The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

(written 8/23/07, 11:14pm)

2nd time.

The opening shot of this movie is, I think, better than anything else that follows it, but not because the rest isn't really good. The opening shot is one of the most pure examples of that thing that I mostly only find in Herzog movies that I rarely find anywhere else. There are some other good examples of it throughout the movie, but the opening shot presents it without any connection to anything else, so it's not diluted in any way by the narrative around it.

Could a whole film be made of nothing but these moments? To what extent is "Fata Morgana" an example of that? I don't know... I need to watch "Fata Morgana" again...

The German title is kind of amazing, but I guess "The Enigma" is really a better title. Hard to say, though. I like the way the German title works on a more purely poetic level, I'd say. Or, at least, an associative level. It's not just a name for the movie but adds something to the meaning of it. (meaning? ugh...)

The weird flattened shots that are maybe supposed to be through Kaspar's eyes are also good examples of that Herzogian thing; also, the scene with the blind guy playing the piano, and that amazing little song he sings. I wish I knew if it was really a song.

Even though the penultimate scene with the doctors satisfying their perverse curiosity by taking Kaspar's body apart and dissecting his brain is an obvious Romantic argument by Herzog against the dispassion of science and I probably wouldn't agree with him about it exactly, the scene works in exactly the way he wants it to. Those scientists are fucking dicks. Put Kaspar back together!

Another example of pre-Lynching Lynch: the scene when Kaspar runs back to the doctor after being stabbed, with his arms in the weird position the whole time he's running and his mouth open in a silent scream (is it silent? I definitely remember expecting it to be silent, but now that I think about it he may have actually been making some nows when he ran on screen, just not a normal "OHMYGODIVEBEENSTABBED" noise.) Bruno S. pulls it off exactly.

Overall, though, I just can't buy into Herzog's argument that Kaspar is somehow "smarter" than the nineteenth-century intellectual straw men Herzog surrounds him with. It's a definite example of Herzog getting in his own way. Sure, there were many problems with nineteenth-century thought, but trying to make it like someone who just has pure thought, undiluted by society, will naturally turn into a person who says things that make more sense or are more amusing to a twentieth-century audience is kind of silly. Things we think now will seem kind of dull to people in a hundred years; not necessarily because they are dull, but because that's just how these things work.

Also, like The Elephant Man or many other movies, this is an example of allowing the audience to congratulate itself for being morally superior to "humanity," by presenting an intriguing character who is obviously misunderstood by the cretins around him. The audience gets to feel good about itself for understanding in a way none of the other characters in the film do, and it's not because the film has opened up a way into the character in such an effective way, but just because that's how the film's set up. In The Elephant Man and, I think, most examples of this type of thing, it's tolerance for the grotesque or, more generally, "tolerance" in general, that the audience gets to feel good about. Here, it's more along the lines of seeing through the superficialities of intellectual thought. I just can't trust that type of thing unless the film has tried equally as hard to make the other viewpoint as understandable, but I'm not sure if that could really be done.

Aguirre, though, doesn't fall into this habit of forcing the audience into identification with some character. The audience most likely does identify the most with the dark-haired chick in Aguirre, but she's not really a major character. Anyway, it's not like Herzog isn't capable of making a movie in such a way that doesn't try to make the audience feel good about itself, but that's obvious how much of Kaspar Hauser works.

Which is sort of like something I remember thinking about while watching it this time: that this is one of the few Herzog movies where part of what is so fascinating about the movie is the psychology of the protagonist. In that way, I suppose, the film kind of has to try to make the audience identify with Kaspar, so that the opening up of his mind can be as fascinating as Herzog wanted it to be. But in the end I guess I have to say I prefer the more Herzogian stuff in other Herzog movies. Need a better way of describing that...