog -- here as elsewhere -- has a tendency to hold on stylized shots for a long long long time. The camera is placed behind and above Bruno as a huge truck pulls his forfeited mobile home away. The camera remains static as the mobile home sluggishly departs to the right. The camera stays in the same place and so does Bruno, who is now staring at the empty space that his mobile home had occupied. He continues to stare as the seconds tick by and a scratchy old record plays a tune called "Silver Bells." If you're patient, and if you're sensitive to mood and character and composition, you'll get much more out of this movie than if you're expecting some plot-driven dynamo.I'd like to compare this to Robert Altman's exercises in improvisation but I can't. One senses an intentionality behind Herzog's stuff that's absent from Altman's movies. What I mean is, Herzog seems to have something in mind behind the apparent non sequiturs and stylized shots. Herzog has a goal, whereas many of Altman's movies seemed designed for nothing more than seeing what happened next. In a sense, Altman stays with the dancing chicken because that's all there is, while Herzog believes that there is somebody turning the machine on and off.

Cosmoeticadotcom The DVD, by Anchor Bay, is part of their Werner Herzog Collection, and comes with a theatrical trailer, production and biographical notes, and a great commentary with Herzog and Norman Hill. In it, Herzog spins his usual informative and cogent anecdotes, rips conventional filmmaking techniques, and resents the tendency of critics to deconstruct every little thing in a film. Not every metaphor has to be based in logic. The Keatsian idea(l) of Negative Capability has never been better embodied in the work of a filmmaker than it is in Herzog's canon, for many of his images simply are, and do not have a narrative heft. In this film, the perfect example is the dancing chicken? It can mean a number of things, but the very act of attempting to pin it down robs it of some of its power. The German is subtitled, and the English is not. As a multi-lingual film dubbing would not work. The film transfer is fine, and it is in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio. While not a film that makes great use of visuals, there are moments, such as the film's opening, shot through a glass of water, that show that Herzog and his cinematographer Thomas Mauch knew how to distort reality just enough to blur fiction and nonfiction seamlessly. The use of American folk music from Chet Atkins and Sonny Terry is a departure from the grander musical schemes employed with Florian Fricke and Popol Vuh in other Herzog classics, but is apropos for the dour American grotesques that creep into the film, starting with shotgun wielding farmers who drive their plows right next to each other, to protect a small strip of land both claim as theirs.But the real gem of the commentary is Herzog's explanation of not only the film's provenance in regards to Bruno S., but how he chose the town in the first place. He calls that part of the country Errol Morris Country because he and the famed American documentarian (Gates Of Heaven, The Thin Blue Line, The Fog Of War) were fascinated by Ed Gein, who dug up all of the corpses in a circle around his mother's grave. They wanted to know if he dug up his mother. What relevance this has is anyone's guess. Morris chickened out, so Herzog decided to abandon the idea and write his screenplay for Bruno, thus angering Morris, who felt that he should have had some involvement, and that Herzog tread on his 'turf,' by filming there. While in Plainfield to write the screenplay, Herzog met many of the non-actors who populate the film. Herzog also relates gems about Bruno, such as his painting fan blades the colors of the rainbow, and discovering that when it spun fast it blurred into white, or how he would walk about with his fly open, unawares.Also, the use of non-actors is perfect. It is in minor details like this, that veer away from script and allow actors to fully embody their characters, that the realistic aspects of a film can shine. Most filmmakers would never even consider such of import.Films like Stroszek are merely minor palliatives for that ill, but they are better than nothing, and hopefully will last longer than the grim impulses which make them so cogent.

HIREN DAVE Watching this third Herzog film I must say that Herzog's heroes are like directionless hermits. Herzog repeated unprofessional actor Bruno S. again after their appreciable teaming in 'Kasper Hauser' and teamwork again proves another landmark film. Bruno is again social outsider here like 'Kasper Hauser'. In initial scene we come to witness his releasing from prison. He loves just two things in life- playing musical instruments and drinking beer. But soon he realized that life in Germany is full of hardships and brutal one, so along with his prostitute girlfriend Eva and an old neighbor they thought about starting new life in America-the land of opportunities. For them America is an unexplored mystery or a dream of freedom. But soon disillusionment starts unsettling them in hostile land and they realized that life is severe and brutal everywhere and perhaps it's more severe wasteland in America. Remembering the great visionary American poet T S Elliot his 'The waste land' here. Bruno and Eva are physically safe in America and there is no local hoodlum who's kicking them in their hometown but still Bruno is so unhappy. As Bruno explains to Eva in one of the scene that in Germany it was visible but here they do it so gentle way, and that's much worse than it seems. That invisible chaos seems economical on surface but it's deeper at mental & spiritual level. Only Bruno understands it and that's lead us to that brutally dark ending part.I've never seen final ten minutes in any movies as symbolically represented chaos of life in this one. It is just a phenomenon. Those dancing/ piano playing birds, a shot in ropeway and circularly moving trolley will remain permanently imprinted to my senses. I became bit sleepy while watching it yesterday and miss the brilliant clue by Herzog in that final scene. I watch that scene again today prior to writing this post and it was Eureka moment. It is that line written on the backside of that ropeway vehicle in which Bruno sat last. IS IT REALLY ME! The clue signifies the futility of both driverless revolving trolley and trained performing birds. But for Bruno life itself is futile and he knew it damn well. That final scene was just something that you get from auteur like Herzog only!Salute to this genius filmmaker.