Invincibile

Invincible (Werner Herzog).

Set in the years before WWII, a simpleton cum Jewish Pole strong man, was recruited by a German mystic cum showman, who's intent on dressing him up into Aryan legends, to perform legendary feats of strength on a hybrid cabaret-like show for Nazis patrons?

I wouldn't believe it either, but its supposedly inspired by a true story. Thank god for the inspiration of mad geniuses!

I laughed so hard at the first few chapters of this movie, its embarassing. But I regretted my rash reaction by film's midpoint. For what was deemed funny early on (weird mix of acting styles, idiosyncratic dramatic developments, and outlandishly funny English accents etc), got into me like second skin. And I realised by some point, I have seen one of the most oddly "moving" films in recent memory.

Two words, child-like innocence (or was it three?). Whatever. This flick me liked and it comes with my highest recommendation. Watch it, and learn.

Next up, Herzog's Heart of Glass.....

Zishe is a Jew living in Poland and working with his family as a blacksmith. When a fight breaks out in a local restaurant, Zishe uses his impressive strength to fend off his attackers but finds himself facing a bill for the damage. To make the money to cover the cost, Zishe enters a local circus to challenge the resident strongman. Easily winning, he draws the attention of a talent scout who offers him the chance for more work in Germany. Despite the reservations of his parents, Zishe travels to Berlin where he joins the high-class show of mystic Hanussen. Playing to mostly film stars and members of the ascending Nazi party, Zishe plays the role of an Aryan strongman. Initially happy to do so, the deception and denial of self gradually eats at him as he performs on stage.

I may not be the most cine-literate person in the world but I know enough to give any film from Werner Herzog a try to see what happens. With this film I was interested from the very start as it throws up an interesting "true" story that I had never heard before. It opens well but it only manages to hang together until the middle of the film, at which point the direction of the story starts to badly waver and, with a mostly amateur cast and some clunky dialogue, it cannot do anything to really turn it around. After a while it does become dull and rather aimless which was a shame given the potential that it showed early on. The problems of narrative will probably worry Herzog's fans less than the casual viewer though but what will surprise them is how visually ordinary it all is. It all looks good and has some nice use of locations but generally it lacks imagination or the flair for the unusual, with only the out-of-place use of the crabs sticking in the mind as an image.

The cast are mixed, with some good performances and some terrible ones. Ahola falls somewhere in the middle; he is not the most expressive man in the world but he has a good presence and his gentle strongman performance works for the majority – it is only in the latter stages where more is asked of him where he comes up wanting. Roth is impressive of course and he does add a much needed professionalism into the film when given the chance. The rest of the cast are mostly average at best – not a major problem but few people will defend the bland and flat deliveries of people like Gourari and Wein – both of whom come over as if they would struggle to read a traffic sign in a convincing manner.

Overall this is an OK film at best – starting with potential but fading away long before the end. The performances are mostly average but what is more surprising is that Herzog doesn't really make the film his own – some of it looks interesting but it lacks the visual style that I had hoped for and it doesn't offer a great deal in its place.

Werner Herzog's Invincible tells the story of a Polish blacksmith in Nazi Germany who in his provincial integrity thinks he can protect his people after becoming the star at the Palace of the Occult in Berlin, which is overseen by a sinister man who dreams of becoming the Nazis' Minister of the Occult. Much of the movie's uncanny appeal comes from the contrast between the simple-mindedly innocent blacksmith-come-strongman and Tim Roth's wicked Hanussen, who trickles with studied malice. Standing between them is a young woman under Hanussen's mental force, who the strongman loves. The movie is supposedly based on a true story. I can conceive of various ways it could've been told unspectacularly, but Herzog has turned it into a movie in which we mostly have no clue what could possibly happen next.

The movie has the evocativeness of a German silent film, bold in its expressionism and moralistic insistence. Its casting is critical, and intuitively right. Tim Roth is a menacing deceiver, posing as a man with extrasensory abilities, using hocus-pocus and theatrics as he hustles for position within the rising Nazi majority. There's a scene where he hypnotizes the strongman's love interest, and as he stares dauntlessly toward us, I wondered if it was feasible to hypnotize us as well. As for the untrained actor playing the strongman, the camera can look as closely as you like and never see anything insincere.

Herzog always works to push us into the mythic and the mysterious. And here, there are shots of a stark, craggy seashore where the stones are covered with thousands of bright red crabs, all clambering away on their crustaceous errands. As with similar imagery in most of Herzog's other films, there can be no exact interpretation of this. And like most of his other films, Invincible is a unique experience. Herzog has gotten outside the tropes and confines of conventional movie storytelling, and confronts us where our sense of trust and belief keeps its skeletons.

Of the filmmaker Werner Herzog, I've heard and read strange things about him and his films. That two of his works, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, and Fitzceraldo, are two of the most bizarre modern European films. That he once ate a shoe from a bet with Errol Morris, and made a documentary about it. That he once said (and I'm paraphrasing) "some people make movies with their minds and hearts, I make them with my (expletive)." So, when I saw this film at the rental store, Invincible, and the image of Tim Roth in a truly Gothic pose on the cover, I expected it to be a dark, brooding film about pre-war, pre-dictator Hitler Germany. In a way it is, and in a way its not. Although the film is rated PG-13, I would imagine that for the die-hard Herzog fans this is like his family film, or at the least kids might not be too freaked out to watch it. Surprisingly, Herzog brings a fable out of a true story, about how each side of the coin is a certain way, black or white, and whichever role you choose defines you, though there can be an exception.

There was one sequence, however, where I saw that Herzog brilliantly had a kind of surreal, one-of-a-kind filmed scene that I expected amongst the more typical dramatic scenes. It involves a dream of Zishe's (played by near unknown Jouko Ahola in a mostly one-note performance) where he walks around on a rocky beach. He is surrounded by bright red crabs, and steps around on the rock trying not to knock them down or get snipped by their claws. But he does so casually, with the searing Hans Zimmer/Klaus Blaudet music in the background. This dream occurs again towards the end of the film, as his younger brother leads him by the hand through the crabs on the rocks, somehow giving him strength. These are powerful scenes in a movie that could've been even more powerful.

Take Tim Roth's performance- it towers above all the others because most (aside from Udo Kier whom I recognized) are non-professionals. It's to Herzog's credit that he makes these people in Poland shtetels and in Berlin to be believable, but he's not a great director of them like the neo-realists in Italy were. And because Roth, as this brooding, tragic anti-hero witnesses what happens with his strongman from Poland, is so good and subtle at his role, he out-acts pretty much anyone else in the film. Watching him is fascinating, especially when he's quiet and subtle, or in the scenes when he's on stage performing his acts. It shows how versatile he can be in this film. I just wish it was the same for the others. (strong) B+

The great Werner Herzog uses grandly designed set pieces to deliver a foreboding period piece about the nature of facism in pre-WW2 Berlin. The focus of the story revolves around the opposing philosophies of the sinister, renowned clairvoyant Hanussen, and one of his performers, a naive strongman, lured off the farm to make his fortune in the big city. Needless to say, both of these powerful characters provide the symbolic thrust of Herzog's visionary statement, and he presents them as extreme opposites. Roth really delivers as a refined cynic, while real-life strongman Ahola is a childlike brute, an amateur hero challenging the authority of a professional villain. While parts of the picture are heavy-handed and obvious, it has a refreshing, unsentimental neutrality about it's subject matter, and it's mise-en-scene pleasures are many. My favorite scene follows our hero on his way to Berlin: he's picked up by a couple of farmers, one of them unable to control wild outbursts of laughter as he listens to the naive strongman tell about his dreams. A worthy film in the Herzog repertoire and interesting enough even for non-enthusiasts.