The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser: The Liveblog

Hi there, all!

Superbowl weekend. Usually I take two days to make a single post, but with the festivities around this weekend, I would rather get something up quickly. I've been thinking of using this format every now and then, so let's test it out: I will be liveblogging Werner Herzog's The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. Never seen it before, but I've blogged about other Herzog films before. Consider this as though I was tweeting these thoughts individually. Here goes something (hopefully!)

• Hoo boy. It's gonna be interesting to do this for a movie with subtitles. All those years of learning to type without looking at a keyboard - finally worth something!
• I like that this film was introduced via scrolling text explaining Hauser's life (discovered not knowing how to speak, not knowing how to walk, no history, no name, etc,). It really lets us get on with the thing - imagine if every movie used the first half of its trailer to rush through the setup before the action began.
• Strange note I realized before starting: there is no trivia page on IMDB, and this is, last I checked, Herzog's highest-rated work on the site. A movie as mysterious as its character...
• Ah, some wonderful still shots of the village, fields, etc. Such a great eye for these little details, and the elegant opera brings the perfect ethereal mood.
• Same goes for the shots of townsfolk looking at Kaspar and the diagetic sounds that have been paired with them.
  
• Bruno S. as a screen presence, is a find. I may have mentioned that in writing about Strozek last week, but there's just something fascinating about him: always nervous and not exactly "endearing," but something a standard deviation removed from that. It's different from the contagious intensity of Kinski or his work with Christian Bale and Nic Cage.
• On the subject of Nic Cage: doesn't his recent off-camera life sound like a Herzog movie? A world famous actor buys a broken European castles with the intention of fixing them up, then goes broke? I hope one of them thinks of making it into a movie.
• It's impossibly endearing when Bruno or the children look off camera. It's like the next words out of their mouths are "What do I do next?"
• I don't think anything has made me smile so much all day as Kaspar making a cat walk on two feet.
• The use of animals in this movie is freaking fantastic. I would say the parallels between Kaspar and the animals is a little heavy-handed, but this movie has some really cool shots of animals. And what is up with that camel!?! What the fuck - is that what they look like?
• I have little to say about this scene where Kaspar is being taught religion except that it is an excellent scene, both in concept and execution.
• This scene trying to explain inanimate objects is better. Go apple!
  
• Yesterday-ish, a couple of people I follow on Twitter were saying that Herzog's movies feature somewhat stilted acting. I propose this: it is not the acting that is stilted, but the situations. The actors in many of his movies are reacting as natural as they can while knowing they've got a camera watching.
• I feel like I've seen something like this before, where someone is corrected but their "misspeak" reveals some kind of truth. Yet, there's still something very moving about this film and its tone.
  
• Helping the dreamlike atmosphere: the untraceable passage of time. I was shocked earlier when it said Kaspar had been in society for two years. Now, he's learned to read music and play some piano, and no one's mentioned how many years it's been.
• I may have to rewatch this movie with the swans in mind - there's a definite motif there, but I've got to focus in on it to see what that's about.
• Oohh, that was actually pretty perfect timing: I was just typing that the second half of this movie loses some of the natural-ness of the beginning, so it's less charming. But then it switches to a story being told by Kaspar.
• Okay, I thought the story about the procession up the mountain through death would be a good ending. Then I thought the story about the caravan led by a blind man would be better. But the actual ending is superb thematically.

I hope this has been as readable as anything. This has been fun writing and watching a truly remarkable film in a lot of ways. Like most of Herzog's films, I can't wait to watch it with commentary sometime (though I have yet to actually listen to the commentaries).

"Thank you all for listening to me. I am tired now."
-Kaspar Hauser