Stroszek

Saw the film Stroszek thanks to my friend Leo being involved in a festival of Werner Herzog films. Inevitably Herzogian, a bleak but yet sporadically comic and often poignant film about an societal outsider, talented yet defunct, fragile and insightful. The film is undeniably odd, however I find that the power of these films is that Herzog manages to find subjects on the very periphery of our culture, and yet these people identify with us all. I found myself drawn to the character, intensely sympathetic to his hurt.

I hear that Ian Curtis committed suicide after watching this film, a fact a find easy to believe. Despite this, i did find moments of hope within, not least that the actor who played the lead, despite much of the story having parrallels with his own life, actually released an album of his own recently. A note of hope within the moody landscape often presented by Herzog.