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Versione 1
Rating: It's 1968.
I imagine a young Werner Herzog, holding the story of the nineteenth-century German writer, Herr Carl Joachim Friedrich Ludwig von Arnim, a semi-forgotten aristocratic offspring of the fervent ongoing romantic movement.
And The Mad Invalid of Fort Ratonneau must be very compelling, at least in some parts, if Herzog decides to draw inspiration from this short story for his first feature film.
In truth - perhaps - it may not even be that compelling considering the slightly rosy ending that takes darker shades in the film. After all, a story of madmen with a happy ending has never been seen...
In the same days he was absorbed in reading the story, I also imagine that the director came across an early 1900s photograph of his grandfather, Mr. Rudolf Herzog, an archeologist at the Neratzia Castle on the island of Kos in Greece. Between 1900 and 1907, the grandfather had profitably dealt with translating some ancient engravings found among the ruins of the Castle, which had been built in medieval times by the Hospitaller Knights using lithic material stolen from nearby temples, and he lived there for a long time to study those artifacts on-site, on the beautiful Aegean island.
Of course, young Werner, not yet born at that time, could never have visited his grandfather at the fort for a few days. Perhaps he harbored the desire to see that mythical place, which was likely talked about during family meals, with its walls “with feet,” the minaret of Gazi Hassan Pasha, and who knows what other wonders remained hidden. Or perhaps, conversely, he had been there with his grandfather after the war and was struck by the beauty of the place, seeking any excuse to return. To combine business with pleasure, as they say in such cases.
The fact is that the story of a French soldier set in Napoleonic France, written by a convinced anti-Napoleonic with likely political intentions, becomes the story of a German soldier during World War II, in Greece, in Kos. And the war could be any war, even though it isn't. After all, Germany's invasion of Greece was a shameful reality that a German intellectual, in 1968, could have thought about, as a heavy burden on the chest. At the same time, it takes on a deeper meaning and perhaps reevaluates the “German soldier,” in the sense that a war, from whichever perspective you look at it, is materially made by ordinary men, defenseless in their individuality violated by the act of war, with the same dreams, needs, affections, ambitions, fears.
Speculations are rife.
It's 1942 (the same year W. Herzog was born) the temporal setting during which the events unfold, and it's summer, but everything begins earlier, when the young soldier Stroszek is wounded in combat near Chania, in Crete (presumably during the Battle of Crete that took place between May and June of 1941).
He is gravely wounded, with head injuries, and at death's door. A Greek girl, Nora (an Italian name meaning “creature that has mercy,” likely a reference to the previous and no less disastrous Italian fascist military occupation compared to the Nazi German one), takes care of him and he heals. The convalescence must have been long, we do not know for sure how long, but the two end up falling in love, and by the time of our story, she now speaks German.
As compensation for his injury, at the mercy of a superior, the soldier Stroszek is sent to a seaside fort (Neratzia Castle, indeed) with Nora, now his wife. He is tasked with guarding an ammunition depot set up there, and his companions are soldiers Becker and Meinhard, also assigned to the fort due to wounds sustained in battle.
Their life passes peacefully; they live in a town far from clashes and bombings, even partisans are almost invisible and distant presences.
They engage in fort maintenance work, cockroach hunting, fishing, and teaching the German language to Greek children. Becker is a philologist, the only scholar in the group who spends his time at the fort deciphering Greek engravings from the temples (the same ones that grandfather Herzog studied). The most engaging activity, which involves everyone in the same manner, is the handmade production of fireworks with gunpowder stolen from the munitions they “guard.” The fireworks are never set off and are accumulated inside the fort for “unspecified” reasons, according to the unreasonable will of Stroszek, who is the “project manager” of this idle activity. Certainly not a violent activity, not for soldiers at war in 1942 anyway.
But it is known that a man deprived of goals suffers, and young Stroszek is no exception, always a dreamer (before leaving for the war, he nurtured great ambitions of traveling to distant lands), he begins to suffer from depression that manifests as alienation from his companions and his wife.
He seems to almost prefer the company of a soldier pianist (I leave it to you to discover who that is) who leaves him full of doubts, or a gypsy who passed by to seek overnight shelter at the fort. The gypsy is a dignified and extremely charming man, part philosopher, part magician and Sovereign of Peoples who continually change direction, unlike any other - predictable - people on Earth. The condition of being a wanderer allows him to continually introduce new experiences into his life as a street artist, living in solitude searching for his “people.” Everyone takes a liking to him (Yet the unnamed Nazis, the Germans, have been exterminating the gypsies for some years, but none of the film’s characters speak of it. Is Herzog taking a stand and dissociating himself from what was done by his people to others?).
Stroszek gradually matures some ideas, but we don't know what they are. Could it be his miserably empty life that becomes the worm in his mind? Perhaps this is just part of a much bigger problem. What is certain is that due to that "worm," he will start his personal war, rebellion against everyone and everything: the windmills (yes! those), the sun, his companions, other soldiers, his wife and the whole country become his enemy. Alone against everyone. To feel alive, at least a little. Perhaps that's it.
One has to watch their back from him at every moment; there doesn't seem to be any apparent sense to his actions. A poor donkey pays the price, anticipating by a few years some famous images of dead animals in Fata Morgana, abandoned to dry in the sun... Just like his companion on that unfortunate day in Crete...
Vast spaces in which the few characters, as tiny as ants, move and can't help but call to mind the setting of Dino Buzzati's The Tartar Steppe.
Ellipsis is the cinematic device constantly employed. Some phases of the memory (or madness) are emphasized through music with the reintroduction of rebetiko music - originally the Greek equivalent of Portuguese fado or American blues - by composer Stavros Xarchakos, an artifice that gives those moments a dreamy and sublime value but also - and especially - sad and resigned... or desperate.
I don't want to say more about this story that begins and ends in a cloud of dust, but I fear that someone, after 52 years, still hasn't seen it... yet there is so much to say that I find myself getting lost in it. Innumerable details convinced me of the political and immensely human value of this budding work of the director's poetics.
A man, Werner Herzog, who knows how to say things beyond appearances, beyond the surface.
Even at just 26 years old.
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