WoyzeckAt times, the whole world seems to be out to get you; and if it were, would madness be so inappropriate? Friedrich Johann Franz Woyzeck (Klaus Kinski)--Woyzeck, for short--is life's punching bag. He is condescended to by his captain (Wolfgang Reichmann) while Woyzeck shaves him, he is berated by his doctor (Willy Semmelrogge) who uses him like a guinea pig for his bizarre experiments, and he is cajoled and mocked by the ubermensch drum major (Josef Bierbichler), who had previously seduced his beautiful wife, Marie (Eva Mattes). Woyzeck's mental health is not only faltering, it is plummeting into the depths, a rock sinking fast into the lake.
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It might be best to look at Werner Herzog's Woyzeck as a demented fiction of a world, populated by the insane and depraved, the cruel and corrupt, where our "hero" is the victim of a paranoid frenzy which destroys him in the end. Like much of Herzog's work, there is more than one way to see the events, more than one way that the events and portrayals mirror life and are a metaphor for other things. I see Woyzeck, and I recall days past in the schoolyard, tormented and bullied, as I'm sure others can relate. The people of the small German town are formed into cliques of Prussian military, of academia, of gossipy hausfraus. The captain might be a long-winded history professor, running off about kids and their "running about". The doctor shares all the charm of a cruel rich kid, who bribes Woyzeck for dimes to submit to bizarre experiments of diet and more to further his research. And has there ever been such a perfect parallel to the despicable jock than the drum-major? But Woyzeck puts up with the humiliation, he endures the dehumanization, because he loves his Marie. It is when the intimations about his wife's infidelity are thrust upon him that he begins to lose that last tenuous grasp on his frail sanity. Woyzeck's grief and turmoil is expressed like the verse of Shakespeare at times, his hesitance to act resembles Hamlet's; this dramatic presence is no coincidence, since Woyzeck was also a loose adaptation of the play by Georg Büchner, also titled "Woyzeck". The opening and closing titles bookend the film, framing it as though it were like a children's fable, a "small town by a small lake", culminating in the dark ending message of the "beautiful murder". And Woyzeck is both beautiful and austere, with bravura shots expressing much by saying little. Woyzeck running through the verdant fields of unopened poppies is striking, but my personal favorite is when Woyzeck has purchased the murder knife from an indifferent shopkeep, and runs (again) through the deserted town square--as the perspective remains absolutely still, he appears to shrink, smaller and smaller, a reflection of his own self.
Much mockery is made of Woyzeck, even in his presence, even when it is not directed at him. For instance, when Woyzeck and Marie are at the fair--he still in uniform--a monkey is presented at an animal show, dressed in a uniform remarkably similar to his own, and the monkey is described as an animal, much as his doctor does of him. He is criticized by his captain while Woyzeck is shaving him (he is also a barber) for having a son born out of wedlock by Marie. When he attempts to defend himself on similar philosophical grounds, his captain feigns confusion to keep the destitute man in check. Woyzeck's profession as a barber is both tragic and ironic, for when he finds he does not have enough money to buy a gun to exact his revenge upon Marie for making him a cuckold, he makes do with a cheap blade. When the moment of Woyzeck's vengeance arrives, it is preceded by a calm, a serenity of nature. As Woyzeck has hypothesized in his fevered mind, life is driven by nature, and nature commands his hand--he allows himself to be wielded by nature in his eyes, just as he wields the blade. The scene which follows is a slow motion ballet of murderous sorrow, a rage that is crushing, like an avalanche rolling down a mountain. Very little of the violence is actually seen, and yet it remains visceral in its intent--the flies that flutter about recall another meditation of Woyzeck's, about nature and fornication--people would roll around with one another if the sun were snuffed out, like the flies on his arm. The blade itself remains preternaturally clean, especially given the bloody work to which it is being put--but this untarnished blade is the glaring guilt, so bright as it refracts the light in this midday evisceration that it glows like the light which Woyzeck claimed to see upon the lake on nights before. The sorrowful music heightens the tragic scene, and ends with a cutaway to a waltz, a darkly perverse juxtaposition and cynical assessment of the people in Woyzeck's world. And as the music plays throughout Woyzeck, the pieces are performed with instruments that seem ill-suited to the compositions--but that's the point; this music is unsettling and lovely both, awkward, yet with resonance...an appropriate pairing for the film.
Recommended for: Fans of stories with no happy ending, of the world which works to push us over the edge of our sanity. As Woyzeck observes: "Every man is an abyss. You get dizzy looking in." That dizziness is the spell which makes Woyzeck a heady tale.
Much mockery is made of Woyzeck, even in his presence, even when it is not directed at him. For instance, when Woyzeck and Marie are at the fair--he still in uniform--a monkey is presented at an animal show, dressed in a uniform remarkably similar to his own, and the monkey is described as an animal, much as his doctor does of him. He is criticized by his captain while Woyzeck is shaving him (he is also a barber) for having a son born out of wedlock by Marie. When he attempts to defend himself on similar philosophical grounds, his captain feigns confusion to keep the destitute man in check. Woyzeck's profession as a barber is both tragic and ironic, for when he finds he does not have enough money to buy a gun to exact his revenge upon Marie for making him a cuckold, he makes do with a cheap blade. When the moment of Woyzeck's vengeance arrives, it is preceded by a calm, a serenity of nature. As Woyzeck has hypothesized in his fevered mind, life is driven by nature, and nature commands his hand--he allows himself to be wielded by nature in his eyes, just as he wields the blade. The scene which follows is a slow motion ballet of murderous sorrow, a rage that is crushing, like an avalanche rolling down a mountain. Very little of the violence is actually seen, and yet it remains visceral in its intent--the flies that flutter about recall another meditation of Woyzeck's, about nature and fornication--people would roll around with one another if the sun were snuffed out, like the flies on his arm. The blade itself remains preternaturally clean, especially given the bloody work to which it is being put--but this untarnished blade is the glaring guilt, so bright as it refracts the light in this midday evisceration that it glows like the light which Woyzeck claimed to see upon the lake on nights before. The sorrowful music heightens the tragic scene, and ends with a cutaway to a waltz, a darkly perverse juxtaposition and cynical assessment of the people in Woyzeck's world. And as the music plays throughout Woyzeck, the pieces are performed with instruments that seem ill-suited to the compositions--but that's the point; this music is unsettling and lovely both, awkward, yet with resonance...an appropriate pairing for the film.
Recommended for: Fans of stories with no happy ending, of the world which works to push us over the edge of our sanity. As Woyzeck observes: "Every man is an abyss. You get dizzy looking in." That dizziness is the spell which makes Woyzeck a heady tale.