Don't get me wrong, I thought Aguirre was a great movie, Fitzcarraldo was a wildly mad genius of an epic, and Nosferatu was a very respectable take on the legend, but watching Woyzeck is like getting an immense, harsh, and assuredly charged rush of poetic madness from a filmmaker and star who know exactly what they're doing. It's not "perfect", then again when it comes to poetry Herzog usually dominates with visuals over dialog (he's also working off of another source this time as well). But here is a case where the sense of forbidding fatalism is at an incredible high, and looking at Klaus Kinski's face at times is like looking into the soul of a truly tortured, insane form of a human being.
What's interesting, and even quite tragic to an extent, in seeing the tale of Woyzeck is that he is basically an underling, who is fed a strict diet of peas and the occasional mutton, and is totally subservient to his fairly whacked out superior officers. What it is exactly that Woyzeck is doing as an officer is anyone's guess, but to me seeing how the higher-ups treated Woyzeck is fascist (though for what end who can say, aside from their amusement at their manic squire).
Then there's Marie, played by Eva Mattes in a well deserved Cannes winning turn, Woyzeck's love and mother of his little out-of-wedlock boy. One can already tell in little scenes like when Woyzeck makes his co-soldier duck into the bushes over a 'did you hear that/see that' not-there presence that he's on edge. Needless to say it only adds salt to the wound when Woyzeck accuses Marie of adultery, as it's with a brutish Captain (Wolfgang Reichmann in a small but imposing role). And then it all leads up to a terrifying crime that comes from somewhere inside of Woyzeck, where it's been building up increasingly over time.
Herzog presents this story, based on an unfinished play, with a breathtaking visual scheme, however with less of the epic visual virtuosity of Aguirre and this time settles for something more basic, but still always eye-grabbing. I didn't even notice how few cuts there are supposed to be (less than 30), but it gives the audience much more time to really feel and be enveloped by these characters, particularly Woyzeck and Marie.
There have already been some great, powerhouse scenes- some with the tension stacked up incredibly, like when Woyzeck is stuck without an explanation, aside from crazy philosophy, as to why he urinated on a wall, or when Woyzeck makes the full-on accusation to Marie about the affair, with full Kinski-body-gyrations included- by the time the climax comes around. But for me, this is really not only one of Herzog's most moving and bleak scenes, but maybe one of the most heartbreaking in all of cinema. We as the audience can guess what has been coming; there's practically a Crime & Punishment sensibility that's been streaming forward in the ten-fifteen minutes preceding this scene. Yet the combination of three cinematic elements becomes overwhelming for me as a movie-viewer.
At first we see the actual murder happen, with the film's main music title playing over slow-motion and Kinski with a face that would make Joe Pesci cringe. But then we get another piece of music, a much more sad piece of music not heard yet in the film, as Woyzeck continues slower and slower until stopping loaded with tears in his eyes, and still in slow-motion. I started to feel so connected somehow to what was going on I teared up, too. Throughout the film I knew Woyzeck was crazy, and from the opening scene (which is actually kind of hilarious when taken out of context) throughout the picture, I knew something had to give. But the power of director's aesthetic choice, which is spellbinding and fully dramatic, and Kinski's performance make it something comparable to Dreyer and Falconetti in Joan of Arc.
While I would have recommended Woyzeck anyway, especially if you're just getting into Herzog's work, this scene alone makes it almost mandatory for many movie-buffs to seek it out. And as for Kinski, it's arguable if this might be his finest non-epic film performance, as a simple man completely torn in his mind, given to delusions of grandeur and, actually delusions of the paranoid and depleted, and to a crushing sense of loss that sends him to his conclusion. A+
What's interesting, and even quite tragic to an extent, in seeing the tale of Woyzeck is that he is basically an underling, who is fed a strict diet of peas and the occasional mutton, and is totally subservient to his fairly whacked out superior officers. What it is exactly that Woyzeck is doing as an officer is anyone's guess, but to me seeing how the higher-ups treated Woyzeck is fascist (though for what end who can say, aside from their amusement at their manic squire).
Then there's Marie, played by Eva Mattes in a well deserved Cannes winning turn, Woyzeck's love and mother of his little out-of-wedlock boy. One can already tell in little scenes like when Woyzeck makes his co-soldier duck into the bushes over a 'did you hear that/see that' not-there presence that he's on edge. Needless to say it only adds salt to the wound when Woyzeck accuses Marie of adultery, as it's with a brutish Captain (Wolfgang Reichmann in a small but imposing role). And then it all leads up to a terrifying crime that comes from somewhere inside of Woyzeck, where it's been building up increasingly over time.
Herzog presents this story, based on an unfinished play, with a breathtaking visual scheme, however with less of the epic visual virtuosity of Aguirre and this time settles for something more basic, but still always eye-grabbing. I didn't even notice how few cuts there are supposed to be (less than 30), but it gives the audience much more time to really feel and be enveloped by these characters, particularly Woyzeck and Marie.
There have already been some great, powerhouse scenes- some with the tension stacked up incredibly, like when Woyzeck is stuck without an explanation, aside from crazy philosophy, as to why he urinated on a wall, or when Woyzeck makes the full-on accusation to Marie about the affair, with full Kinski-body-gyrations included- by the time the climax comes around. But for me, this is really not only one of Herzog's most moving and bleak scenes, but maybe one of the most heartbreaking in all of cinema. We as the audience can guess what has been coming; there's practically a Crime & Punishment sensibility that's been streaming forward in the ten-fifteen minutes preceding this scene. Yet the combination of three cinematic elements becomes overwhelming for me as a movie-viewer.
At first we see the actual murder happen, with the film's main music title playing over slow-motion and Kinski with a face that would make Joe Pesci cringe. But then we get another piece of music, a much more sad piece of music not heard yet in the film, as Woyzeck continues slower and slower until stopping loaded with tears in his eyes, and still in slow-motion. I started to feel so connected somehow to what was going on I teared up, too. Throughout the film I knew Woyzeck was crazy, and from the opening scene (which is actually kind of hilarious when taken out of context) throughout the picture, I knew something had to give. But the power of director's aesthetic choice, which is spellbinding and fully dramatic, and Kinski's performance make it something comparable to Dreyer and Falconetti in Joan of Arc.
While I would have recommended Woyzeck anyway, especially if you're just getting into Herzog's work, this scene alone makes it almost mandatory for many movie-buffs to seek it out. And as for Kinski, it's arguable if this might be his finest non-epic film performance, as a simple man completely torn in his mind, given to delusions of grandeur and, actually delusions of the paranoid and depleted, and to a crushing sense of loss that sends him to his conclusion. A+