Every Man for Himself & God Against All
AKA The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
AKA The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser
Many people in the U.S. only know him for his more recent work like Grizzly Man, but
Werner Herzog has pretty much been doing character studies on odd, interesting and provocative people for over 25 years.
Herzog cast Bruno S., (a real life mystery man whose own life parallels the story) as foundling Kaspar Hauser, the young man without a past who showed up in a Nuremberg one day in the late 19th Century.
The film is stark in it’s portrayal of alienation, but with a life and humanity all it’s own. The look of the film is one distinctive to films of the 1970s a time when beautiful technical advancements in color film had been made over just a few years earlier – and Herzog takes full advantage of this to show the quaint, picturesque German landscape.
While I think it fall short of achieving the heights the best Herzog film have, many critics disagree with me, ranking it as his best, and on many top 10 lists. The film has been remarkably influential, influencing movies as diverse as Julien Donkey Boy, and Castle Freak.
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