Woyzeck

Price: 39.95 AUD

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In WOYZECK, Werner Herzog (AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD) crafts yet another highly stylized and dispassionate tale of madness and obsession and for the first time in his oeuvre injects a love story (tortured though it is) into the equation. Based on Georg Büchner's unfinished play, the film is a dark study of a lowly German flunky (Klaus Kinski) who toils as an orderly in the army. Cowering pathetically in front of his superiors, who constantly push him around, he struggles and rushes through his daily duties. In order to earn much-needed extra money, Woyzeck volunteers for a local doctor's strange experiments, which require Woyzeck to stay on a strict diet of peas and push him to murderous insanity. In addition, Woyzeck has a son with a lusty young prostitute, Marie (Eva Mattes), who is easily seduced by a stout drum major. Publicly humiliated by the officer, Woyzeck is propelled into a rage. Herzog pushes his use of static cinematography and extremely stylized acting almost to the point of abstraction as he evokes Woyzeck's struggles with social and sexual oppression that lead to his eventual journey into humiliation and madness.