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31 out of 35 people found the following review useful: My Favorite Kinski/Herzog, 2 June 2003 Author: chexmix from Brooklyn, NY
I seriously need to re-watch *all* of Herzog's films, but in the flicker of memory this is my favorite.For me, the static camera-work fits the hothouse atmosphere of Buchner's play perfectly. I think especially of the early scene where Woyzeck is shaving the Captain, and the camera doesn't move *at all* for what seems like forever ... technically, it is reminiscent of some of Jim Jarmusch's early films where the camera is hilariously static. Here, it is horrifyingly static.And Kinski has never been more possessed, more demonically almost out of control. I just can't watch him, particularly during the intense (slow motion!) climactic sequence, and then "come back" to Hollywood movies and watch ... well, say, Kevin Costner. Sorry. Guess I'm a snob.Finally, the strange, sawing music just sends me over the top every time, my skin tingling. To me this is an absolutely unforgettable, brilliant film experience. It disturbs the living hell out of me, and I like that.
23 out of 26 people found the following review useful: Intense, Powerful, Disturbing, 5 August 2000 Author: (casey_cleary@hotmail.com) from Washington, USA
One of Werner Herzog's most unrecognized films, Woyzeck is utterly brilliant.Few films succeed at portraying frustration and madness as much as this. Among them are Scorsese's "Taxi Driver" and Lodge Kerrigan's "Clean Shaven"Klaus Kinski's performance is so good that just watching him is tiring, and the viewer is left anticipating when he will finally snap. Few films stick with me as much as this one and the sped up opening sequence is one of the most memorable opening scenes of any film I've seen.
17 out of 21 people found the following review useful: Kinski, 1 August 2004 Author: turing77 from United States
This movie is a mere bagatelle when contrasted with Herzog's other herculean efforts on Aquirre and Fitzcarraldo. The story is simple and quaint, the scale small, but the performance by Kinski is titanic. The sequence where Woyzeck murders his wife is absolutely unbelievable. The scene is set in slow-motion to music, so all acting is visual. With his face, Kinski becomes a man who has killed his wife. This isn't acting: this is reality. It is one of the most impressive and heart-wrenching things ever captured on film. No wonder Herzog, that stickler for authenticity, kept coming back to Kinski, no matter how intolerable the man became. Eva Mattes as Frau Woyzeck is luminous, and the photography is exceptional. As with all Herzog works, there is a feast of imagery for the eyes.
13 out of 16 people found the following review useful: Inspiring Acting on Part of Klaus Kinski, 18 May 2001 Author: marquis de cinema from Boston, MA
The opening fast motion sequence is an inspiring piece of film making. Filmed with much humor and viciousness. What gives the scene a realistic touch is the fact the soldier was really kicking and physically abusing the actor because Klaus Kinski had told him to do it. This scene sets up the story for the rest of the film. Also indicates the abuse the main character will take ranging from his wife to his superior officers.Woyzeck(1979) delves into the theme of man vs nature extensively thoughout the movie. Woyzeck is a man who fights hard to keep his sanity intact. He has a fight with nature because to be with nature for him is to lose his sanity. The theme of man vs nature is a main motif in most of Werner Herzog's work. In the end the main character loses out to nature in a big and scary way.A engrossing tragedy of epic proportions. The movie is tragic because the main character never develops any self will until he becomes totally insane. Another thing that makes the film a tragedy is the depths the main character plunges after taking the sort of garbage he has to endured from people around him. Woyzeck is in the traditional of tragic figures like Oedipus Rex and other famous Greek and Roman literary legends. Finally, Woyzeck is a tragic figure because he is unable to be the person he wants to be.The acting of Klaus Kinski is awe inducing and thought provoking. Never before have I seen an actor risk his sanity with the courage and conviction of Klaus Kinski. Has been done before but rarely with this frightening realism. His performance here is just as jaw dropping as his forceful performance in Aguirre:The Wrath of God(1974). Film shows why he is the European Marlon Brando.The direction is unusually average for a Werner Herzog movie. His direction is brilliant in spots but there are times when the direction of Werner Herzog tends to bog down. May not be his most inspiring direction of his career but is not as bad as many people have commented on. This is probably the sole reason the film does not get the same respect as other Herzog classics. One thing positive about the direction of Werner Herzog here is he brings out the best acting in Klaus Kinski.The main character in Woyzeck(1979) has many things in common with other main characters from the Herzog-Kinski collaborations. One, the characters of Aguirre, Fitzcaraldo, Nosfertu, and Cobra Verde are surrounded by alienation and loneliness. Two, these characters fight a losing battle to stay one step ahead of insanity. Three, they are people who want power that they are unable to have. Four, They are vulnerable people who are attacked from all sides.There are many similarities between the films Signs of Life(1968) and Woyzeck(1979). One, the two main characters are low level soldiers who take much abuse from their superior. Two, both are about characters who have a conflict with nature. Three, both films deal with the themes of alienation and loneliness. Finally, in the two films the main characters surrender to nature and ultimately become insane.The musical score of Woyzeck has an atmospheric and gothic ring to it. Sets the mood and behavior for the main character played by Klaus Kinski. One of the best musical scores in a Werner Herzog feature film. The main theme title seems to set up what Woyzeck will do in each scene which he occupies. The use of the main theme during the murder scene is as effective as the music used in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho(1960).The murder scene in the climax is one that is daring and shocking in its depiction of intense violence. Although the scene is not very good it is still done with bravado and high level intensity. The murder represents Woyzeck's rebellion against the society which has pushed him around all his life. Its this scene that he comes to term with nature and loses his grip on sanity. The murder scene in Woyzeck(1979) is as shocking to watch as the murder scenes from Scarlet Street(1946), Psycho(1960), and Suspiria(1977).Originally written for the actor from The Mystery of kaspar Hauser but was changed because the direction thought the actor was too young to play the role of Woyzeck. Based on a famous play by well known German playwright, Georg Buchner. Filmed right after completing the picture, Nosferatu the Vampire(1979). The acting of Eva Mattes is filled with eroticism and tragedy. Anchor Bay did a wonderful job with the presentation of Woyzeck(1979) for DVD.
18 out of 27 people found the following review useful: Nightmare schizo-comedy - Shakespeare a la Herzog, 3 October 2005 Author: mstomaso from Vulcan
I will put the bottom line at the top so you can decide whether to bother reading on (and seeing this film).This is certainly not a film for everybody. If you find the following review annoying, and you feel as if you wasted time reading it - BY ALL MEANS - avoid seeing this film, you simply won't enjoy it.Another Herzog-Kinski masterwork, Woyzeck is one of the weirdest films of the 1970s. I do not use the word "weird" very often, but it is so appropriate for this film that an endless string of adjectives, adverbs and modifiers I would need to replace it seem thoroughly inadequate. Despite the vast and deep power and beauty of this film, I don't want to label it "good". Unlike some of the less surreal Herzog-Kinski collaborations, the amount of attention you pay to this film does not necessarily correspond to the amount of sense you will be able to make of it. Mostly, I think it's a film about psychosis - both personal psychosis (Woyzeck himself) and social psychosis (Woyzeck's miserable treatment at the hands of virtually everybody around him in his back-water town in Nazi occupied Poland).For the first half of the film you will feel as if you are playing a VERY serious version of Monty Python's "Spot the Loonie." But, in this case, you are looking for the HEAD LOONIE in a whole melange of maniacs. The string of soliloquies which eventually leads to the climactic ending, hearkens back to Shakespearean tragedies, but until the very end, you don't necessarily know whether to think of this film as a comedy or the very dark and sinister tragedy that it seems to be. Even after the film exposes itself so dramatically in the end, I am still inclined to see it as a very deranged bit of comedy as much as anything else. Such is the beauty of Herzog's artistic method - nothing is straightforward, much is hideous and beautiful, and in a peculiar metaphysical and aesthetic sense, it all makes perfect sense.Klaus Kinski gives a signature performance and the rest of the cast, though excellent, is barely noticeable with Kinski's intensity in the foreground. Though less accessible than many of Kinski's more popular works (Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo, Nosferatu), this is nevertheless a unique and brilliant blend of one of the greatest actor-director teams of all time.
11 out of 15 people found the following review useful: Klaus Kinski is Perfect as Tormented Solider, 25 September 2000 Author: eibon04 from New York City, NY
Klaus Kinski gives a couragous effort that deserved an Oscar for Best Actor in 1979. Woyzeck(1979) deals with a lower level solider who's clinging to the small amount of sanity left in him. The film is competently done by Werner Herzog. The motion Picture comes on the heels of Herzog's Nosferatu(1979). Its one of the best films by Werner Herzog that isn't as notorious as films like Fitzcarraldo(1982), Aguirre:The Wrath of God(1974), and The Mystery of Kaspar Hausar(1975).There is a murder in the movie that's worthy of the shower scene in Psycho(1960). Woyzeck(1979) follows a few themes that were prominent in Herzog's debut Signs of Life(1967). The fast motion scene at the beginning is marvolous. Klaus Kinski was really being kicked around in the opening scene. Klaus Kinski did such a great job at his realistic portrayal that the actor almost ended up like the main character.
10 out of 14 people found the following review useful: The best Herzog/Kinski?, 14 June 2005 Author: Enoch Sneed from United Kingdom
*** This review may contain spoilers ***
Compared with the other films they made together in the Andes, the Amazon and West Africa this Herzog/Kinski version of 'Woyzeck' seems very small-scale indeed. The shoot was equally small-scale, with a brief schedule and long takes to reduce the number of set-ups.I think the film is all the better for this. The story telling is brisk and straightforward and the acting uniformly excellent. If Kinski had only made this one film we would have known he was a remarkable actor. From the opening scene his movement and body-language convey Woyzeck's feverish restlessness and inner tensions. Here we don't have Kinski the raving 'ubermensch', but a pitiful little runt of a man who is put upon by everyone. Even his doctor treats Woyzeck as no more than a laboratory animal. Woyzeck meanwhile is so conditioned to a life of obedience that he willingly lives on nothing but peas for months on end as part of the doctor's investigations.The last straw comes when Woyzeck's common-law wife has a night of sex with a handsome army musician. We are not asked to judge this woman: she enjoys sex, she thinks the musician will be a good sexual partner so she gives herself to him.Woyzeck is distraught. The one person he felt he could trust in this world has betrayed him. He can't fight back against the musician (a robust man who lifts Woyzeck with one hand). His frustration turns into tortured insanity and murder.This short, intense film is a little masterpiece. Highly recommended.
6 out of 7 people found the following review useful: the most heart-wrenching piece of film Herzog/Kinski did (or, at least, that I have seen yet), 25 November 2006 Author: MisterWhiplash from United States
Don't get me wrong, I thought Aguirre was a great movie, Fitzcarraldo was a wildly mad genius of an epic, and Nosferatu was a very respectable take on the legend, but watching Woyzeck is like getting an immense, harsh, and assuredly charged rush of poetic madness from a filmmaker and star who know exactly what they're doing. It's not "perfect", then again when it comes to poetry Herzog usually dominates with visuals over dialog (he's also working off of another source this time as well). But here is a case where the sense of forbidding fatalism is at an incredible high, and looking at Klaus Kinski's face at times is like looking into the soul of a truly tortured, insane form of a human being.What's interesting, and even quite tragic to an extent, in seeing the tale of Woyzeck is that he is basically an underling, who is fed a strict diet of peas and the occasional mutton, and is totally subservient to his fairly whacked out superior officers. What it is exactly that Woyzeck is doing as an officer is anyone's guess, but to me seeing how the higher-ups treated Woyzeck is fascist (though for what end who can say, aside from their amusement at their manic squire).Then there's Marie, played by Eva Mattes in a well deserved Cannes winning turn, Woyzeck's love and mother of his little out-of-wedlock boy. One can already tell in little scenes like when Woyzeck makes his co-soldier duck into the bushes over a 'did you hear that/see that' not-there presence that he's on edge. Needless to say it only adds salt to the wound when Woyzeck accuses Marie of adultery, as it's with a brutish Captain (Wolfgang Reichmann in a small but imposing role). And then it all leads up to a terrifying crime that comes from somewhere inside of Woyzeck, where it's been building up increasingly over time.Herzog presents this story, based on an unfinished play, with a breathtaking visual scheme, however with less of the epic visual virtuosity of Aguirre and this time settles for something more basic, but still always eye-grabbing. I didn't even notice how few cuts there are supposed to be (less than 30), but it gives the audience much more time to really feel and be enveloped by these characters, particularly Woyzeck and Marie.There have already been some great, powerhouse scenes- some with the tension stacked up incredibly, like when Woyzeck is stuck without an explanation, aside from crazy philosophy, as to why he urinated on a wall, or when Woyzeck makes the full-on accusation to Marie about the affair, with full Kinski-body-gyrations included- by the time the climax comes around. But for me, this is really not only one of Herzog's most moving and bleak scenes, but maybe one of the most heartbreaking in all of cinema. We as the audience can guess what has been coming; there's practically a Crime & Punishment sensibility that's been streaming forward in the ten-fifteen minutes preceding this scene. Yet the combination of three cinematic elements becomes overwhelming for me as a movie-viewer. At first we see the actual murder happen, with the film's main music title playing over slow-motion and Kinski with a face that would make Joe Pesci cringe. But then we get another piece of music, a much more sad piece of music not heard yet in the film, as Woyzeck continues slower and slower until stopping loaded with tears in his eyes, and still in slow-motion. I started to feel so connected somehow to what was going on I teared up, too. Throughout the film I knew Woyzeck was crazy, and from the opening scene (which is actually kind of hilarious when taken out of context) throughout the picture, I knew something had to give. But the power of director's aesthetic choice, which is spellbinding and fully dramatic, and Kinski's performance make it something comparable to Dreyer and Falconetti in Joan of Arc.While I would have recommended Woyzeck anyway, especially if you're just getting into Herzog's work, this scene alone makes it almost mandatory for many movie-buffs to seek it out. And as for Kinski, it's arguable if this might be his finest non-epic film performance, as a simple man completely torn in his mind, given to delusions of grandeur and, actually delusions of the paranoid and depleted, and to a crushing sense of loss that sends him to his conclusion. A+
7 out of 9 people found the following review useful: Slow-moving, harrowing drama., 13 November 2007 Author: Coventry from the Draconian Swamp of Unholy Souls
"Woyzeck" is a rather unusual and atypical installment in class-director Werner Herzog and class-actor Klaus Kinski's cinematic collaborations. They worked together on no less than five brilliant movies, but this production is the only one that isn't …well … "huge"! Other mutual accomplishments like "Aguirre, Wrath of God", "Cobra Verde" and "Fitzcarraldo" thrived on spectacular premises and featured massive set pieces, whereas "Woyzeck" is a rudimentary simple stage play adaptation relying on a solid script and another flawless acting performance by Klaus Kinski. The play, written by Georg Büchner in 1836 already, is a very depressing tale but it involves many themes that ideally fit the narrative style of acclaimed director Herzog. Woyzeck is an introvert and slightly awkward soldier living in a small German town by a river. Everybody in his surrounding abuses Woyzeck in some fashion. His wife openly cheats on him with various townsmen, his army superiors burden him with worthless jobs and the arrogantly obtrusive local doctor performs medical experiments on Woyzeck that exhaust him physically as well as mentally. The poor guy slowly gets trapped in a downwards spiral of insanity and oppressed aggression, resulting in a harrowing and nightmarish act of murder. Primarily, this film is another tour-de-force for the genuine acting talent Klaus Kinski. He may have been impossible to work with, but he sure was one of the most convincing and charismatic artists who ever walked this earth. Kinski's performance evolves together with his character. In the earliest scenes of the film, Woyzeck is a pitiable little servant but near the end – and during one massively disturbing sequence in particular – he's a petrifying madman with a legitimately maniacal glaze in his eyes. Kinski was a demigod and an extraordinary acting genius, and only Werner Herzog was a competent enough director to 'exploit' him the fullest. "Woyzeck" is an incredibly slow-paced and talkative film, notwithstanding the atmosphere is continuously intense and somewhat ominous. The costumes and photography are stunning and especially the musical score is unforgettable. The aforementioned massively disturbing climax sequence, also thanks to the slow-motion camera-work and mind-penetrating music, easily represents one of the most excruciating moments ever registered on pellicule.
4 out of 4 people found the following review useful: "Running through creation like a razor", 27 July 2007 Author: nora_nettlerash from Ruritania
Woyzeck is Werner Herzog's only ever adaptation of a stage play. There are always problems in the transition of a play from stage to screen. The theatre relies on the power of words and performances, whereas cinema is built more upon images and set pieces. Herzog, an unconventional yet adaptable director, handles the conversion well, giving it a cinematic presentation while still retaining the integrity of the source material.Buchner's play is a strong story, albeit incredibly grim and depressing. Klaus Kinski, as the title character, is driven insane by military routine and scientific over-analysis, and apparently the role had an irreversible effect on the already psychologically unstable actor. It's typical Herzog material, looking at insanity, dehumanisation and people driven to extremes. Also, like his previous picture Nosferatu, it is another link between the German New Wave and the German Expressionist movement of the 1920s, as it shares that movement's obsessions with psychological analysis and social entrapment.In filming Woyzeck, Herzog creates an unusual mixture of obviously real locations and rather static, theatrical direction, with few cuts or camera moves. In typical Herzog style there is an unnerving quietness and tranquillity. He isn't afraid to flaunt the advantages of the cinematic medium over the theatrical, with some beautiful landscape shots, and Kinski darting about in and out of close-up and stepping into shot from behind the camera – an effect impossible on the stage. The climactic murder scene is also very well done, and here the picture is at its most openly cinematic.Kinski is clearly very deep in his performance, and its no wonder the material had such an impact on him. It's a pity, but he is ideal for the role. It's hard to imagine anyone else bringing that much intensity and realism to the part. Really, these collaborations between him and Herzog are the best examples of his unique acting talent because they were, as far as I know, the only opportunities he had to play lead roles. Also worth a mention here are the excellent supporting performances from Eva Mattes and Josef Bierbichler, European actors who deserve far more recognition.Because of its theatrical origins Woyzeck is perhaps the one Herzog film in which the narrative takes precedence over the look of the thing. On the one hand, this is a good thing because it is much more focused and doesn't digress as his pictures tend to. But for me it also makes it a weaker entry in his filmography, because his films generally rely on their powerful imagery. Still, it is watchable, short and sweet, with some interesting moments.
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