Review of Stroszek (1977) by Mjs M — 19 Apr 2008

I?ve always said that Werner Herzog is probably a better icon than he is a director, which is not necessarily a bad thing. The guy is a crazy mofo, and when his movies channel that personality they are really interesting to watch.

Stroszek doesn?t have the sense of danger that his jungle movies like Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, or Rescue Dawn had, nor does it have the stranger than fiction quality of his documentaries. Instead Herzog finds strangeness in rural Wisconsin, and of course there is plenty of insanity to be found in that wretched hellhole ;).

The film is competently made, but I can?t really call this master-level filmmaking. There?s a lot of interesting stuff here, but Herzog has made more interesting works.