Film: Woyzeck
Year of production: 1979
UK Release date: 2nd September 2002
Distributor: Anchor Bay
Certificate: 15
Running time: 80 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann, Willy Semmelrogge, Josef Bierbichler
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: West Germany
Language: German
Review by: Rob Joy
Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski’s collaborations are now infamous, and their third, Woyzeck, the adaption by the director of Georg Büchner’s 1837 unfinished play, is an interesting addition to their partnership. Both Herzog and Kinski tend towards extremes and this adaption is no exception, director and actor handling Büchner’s themes of poverty, class, society, love and madness.
Woyzeck (Kinski) is a poor soldier living a relatively penniless existence in a small military town. The film begins with his exercise regime; he is dressed in an ill-fitting military tunic that is to be his costume throughout, being kicked to the ground with each incomplete push-up by a faceless superior. It’s immediately apparent from the look on his face that Woyzeck isn’t simply tired, but almost worn away. Along with his captain, who belittles him for his lack of morals due to his poor living circumstances, Woyzeck carries out extra tasks for the doctor, being restricted to only eating peas for four months as a medical experiment to earn enough money to support his family. The experiments have already taken their toll on Woyzeck, weakening him physically and mentally.
Woyzeck’s partner, Marie, with whom he has a child out of wedlock, constantly flirts with the drum major. We see them first as he parades around the square looking up to her at a window, then later at her home, after they meet, while she is accompanying Woyzeck and their son to a carnival show. Herzog implies in this scene that the two sleep together, the drum major initially being rather overt and forceful. As Woyzeck’s condition worsens, he discovers Marie’s infidelity and attempts to confront the drum major in an inn after he sees the two dancing together.
These storylines play out interspersed with scenes of Woyzeck and his colleague Andres. These are used to further show Woyzeck’s decline into paranoia and madness: his nervous disposition; his language - poetic, cryptic and pessimistic. Andres offers little advice other than to visit the infirmary, but Woyzeck is set on stopping the drum major and Marie from being together, and his madness leads to drastic measures, the climax played out in a beautiful but harrowing slow motion shot, the speed of which is repeated at the finale where we briefly hear the authorities take on Woyzeck’s ultimate actions...
Büchner’s play was fragmented and incomplete, more a set of scenes to be compiled and finalised. It has been interpreted on stage, film and in song with each artist rendering their own order of the final piece, though they share many similarly sequenced sections. Herzog certainly makes a cohesive story from the fragments and stays faithful to much of the dialogue, but he transcends the original text. His additions, including the drum major’s strong, violent advances on Marie (in the play, the affair is a fiction, delivered to torment Woyzeck by his captain and the doctor to push their experiments on him even further and tease him for his lower-class background) help the film move along and change the focus a little.
Poverty and the treatment of the poor by other classes are big pre-occupations of the play, but Herzog, or more obviously Kinski, renders this version more clearly about the descent into insanity due to the circumstances and less about the circumstances themselves. His performance is equally intense and fragile. His panicked, desperate look contrasts wonderfully with the arrogance and confidence of almost all of the other characters, the only exception being Marie (an excellent Eva Mattes), who is at once a strong and weak woman, aware of her failings to remain faithful to Woyzeck, but desperate to supersede her class and income, the drum major being her potential ticket up the social ladder.
Production began just several days after the star and director finished work on the remake of Murnau’s Nosferatu, and Kinski’s tired appearance lends itself excellently to his portrayal of the tormented title character: sunken, worried eyes, and a hollow look about his face. The pace of the film owes much to its use of long takes in many scenes, in keeping with the theatrical origins, Herzog uses the camera’s potential: allowing characters within a shot to make good use of their space, approaching the camera, giving the audience a close up for dialogue, while action takes place behind them. The camera is often in motion, albeit invisible on the whole, and the action on-screen captivating enough to surpass the need to cut, tightly choreographed to fit into the shot. The advantages of producing the film like this were apparent to Herzog, who shot and edited the film in under a month. It’s economy works in its favour stylistically, presenting an incredibly objective viewpoint for the audience, never showing a character’s point of view and never cutting within a scene to a close up, but always to another shot to continue the action.
The picturesque town (Czech, doubling for German) and surrounding countryside are not akin to the usually more extreme circumstances that Herzog tends to shoot in, particularly in his work with Kinski, but they provide a more sleepy setting, striking in its quaintness and natural beauty, for the horrors that the film contains. A beautiful sequence with Kinski running, out of breath, through a poppy field about to break out into bloom before he hears voices, coming from the ground, from above, within, is striking in its simplicity and beauty, as well as its portrayal of something that could have, in the hands of another actor or director, quickly descended into parody of sorts and certainly diverted from the distressing nature that Kinski fills the scene with.
The score is provided by Fiedelquartett Telc and is very apt for the setting - an almost off-key string quartet with a heavily Germanic sound - it elevates certain scenes and jars intentionally and effectively in others and, along with the setting, gives a more authentic feel for the era.
The supporting cast are exceptional. As mentioned above, Eva Mattes brings a duality to Marie; her guilt at her natural flirtatiousness alongside the misery of her penniless position comes across, and she embodies well the frustration of being unable to suppress her behaviour. One scene in particular of her telling a story to a group of children before Woyzeck leads her off is particularly touching, the loneliness she talks of clearly being the loneliness she feels, isolated by her own actions and class.
Contradictions are written in to almost all of the characters. The captain (Wolfgang Reichmann) excels, extolling his own virtues and morals one moment, while being entirely uncertain of his place in the world the next, and all the while making sure Woyzeck knows his (much lower) place socially and mentally. Both the captain and the doctor (Willy Semmelrogge) use language with an air of authority. Their moralising and scientific justification for everything gives them an unfulfilled existence: while checking his own pulse to calm himself after an outburst, the doctor says: “Anger is unhealthy, unscientific,” despite having spent the scene telling Woyzeck that mankind is free, able to as he wants when he wants. Woyzeck’s use of language on the other hand is far more poetic, colourful and rich.
Kinski delivers with a determination and seriousness (though there are notable inclusions of humour, both light and dark) which is relentless, pulling the audience deeper into his character. He often references the class struggle he is part of, feeling that he is doomed to a life of work and toil, telling the captain early on: “If we ever got to heaven, they’d make us work the thunder.” The final fifteen minutes in particular really allow Kinski to shine, the emotion in his expression and actions really carrying the longer takes, his visceral actions and appearance during the climax cementing Woyzeck as one of his finest performances.
Herzog delivers an unusual film for him. Despite Kinski’s performance, it’s a little more subdued and understated than some of Herzog's other efforts. In part this may be due to the adaption from a stage-play and some of the restrictions that entails, or possibly the approach taken to its filming and structure. It is certainly not ‘typical’ Herzog, if there could be such a thing. The cast excel, and although Woyzeck is not universally loved, it’s a fine literary work in its own right, and Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski cast a slightly different light on its conventional perception, bringing a new depth and intensity they have become acclaimed for to Büchner’s tale of class, madness and mayhem. RJ
No comments:
Post a Comment