My take on the ending- major spoilers

I had been thinking about how Bruno might be the chicken when I was watching also. I did not know what what to think about the rabbit except fot the obvious reasons.

[deleted]

Yeah, I think it's kind of misreading Herzog to try to read his work so "tightly" and "formally", because he sure doesn't think of it that way himself. It's like trying to force him into being a traditionalist, as if he's following the traditional standards, when he really isn't. He rather makes his work intentionally ambiguous to allow a variety of interpretations, and he's often just filming things that strike him as interesting, he's often finding and going with fortuitous "accidents", and so on.


http://www.rateyourmusic.com/~JrnlofEddieDeezenStudies

The best explanation I've ever heard is that the dancing chicken is a metaphor for human life. Somebody puts a coin in the machine and the chicken comes out and dances.
Same for humans, somebody puts us on this earth and we perform with no notion of what will ultimately become of us or why we're doing it.
For anybody who has seen Aguirre, Wrath of God - the ending has, I think, quite a similar theme i.e. that the world is a stage but that man doesn't really know how he got on the stage or what he's supposed to do now that he's there.

So tonight I watched Werner Herzog's Stroszek with my family. Aside from again becoming terribly depressed, I picked up on a lot of the symbolism this time. And I realized what I have realized over and over but have many times forgotten.

"As he came forth naked from his mother's womb, so shall he return, and shall take nothing away with him of his labour. A most deplorable evil: as he came, so shall he return. What then doth it profit him that he hath laboured for the wind? All the days of his life he eateth in darkness, and in many cares, and in misery, and sorrow."

For those of you who have no intention to watch foreign films, I'll quickly summarize the plot and a bit of the message. The film begins at the penitentiary: a sight of freedom and a chance to commence a new life. Bruno Stroszek is released from prison and warned to stop drinking. He has few skills and fewer expectations: with a glockenspiel and an accordion, he ekes out a living as a street musician. He reunites with an old friend, Eva, a prostitute, who is persistently harassed by a couple of thugs, her pimps. After having disappeared one evening, Eva arrives at Bruno's apartment in the morning bruised and bleeding. The two are left with no option. They and Bruno's neighbor, Scheitz, an elderly eccentric, leave Berlin to start over in Wisconsin. In that winter bound, barren prairie, Bruno works as a mechanic, Eva as a waitress. They buy a pre-fabricated home. Then, bills mount; the bank threatens to repossess the trailer. Eva, knowing how to make quick money, returns to her former profession, and Bruno realizes that his escaping from German street-thugs and moving to America brought nothing new to his life. "For he came in vain, and goeth to darkness." He again feels trapped; his relationship with Eva collapses. Worried about her, Bruno goes to the restaurant were she works--to catch her with another man in his semi-truck. The relationship ends with Eva telling Bruno that she intends to head to Vancouver with the trucker and his pals. Bruno returns to his mobile home where a bank representative visits him and informs him that his house will soon be repossessed. The following day Bruno's home is auctioned-off and pulled away from the lot as he and Scheitz stare miserably at the cornfield horizon. The two hop into their car, Scheitz weilding a shotgun, and head toward the bank prepared to, finally, make a difference. The bank doors are locked; it's Sunday. Scheitz, having slipped into radical paranoia, yells, "They're all in this together!" and the two head next door to the barbershop. They rob about thirty dollars, run back to their car, drop the gun off in the car, and walk across the street to the grocery store, to buy some food. While Bruno is checking out (he purchased a large frozen turkey) Scheitz is dragged out of the store by the local police. Turkey in hand, Bruno returns to his car and drives to his auto-repair shop, where he throws his shotgun, the turkey, and about seven cans of beer into the employee tow-truck. And he drives. He drives for hours until his car begins to smoke and he is forced to stop at a hill-town restaurant. He abandons the car (left in drive, tracing circles in the lot and beginning to catch flames) and carries his turkey and gun to a ski-lift where he commits suicide.

I suppose you really have to watch the film to pick up all the symbolism for yourself. The circle plays a huge role in the film. Bruno complains that his life follows a cyclical track. In the final scene, his car is left driving itself in circles, Bruno hops aboard a ski-lift with no one to turn it off and he travels up and down the slope in circles. All these things and a clip of a dancing chicken at the very end have reminded me of the words of King Solomon: "What is it that hath been? the same thing that shall be. What is it that hath been done? the same that shall be done." He has at last come to terms with reality. He has realized the pattern of his life and his only outlet. Also, he has no way to get off the ski-lift other than by killing himself. But right before the viewer hears the gunshot, Herzog allows us to catch a glimpse of Bruno's face, travelling up the lift. He is smiling. He had looked forward to being released from prison. He had looked forward to housing his friend Eva, and when Berlin was too much, he had looked forward to living in the States. In the end, all Bruno looked forward only to nothing, oblivion.

The final line of the film is:

Deputy Sheriff: We have a 10-80 out here, a truck on fire, we have a man on the lift. We are unable to find the switch to turn the lift off, can't stop the dancing chickens.


"For what profit shall a man have of all his labour, and vexation of spirit, with which he bath been tormented under the sun? All his days axe full of sorrows and miseries, even in the night he doth not rest in mind: and is not this vanity?"

My take is more along these lines too, lvd.

I don't neccessarily believe there is a definite answer to all the imagery that appears in the ending. What makes the ending so brilliant and memorable is that each viewer can come up with their own interpretation of what is going on. It's ambiguity could annoy you but I think most people really like trying to figure out what it all means even when there are no right answers (even though I'm sure artihcus022 watched a completely different film to the one I did as their reading seems so skewed).

I never really think of this film as being about the American dream and believe you could swap America for pretty much any other country. Stroszek
could move to Britain, Brazil or China and still feel as isolated. Bruno could try to adapt like he does in America (the cowboy hat, lumberjack shirt etc.) but he will still be alienated. They break him in Germany, they break him in America, there is nothing to suggest he won't be broken anywhere else.

I saw the ending in a similar way.

I think Bruno steps out the cafe without knowing where he is going or what he will do next and his actions that follow are just instinctive to his character.

To me, the film is not symbolic or metaphorical, it just captures the events in Bruno's life. When it is symbolic, I think Herzog does it openly and on purpose (e.g the scene with the doctor holding the baby and explaining it to Bruno, and the scene where he explains the little object he made to Eva that represents himself).

I don't know what artihcus022 said since he seemed to have deleted the original post, but yes, I supposed bruno could be called an idiot. He doesn't understand how the world works, and can't make do for himself. But that doesn't mean we should dismiss him as such and go on with our lives. Some people seem to think that they are solely responsible for their lives and deserve all successes they achieve, but in truth these concepts are ill defined. Is a person somehow responsible for the combination of genes he inherits and events that occurred in his life that shaped his character? As the doctor in the movie points out, we all have impossible questions that we can never answer. Bruno is just a particularly distinctive personification of the difficulties all people face.