Penelope Gilliatt
Last Updated on June 7, 2022, by eNotes Editorial. Word Count: 143
["Stroszek"] is a brilliant, poetic film about a man's clutch on a difficult existence. Stroszek's story shows us the bitterness of exile, and the rewards of concentration on singular tasks misapprehended by the common run. He could strike only those in step as a man of folly. And, in Scheitz, Herzog has created one of the most fragile and sweet-natured characters to be seen in any contemporary European movie: a man of infinite mental fortitude and physical frailty, who could be blown away like a skeletal leaf. Herzog has made a funny, very serious film about a tonic sort of nobility practiced in territory as foreign to his characters' cast of mind as the world is to the premature baby's. (pp. 74, 77)
Penelope Gilliatt, "The Current Cinema: 'Stroszek'," in The New Yorker (© 1977 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.), Vol. LIII, No. 23, July 25, 1977, pp. 74, 77-9.∗
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