APRIL 11, 2008 - VOL. 1, ISSUE 10

If it is true that all the best people come from the Midwest, it is ironic that director Werner Herzog chose to set the immigrant tale of Stroszek in the Wisconsin town that bred the notorious serial killer Ed Gein. What is true is that the best people escape the Midwest, and the ones that don't become mechanics or mass murderers. Although you wouldn't equate the genial quality of rural life contained in Herzog's poetic homage to the Midwest with the Wisconsinite who dug up corpses and played with their flesh, there is however a sinister quality in both. The placidity and isolation of small town life that drove Dylan and Hemingway mad enough to bust out and make names for themselves, or Gein mad enough to kill, is what the three German immigrants in Stroczek feel will be their haven.

The story begins with Bruno Stroszek being released from prison. We get the notion that he frequents the place when we see his inability to adjust to society. Immediately after promising the prison guards to abstain from alcohol, he hits a bar on his way home. At the bar he meets a whore named Eva who is being hassled by her pimp, brilliantly played by a real life pimp/boxer called "The Prince of Hamburg." When the pimp's violence starts to intrude upon Bruno's private life, he decides it is time to escape the urban containment of Berlin, which probably feels like more of a prison than the one he was released from.

When Bruno, Eva, and a wily old hunchback named Herr Scheitz immigrate to Wisconsin from Germany, their dreams are for manual labor, prefabricated homes and to a great degree, acceptance into society. Soon they see their dreams slowly slip away as despair sets in when they realize they can't shed their outsider tendencies. They can't understand their co-workers or the bank employee because they don't speak English. Eva goes back to whoring when being a waitress doesn't pay the bills. Their home is auctioned off after a series of unfruitful requests by the bank for payments. Suddenly, the life they built and achieved on quick credit now rests on the arm of an auctioneer, whose rapid-fire delivery Herzog calls "the poetry of capitalism." Their prefabricated home is sold and wheeled away as quickly as it was wheeled to them.

What is remarkable about Herzog's films is that he can bring out natural performances out of non-actors by placing them in familiar contexts to their own personal experiences while adding his own touch of poetic realism. The character of Bruno Stroszek is beautifully acted by a man simply known as Bruno S., who in reality is a blue collar worker that spent most of his childhood in mental institutions and was the unwanted child of a prostitute. Herzog crafts every facet of the screenplay of Stroczek with Bruno S.'s real life psyche in mind, from sickly children to mentally unstable companions and loved ones who prostitute themselves. He simply seeks out interesting people who really don't have to act. There is a beautiful scene between Bruno, a real doctor and a premature baby who clings with abnormal strength from the doctor's fingers, a poetic image of the will to survive. In Stroczek he also employs real life pimps, truck drivers, cops, auctioneers, and a host of other non-actors save for the distinguished actress who plays Eva and the career extra who plays Herr Scheitz. Despite Herzog's additional artistic touches, we see a slice of Midwestern life that is very real.

After their dreams have all been sold or auctioned off, because their inept ability to finance couldn't overcome their isolation as outsiders, Bruno reaches desperation and reaches the psychosis of one who can't fit into the Midwestern ideal. In a last gasp to recoup the American Dream, Bruno and Herr Scheitz decide to rob a bank but arrive when the bank is closed, instead opting to rob the adjacent barbershop of less than thirty dollars that they in turn spend at the grocery store across the street. Now that they've broken the law, they have been swallowed up by the isolation of Midwestern life. The outsider portrait of Middle America in Stroszek is an escape to simplicity from the suffocation and demand of the urbanism of Germany, but what unravels the characters lives and drives them mad is when they see personal isolation feels exactly the same in both settings.

The film ends with a cop paging dispatch that, in the wake of the small frenzy Bruno has caused on a final fugitive joyride, the police "can't stop the dancing chicken." Then it cuts to the most glorious minute of a novelty display containing chickens dancing, rabbits riding atop fire engines, and ducks thumping drums. The animals are conditioned to do these menial tasks because of the promise of a reward, in their case a pellet of food. The food starts up the music for the chicken to dance to and it just keeps going in a cycle. For an immigrant like Bruno S. this is the task/reward conditioning that symbolized the Midwestern rural ideal, performing manual labor to be rewarded with free and easy life. However, this is just an immigrant's illusion and it is a cycle to go through like the animals at the end of the film go through. The "good" ones like Dylan and Hemingway break the cycle, the ones that can't go mad like Gein and get swallowed by the isolation.