tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14575780.post1735873219539936203..comments2024-01-31T18:37:07.424+00:00Comments on The Agitation of the Mind: StroszekNeil Fulwoodhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14686296295535235988noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14575780.post-41698054489040334902011-06-21T02:49:06.195+01:002011-06-21T02:49:06.195+01:00Werner Herzog’s “Stroszek” (1977) ...Werner Herzog’s “Stroszek” (1977) is a surrealistically stylized saga about the trio of European eccentrics’ awkward attempts to settle into American freedom. The film concentrates mainly on the psychological, not material problems of the emigrants, and, through analysis of their encounters with life provides thoughtful criticism of American viva-survivalism, money-fetishism, a lack of disinterested intellectual energy, excess of consumerist ecstasy, and a drastic disproportion between a dominant physical relations with nature and a rudimentary spiritual one. The European refined but infantile narcissism meets the American rational but de-sublimated one with tragic consequences for the main characters whose emotional refinement and “poetic” non-practicality turn against them in an atmosphere of pop-sensibility and fake prosperity. The film analyses two types of socio-political power – traditional (direct and obvious), and the innovative and post-modern - financially and economically manipulative. Herzog’s imagery in this film delivers existential meaning with socio-psychological straightforwardness and yet is aesthetically independent from it and “fetishistically” enjoying itself with all its beauty. Visual images in “Stroszek” intrigue and astonish us while their meaning makes us bitterly laugh. The film forces us to question ourselves as Europeans (by our past), as Americans (by our present and future) and as human beings in general. Please, visit: www.actingoutpolitics.com to read the essay about “Stroszek” – “A Surrealistically Comic Parable about European Escapees to American Freedom: From Europe to US – From Narcissistic Self-image to Narcissistic Systemic Logic” (with analysis of clips and stills from the film), and also articles about films by Godard, Resnais, Bergman, Kurosawa, Bunuel, Bresson, Antonioni, Pasolini, Alain Tanner, Cavani, Bertolucci, Fassbinder, Wenders, Rossellini, Moshe Mizrahi and Ronald Neame. <br />By Victor Enyutinkatiahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18386075177018131868noreply@blogger.com