Films I Watched This Week — Apr 28 – May 4, 2025
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974)
Werner Herzog’s masterful film The Engima of Kaspar Hauser tells a historical true story about a young man barely able to speak and walk, who mysteriously appeared in town square early one morning during the year 1828 in Nuremberg, Germany. The townspeople found him clutching the Bible in one hand and an anonymous letter in the other which explained that he had been held captive in a dungeon his entire life, and only recently was he released, for reasons unknown. After the townspeople exhibit him in a sideshow attraction, this strange young man is taken in and studied by a psychologist, who tries to educate and civilize him, and throughout the years this man will learn to read, write, and even play the piano.
Herzog slightly blurs the line between what is fact and what is fiction, and he seems to care less about the accuracy of the story and more about the transcendent power of his character and it’s images. These striking dream-like behaviors and images act on the emotional core of the mentally challenged character of Kasper and of the strange offbeat townspeople who inhabit the town of Nuremberg. These images might, in fact, seem unrelated to the story, and yet Herzog constructs them in such a way that reflects Kaspars teachings of 19th-century German high-society.
The actors Herzog has always chosen for his roles have to be able to create a form of visual intensity, and so the sudden discovery of non-actor Bruno Schleinstein was a revelation. Bruno was born the son of a prostitute and, unfortunately, spent much of his youth in a mental institution. He was largely a self-taught musician who, over the years, developed considerable skill on the piano and accordion while sustaining himself financially working as a forklift driver. When Bruno first caught Herzog’s attention, Herzog knew immediately this young man embodied the exact qualities for the character of Kaspar Hauser, and because of that made The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser one of the most fascinating character studies in all of film history.
Anora (2024)
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