The Enigma of Kaspar HauserWhat is our responsibility to one another as human beings, as members of society? Is our society built up from the foundation of our achievements and those who came before, our education and our deeper thoughts and depth of soul? Or is it merely a ruse, one which we perpetrate amongst one another, a masquerade to aggrandize ourselves to one another, feel a little less stupid? The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser asks these questions indirectly via our exposure to a "noble savage", our title character played by Bruno S. in Werner Herzog's adaptation of the mysterious events surrounding the life and death of a young man in 19th Century Nuremburg.
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Like much of Herzog's work, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is abstractly poetic, which is apropos for the character who blankly introduces himself as "Kaspar Hauser" when prompted to scribble on a paper after having been found staring blankly into the town square, clutching a letter for the captain of the cavalry in his hand, incapable of speaking more than a few words. For it is a marvel when we consider the humble, animalistic origins of Kaspar into this society, and the longing and dreams which are cultivated within him in his final moments. Kaspar's poetry is one born of understanding the world in a way we do not, for we do not see the same cage we are in as he does, because he has been intimately familiar with being a prisoner for most of his life. In the earliest scenes of the film, an unnamed jailer (Hans Musäus) releases him into the world for reasons which are never fully explained, an inscrutable mystery which feels suspiciously like one of a series of steps in a "God fantasy" for some cruel individual. Kaspar does not appear to have been abused in the obvious sense, but his deprivation of knowledge has been a different kind of cruelty. This kind of experience has made his observations of the world attain a different kind of clarity. Take his confrontation with the professor over a logic problem. The professor attempts to use this to exert a kind of dominion over Kaspar--as others have--but refuses to admit defeat when Kaspar proposes a solution to his logic problem which is far more elegant than the professor's own submission (one which is muddy and ambiguous). When he discusses the power of God with a couple of priests who pressure Kaspar into accepting the divinity of Jesus Christ upon faith, Kaspar is unclear how they can believe that God could create something from nothing. Kaspar begins without the ability to even communicate with others, not even able to sit up straight, but after a couple of years in the benevolent care of a kind old man, he is writing his autobiography and learning the piano. When first discovered, the city officials saw him as little more than an oddity, one which was promptly sold off to a circus after he became a financial burden for them. Like people will do, some attempted to teach him, others to mock him. Occasionally, he was paraded around like a "John/Joseph Merrick" type, a curiosity for the aristocracy to reinforce their sense of privilege. Kaspar's ability to see the world without the delusional veils which society drapes over our eyes is revealing.
Kaspar's treatment is both cruel and kind intermittently by those who are good and those who are not. The reasons for his captivity are never satisfactorily explained, and we have to take the communiques left by his captor with a grain of salt. The imprisonment and dramatic discharge into the world has a kind of experimental quality to it, as though the captor were attempting to gauge how Kaspar would react to the world, or vice versa, although society seems to be an unwitting participant in this experiment. Kaspar's presence in the circus is humiliating and degrading, but Kaspar has yet to realize this humiliation himself. Later, his presence in the upper echelon of the aristocracy bears some similarities to the circus routine, only the costumes are fancier, where he is referred to as the effete noble's "protege", even though this noble never taught him a thing; he simply wanted another piece to add to his collection, just as the ringleader did before him, and to an extent, the jailer before him did. The world treats Kaspar with curiosity, unsure what to make of someone who cannot understand the world around him--because we all take it for granted ourselves. Kaspar's reactions and idiosyncrasies highlight the inherent hypocrisies of our society, the things we enable because they are "normal"--the intellectual snobbery in lieu of logic, the circus of oddities we parade as status symbols, and blind submission to the religions of others we do not fully understand ourselves, and more. It is the tabula rasa (blank slate) of Kaspar's innocence that draws our attention to these issues. That Kaspar begins to dream where he never did before during his imprisonment, that he learns to tell a story about the desert--if only the beginning--about the blind leading others through that desert by something so ridiculous as tasting the sand, makes the conclusion involving his brain all the more grotesque than simply taking it at face value. Suddenly, the noble savage appears to be the only civilized one, surrounded by inept fools, poking and prodding in ways that would be comical if they weren't so tragically pointless. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser balances the fulcrum of innocence and cruelty between the young, simple man and us...we know which end of the scale our "enlightened" society sits upon.
Recommended for: Fans of a thought-provoking story of innocence challenged by the strangeness of our own, comfortable world, and the mystery that was this based-on-a-true-story enigma.
Kaspar's treatment is both cruel and kind intermittently by those who are good and those who are not. The reasons for his captivity are never satisfactorily explained, and we have to take the communiques left by his captor with a grain of salt. The imprisonment and dramatic discharge into the world has a kind of experimental quality to it, as though the captor were attempting to gauge how Kaspar would react to the world, or vice versa, although society seems to be an unwitting participant in this experiment. Kaspar's presence in the circus is humiliating and degrading, but Kaspar has yet to realize this humiliation himself. Later, his presence in the upper echelon of the aristocracy bears some similarities to the circus routine, only the costumes are fancier, where he is referred to as the effete noble's "protege", even though this noble never taught him a thing; he simply wanted another piece to add to his collection, just as the ringleader did before him, and to an extent, the jailer before him did. The world treats Kaspar with curiosity, unsure what to make of someone who cannot understand the world around him--because we all take it for granted ourselves. Kaspar's reactions and idiosyncrasies highlight the inherent hypocrisies of our society, the things we enable because they are "normal"--the intellectual snobbery in lieu of logic, the circus of oddities we parade as status symbols, and blind submission to the religions of others we do not fully understand ourselves, and more. It is the tabula rasa (blank slate) of Kaspar's innocence that draws our attention to these issues. That Kaspar begins to dream where he never did before during his imprisonment, that he learns to tell a story about the desert--if only the beginning--about the blind leading others through that desert by something so ridiculous as tasting the sand, makes the conclusion involving his brain all the more grotesque than simply taking it at face value. Suddenly, the noble savage appears to be the only civilized one, surrounded by inept fools, poking and prodding in ways that would be comical if they weren't so tragically pointless. The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser balances the fulcrum of innocence and cruelty between the young, simple man and us...we know which end of the scale our "enlightened" society sits upon.
Recommended for: Fans of a thought-provoking story of innocence challenged by the strangeness of our own, comfortable world, and the mystery that was this based-on-a-true-story enigma.