Review of Woyzeck (1979) by Kevin H — 10 Jun 2008

This Herzog/Kinski collaboration was filmed almost immediately after the filming of their better known remake of Nosferatu. And the exhaustion of the back-to-back filming seems to show, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Herzog, the usually obsessive, painstaking director seems, at first sight, to have completely abandoned Woyzeck-it is so devoid of the usual grammar of modern film and more like an early talkie with its long cuts and monotonous shots taken on a static camera.

Moreover, the eccentric, unfinished play, written in 1823 and only first performed a century later, seems again at first sight to have hardly been adapted for the modern screen. And Kinski does look so exhausted.

But moving beyond first impressions, Herzog's presumed disinterest becomes as interesting as his more characteristically charged obsession. His camera creeps into a mad little world with bizarre characters who speak in riddles and are obsessed with doing down and showing up the lowly Woyzeck. With his very basic direction, Herzog ironically achieves quite a sophisticated sense of feyness which would have been disastrous had Kinski not played the central character with such force and direction (and had Herzog not in a way given up the film to himi). Of course, Kinski looks exhausted, but this is actually the look best suited to playing the hunted, doomed Woyzeck. Kinski shows us what a great actor he could be when he felt called by the material, which was rarely the case, in this case the growing madness of a forlorn, put-upon man.

As he wrote in his autobiography, Kinski accepted his exhaustion, even revelling it as an aid to his performance. And I think his tired face is filled with pathos and the darkest hints of humour. The rest of his body is utilised in creating one of his finest performances. The awkward, diffident way he moves, for instance, is so different from his more usual, strident self.

While Eva Mattes is good as his wayward wife, I would have been amazed that it was only she who won a prize at Woyzeck's Cannes premiere, if it had been anyone other than Kinski (because it is Kinski, I assume that he must have really incesnsed the judging panel into not giving him anything).