Stroszek

Of all the immortal eccentrics populating the Herzog canon, perhaps the most touching and tragic is Bruno Stroszek. As played by the heartbreaking Bruno S., Stroszek is a gentle but hard-drinking Berlin street musician who, after running afoul of a pair of local toughs, leaves Germany for the promise of a better life in Wisconsin. Once there, however, his American Dream quickly sours. Herzog’s quietly devastating portrait of stranger-in-a-strange-land alienation is laced with his indelible moments of crackpot poetry: a writhing premature baby, a dog garlanded in a plastic lei, and that unforgettable dancing chicken. Wisconsin became Herzog’s shooting location because of the director’s fascination with Ed Gein, the infamous killer convicted twenty years earlier for murder, cannibalism, and body snatching.