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Best movie of this year hands down!

Crappy film

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.

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.

STROSZEK might well be Werner Herzog's movie masterpiece. Certainly it contains material here which appears to me to be the natural high point of the director's career, some of the best cinema I've ever witnessed.The story is centred around the titular character, played with relish by Bruno S. (THE ENIGMA OF KASPAR HAUSER) in what is undoubtedly his definitive performance. Stroszek is a musician, fresh out of prison and down on his luck, who decides to emigrate to the USA accompanied by a hooker and an old man (the latter being Clemens Scheitz, a frequent - and welcome - Herzog collaborator). They go in search of the American dream, but what they find is very different.STROSZEK perfectly encapsulates Herzog's world view that the natural order of things is chaos and destruction rather than peace and harmony. Watching it makes for a depressing experience, at least for the most part, particularly because Bruno S. is such a sympathetic actor. The good news is that things change tack in the last 20 minutes, which is a mini-movie in itself, a glorious surreal comedy that gets weirder and weirder until the last, well, dancing chicken. The accompanying blues music just nails it. The ending of this film had tears of laughter streaming down my face while at the same time being completely profound and moving. It's a masterful moment that Herzog should be justly proud of and it closes a thoroughly engrossing film.

From director Werner Herzog (Nosferatu the Vampyre, Fitzcarraldo, Grizzly Man), I confess that I do not remember much of this German film at all, not even watching all of it, but I know I did see it because it is in the book 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die. Basically Berlin street performer Bruno Stroszek (Bruno S.) has been warned to stop drinking after being released from prison, but he immediately goes to a bar, where he meets prostitute Eva (Eva Mattes), who he comforts as she is down on her luck, and later he ends up beaten up by the pimps. Bruno and Eva decide to escape any more harassment from these people by escaping from Germany by moving to Wisconsin, America, and live with his American nephew Clayton (Clayton Szalpinski), so they start their journey, stopping off to do sight seeing in New York City. There Bruno gets a job with his nephew as a mechanic, and Eva works in a truck stop as a waitress, and the couple buy a trailer, but they trouble with the bills, so to stop the bank repossessing their home she is forced back into prostitution, but it isn't enough. After Eva leaves him, he starts a little bit of drinking again, and is forced to put the trailer up for auction, and after believing there is some kind of "conspiracy", he and his original elderly neighbour Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz) steal some money from a barbershop. The police catch and arrest Scheitz, but Bruno gets away, heading back to the garage, taking loads of beer and heading for the highway into the mountains, but forced to stop in a small town when the truck breaks down. Bruno sets the truck on fire, and the final time you see him is getting on a ski lift with a frozen turkey, then the police arrive, you hear a shot, and the last moments see a chicken playing the piano and a rabbit riding a toy fire truck, I don't know why, LOL. I did pay attention to the moments that mattered, were most interesting and would make it a "must see", such as a scene of the lead actor playing his accordion, and the strange ending, but I don't think it would have made much difference to me if I had paid more attention, it seemed a confusing story anyway, but what I did see and catch onto made an alright satirical drama. Worth watching, at least once, in my opinion!

When we first meet Bruno Stroszek he is being released from prison with a lecture from the superintendent about not going back on the bottle. But soon Bruno is in a bar where he tries to re-engage with a woman named Eva. We don't get much information about Bruno's past relationship with Eva, but she is now a prostitute involved with two vicious and controlling pimps who have no use for the docile Bruno. When Bruno offers Eva a place to stay (a place that has been kept for him by an elderly neighbor named Scheitz) she accepts. But the pimps terrorize the two to the point where they feel that they have to get away, and Scheitz offers them the perfect opportunity to come with him to Wisconsin, at the invitation of a nephew. The three do go to Wisconsin, but America does not turn out to be exactly the land of milk and honey for them.The scruffy Stroszek has the aspect of a good-natured but wounded animal. He seems rather simple, but then you are not sure about him and he remains an enigma. I kept thinking to myself that this actor Bruno S. was doing a great job in creating a unique character. Only when I listened to the director's comments did I realized that Bruno S. was essentially playing himself. The son of a prostitute he was abused as a child and spent much of his life in institutions until the age of 26. Herzog saw him in a documentary on street musicians and recognized a quality in him that was enough for him to carry this film.Herzog says he wrote this in four and a half days, but, as is true for any work of art, it is a product of life experiences. Herzog puts his eclectic mind to work to great advantage. He has a memory for people and places and can bring them together in creative ways. For example, the man who plays Scheitz's nephew is a mechanic who in real life had worked on Herzog's car some time ago. Herzog remembered that there was a native American working in the shop at the time, and, even though he had long since left the business, Herzog tracked him down just so he could be in a few scenes. The use of non-actors in many of the scenes adds realism--hard to imagine actors could do any better. The scenes toward the end take place in Cherokee, North Carolina, a result of Herzog's memory of having once been there. It seems that many scenes are thrown in simply because they caught the director's fancy: a doctor tending a premature baby, two farmers feuding over a stretch of land, a driver-less truck running in circles. But this patchwork comes together to create a whole in a miraculous way. I particularly like the way that Herzog will hold a scene for added effect, like when poor Stroszek's repossessed trailer home is hauled off, leaving Stroszek staring at the empty landscape.I don't know what the hell the meaning of the final two minutes is, but I can almost guarantee that you will never forget that piece of film. These final minutes provoked in me some of the same emotions I experienced in watching the rest of the film--saddened by the pointless absurdity, but fascinated by the spectacle.Some see this film as an ultimate criticism of American society, but I do not see that. The Americans are just going about being human is all. The thrust of the story is about people like Stroszek--no matter where they are they cannot escape their unfortunate pasts and personal limitations. In not uncommon circumstances such people come to tragic ends.