Werner Herzog
La Ballata di Stroszek

Released from prison after two and a half years, the alcoholic street musician Bruno Stroszek—an innocent forty-year-old of Hungarian descent—returns to seek out his friend Eva, a prostitute who endures the abuse of two reckless and unscrupulous pimps. Despite his good intentions, unable to build a normal daily life and quit drinking, Bruno resumes with little success playing the accordion in courtyards while contending with the brutality and malice of those in his own unfortunate world. The umpteenth beating of Eva and the constant mockery suffered by Bruno convince the two to follow their elderly neighbor, a pianist, to the United States, who has been repeatedly invited there by a nephew with an auto repair shop in Wisconsin.

Gathering the necessary money for the trip thanks to Eva's last independent tricks, the three fly overseas and find themselves catapulted with hopes and enthusiasm into a reality that is certainly not that of the great metropolises and the so-called "American dream." The nephew of the old friend lives in the cold countryside on the outskirts of a small town, amidst untended fields, prefabricated houses, and a rural-urban landscape that seems unchanged for decades. However, the perception of a positive change does not abandon them: Eva is hired as a waitress in a road restaurant mainly frequented by truckers, and Bruno begins working as a mechanic's assistant in the workshop. Soon, the two manage to obtain bank credit and buy a beautiful prefab house. However, the impact of the harsh life of that land soon manifests in its more subtle aspects. There is a lack of interaction with the community—especially for Bruno, who barely speaks a few words of English—and a lack of contact with the miraculous spirit that had projected them towards a future of mild well-being and serenity in Europe. The dialogue within the couple becomes vague, the money is not enough to meet the mortgage payments, and soon the bank auctions off Bruno's few possessions. Eva, tired of that demoralizing approach, decides to head to Canada with a trucker she met at the restaurant.

In a fit of despair, convinced they are being pursued by a demonic and merciless System, Bruno and the elderly neighbor grab a rifle, determined to rob a bank. In reality, they manage only to rob a barber, and the old man is immediately caught by the police. Bruno escapes, taking the tow truck from the shop and traveling north on progressively damp and foggy roads, through pine forests and increasingly foreign wooden villages. His voluntary ending in the face of the failure of every revenge and desire for redemption will be a rifle shot while sitting on a disused ski lift he has brought back to life.

"La ballata di Stroszek" is one of the most lucid and ruthless portraits of the marginal (and marginalized) man who remains alone with his destiny without finding any way to redeem himself and improve his condition. Deceived by the false and stereotypical promise that things can only get better elsewhere, even disillusioned by the awareness of his limitations, a weak and sensitive man like Bruno flees from the world of reformers and slums in which he grew up when he is already an adult marked by the saddest and most dishonorable experiences. And convinced that the presence of a companion might provide some stability to his desire to start anew, he faces the condition of the emigrant with determined calmness, even if deep down his persecutory view of the money society does not die. He is an artist; and the cheeky smile that accompanies his love ballads poorly aligns with the crude opportunism of pimps and prostitutes, as well as with the traditionalist American lifestyle of a town light-years away from Chicago or New York. The hopes once embraced with trust quickly slip through his fingers, and he finds himself abandoned once again by his woman and everyone else, ending up on the other side of legality once again. Obviously, without any real way out.

In 1976, Herzog shot his first film explicitly set in modern civilization, using a semi-documentary style and a cast where the only professional actress is the director's ex-wife, Eva Matthes (Eva). Dividing between the familiar hues of a Europe still cloaked in the Cold War and the pioneering suggestions of a part of the USA that survives unchanged, the great German filmmaker writes a page of cinema that indulges in no sensationalism; rather, he seeks to portray, with a cinema vérité approach, the purgatory and hell of a man who probably never even dreamed of paradise. The disturbing sense of domination and gratuitous malice exercised personally by the criminal protectors in the first part of the film is later replaced by the icy sensation of physical and verbal isolation in which the three immigrants find themselves; where domination no longer targets personally but becomes inevitable and automatic for all those who do not have the means and cunning to adapt and make a leap in quality. The polite and laconic manner in which the bank officer talks to Bruno and Eva, the incomprehensible mimed conversations of the often inebriated mechanics, and the desolate bareness of the winter landscape become the surreal backdrop of a drift with no return, a reversed awakening from reality to a dream that has all its logics and, once the illusion dissipates, makes the inevitability of its negative outcome glaringly clear.

The acting performance of Bruno, which is of great effect and empathy, becomes more credible and human than any Hollywood-trained professional and infuses his difficult soul into the character without interruption. The character is truly a reflection of himself, and Herzog directs him without indulgence or exploitation, modeling the story around him; thus enriching it with numerous narrative cues that nonetheless draw upon the reality of the facts and the places, showing us an America of grotesque and extreme folklorism (the auctioneer, the trained animals in coin-op windows, the missing man with the tractor, the land neighbors who for years have been waiting to shoot each other).

As a bitter parable of our times, "La ballata di Stroszek" remains a highly relevant masterpiece and touches closely a vast segment of humanity that, even today, more than forty years later, must face the same struggles as Bruno with personal redemption and the futile aspiration to a less miserable life.