road’s end
by Douglas Messerli
Werner
Herzog (writer and director) Stroszek / 1977
The prostitute of Stroszek, Eva (Eva Mattes), is controlled by two violent pimps, who
abuse not only her customers, but the girl herself. And when the slow-minded
Stoszek invites her to come live the apartment that has been kept for him, in
his absence, by an elderly neighbor, Scheitz (Clemens Scheitz), the two roughs
come looking for him as well.
Like Biberkopf, again, Stroszek has little
to offer in the way of vocational skills; the little money he makes is from
playing in glockenspiel and accordion in the courtyards of housing complexes,
relying on the goodwill of the denizens.
For the Wisconsin these visit is not the
lovely farmland dotted with lakes and green hills, but a mythical flat rustbelt
wasteland, Railroad Flats, whose major reason for existence is the railroad
tracks and cars that dominate its landscape.
Pre-made houses, trucked in like
trailers, seem to be the only sense of permanence, as Bruno goes to work in a
garage and Eva serves up coffee and steak at the local truckstop. Scheitz goes
slightly mad, convinced he has finally been able to register the animal
magnetism described by Franz Mesmer.
The US into which this inverted trinity
has stumbled is filled with more soulless folk, it appears, than even was
Berlin of Weimar Republic. What’s even worse is that the inhabitants of this
empty world believe that they still live in Eden or, at least, that their
world, like Candide’s is the best of possible worlds. The radios belt out tunes
of tortured hope and desire, while those listening to them are gradually
drained of all dreams and hope.
When the inevitable happens, Eva has
already skipped town with the truck drivers on their way to Vancouver, with the
symbolic father and son left to watch their dream home auctioned off and driven
away, soon followed by the television set. The two, facing off into the cold
Wisconsin landscape, have nothing left.
Like those in so many American legends,
they use their last few dollars to purchase a pair rifles, intent on a bank
robbery; but even their grand drama turns into a comedy when they find the bank
closed and take their anger out, instead, on a nearby barbershop, whose owner
quickly offers up the few dollars he has in the till.
Instead of attempting an escape, the duo
enter the local grocery store to pick up a frozen chicken and few bottles of
beer. When the police enter the store, they quickly arrest Scheitz without even
seeing Stoszek, who might as well have become invisible.
Stealing the truck the garage in which
he works, he heads off to an Indian-owned hotel and amusement arcade, probably
near the tourist world of the Wisconsin Dells, where the truck sputters to a
dead stop. Frozen bird still in hand, he spends his last few dollars on lunch,
speaking with a German-born tourist before he returns to the parking lot, where
he propels the truck into a
circular pattern before its engine explodes. Across the way he enters the
entertainment arcade which features a real rabbit driving a toy fire truck and
two chickens, one of whom plays the piano while the other dances. The other
major feature of this absurd funhouse seems to be an ever-circling ski-lift
that takes it riders up a painted tableau of a winter landscape before
returning them back to ground zero. And the movie ends with these two images of
meaningless repetition, the chicken unable to stop its mad little stomps, while
Bruno rides up his magic mountain from whence he will inevitably be
returned—unless, as in so many American stories, he is not shot to death by the
policeman who quickly arrives, radioing into headquarters: "We've got a
truck on fire, can't find the switch to turn the ski lift off, and can't stop
the dancing chicken. Send an electrician." Such a line might make one howl
out in laughter, if it weren’t so very sad. The gentle musician, we realize,
has literally come to road’s end.
Los Angeles,
September 27, 2015
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