The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1975)

"I dreamt of the Caucasus..."

It seems that every Herzog film I see is better than the last, and "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser" continues that trend. Herzog tells the story of the apparently feral youth who showed up in a Bavarian town in the early 19th century, and of the five years he lived being groomed for "civilization."

In Herzog's hands, the tale is a melancholy and occasionally poignant one. Hauser is unspeakably abused for most of his life by his jailer (his father?), chained to a cellar basement with no human companionship, never having seen the light of day. Upon his mysterious release, he's barely able to speak or stand, and is viewed as something between a "noble savage" and a monster. Taken in hand by a kindly doctor, Kaspar gradually learns to speak and to feel and haltingly express sometimes overwhelming emotions when confronted with the beauty of the natural world, music, and poetry. But he feels trapped inside his own limitations and frustratingly stymied. As his Sehnsucht deepens, he finds himself increasingly alienated by the civilized world into which he's been cast and the identity that's being forced on him by those authority figures who think they know best.

The depth of Kaspar's soul-hunger is expressed several times throughout the film, but perhaps the most memorable occasion is when he's asked if he ever dreamt during his years of speechless imprisonment. "Yes," he replies. "I dreamt of the Caucasus." He dreamt of high, cold, pure places. In that single line, it seems to me that Herzog captures the mystery, joy, and tragedy of the human longing for transcendence.

The script is excellent, the cinematography entrancing--corn rippling in the wind, Kaspar sucking an egg and gazing out through a crack in the shed where he sits, the interspersions of magic lantern-like images of tall mountain peaks and barren deserts--and the musical score nicely accenturates the scenes and story. But without a doubt, the center of the film is the incomparable performance of Bruno S. as Kaspar.

Viewers might be interested in comparing Herzog's "Kaspar" with Truffaut's "L'Enfant sauvage." July 8, 2008

unforgettable

One of the best films I've seen in a while. This is a very somber true story of a strange young man who suddenly appeared in the middle of Nuremberg, Germany in 1828. He had been abandoned by his parents and was left locked up alone in a dungeon for 17 years. He had no human contact other than a man who would come in to periodically clean and feed him (bread and water) like a caged animal. For whatever reason which was not explained, the man who fed and cleaned him eventually took him out, taught him how to walk and write and discarded him in the middle of town. This story focuses on his life and interactions with others. I think the film was beautifully done and it will haunt my memory for a very long time, perhaps forever.

Hauser's character mentioned in the film "why is everything so difficult for me?". Are things much easier for any of us though? We learned how to do a lot more at a younger age than him, but we all struggle to varying degrees. Hauser struggles in ways most of us as adults don't, but we struggle in ways he does not. March 31, 2008

Enigma of Kaspar Hauser

With "Kaspar," a somber yet engrossing drama accentuated by the lilting strains of Pachelbel's Canon, Herzog found an unusually rich metaphor for man's primitive state. Bruno S., a mental patient taken in by the audacious Teutonic filmmaker, fully embraced the role, refusing even to doff his 19th-century costume at the end of a day's shoot. He plays Kaspar as a perpetually shell-shocked, almost autistic innocent whose strained efforts to communicate and assimilate are thwarted by a profound, perhaps prophetic otherness. The question for Herzog, of course, is whether reason enlightens or imprisons us--an "Enigma" well worth pondering. July 5, 2007

Every man for himself...

Every Man For Himself and God Against All aka The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser is a prime slice of pre-nutter-in-the-jungle Werner Herzog and makes an interesting companion piece to Truffaut's L'Enfant Sauvage/The Wild Child. Where Truffaut used his true story of a foundling more animal than boy as proof of the human soul, Herzog uses the real-life mystery of Hauser as a means of showing that society's accepted way of looking at the world may not necessarily be the most valid - as demonstrated when Hauser's contention that apples are tired is seemingly proved by the inability of his guardian to demonstrate that they are inanimate objects subject to man's will.

Thanks as much to a truly alien performance from Bruno S. in the lead role - he really does seem to have suddenly fallen to Earth and not recovered from the shock - as to Herzog's unique mixture of the restrained and the hypnotic in his approach, the end result is one of those films that's definitely greater than the sum of its parts.
September 3, 2006

Hooked on Herzog

Saw this film in the late 70's and it hooked me on Werner Herzog movies. Agree with the other reviewers as to its humanism, message etc. This reflects well in the Director's commentary on the DVD since he had to manage Bruno, the "Kasper" character as well as direct him because Bruno had such a damaged life (23 years in public institutions/jail).

Want to also recommend the DVD for some of the wonderful and near dreamlike images offered; a field of ripe rye whipped by a swirling wind, a fog-shrouded mountain with weary Irish pilgrims, a temple-covered plain, et. al. Beautiful as they are, it is the genius of W. Herzog to introduce these short hallucinatory segments as a way to bring to the viewer the sensation of how Kasper perceived a world we see as so familiar, but was all so new to him.
June 1, 2006

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