This is a highly artistic treatment of a very sad story. The cast is very good, especially Bruno S. in the main role, a non actor but a pretty determined fellow. This suits the movie very well. Contrary to Forrest Gump or Chance the Gardener in Being There, Kaspar Hauser is definitively an intelligent being, a man with a will and, if the guesswork about his past is correct, a fast learner - a man with opinions. He is not above telling his keepers" that his life in confinement with a total ignorance about anything of God's creation was a better existence compared to what followed. He talks mechanically but with much determination and palpable inner pressure. Everything he says wants to convey meaning. Not one for smalltalk, Kaspar Hauser is. (it is highly recommendable to watch this in the original German version)
The script is excellent. There is an emotional side, where speculation about this true story is admitted, and in contrast the protocol" of the officials, scientists and theologians who make Kaspar Hauser the subject of their curiosity and their studies. The protocol" part is clearly delivered as a comedy, embodied by the protocolist himself, a Dickensian geezer. Any scientific and philosophical approach to the Hauser phenomenon is presented as complete albeit generally well intentioned humbug, and in the end one is as helpless an saddened as in the beginning. But at least these people collected a lot of data which let one assume that the story Kaspar Hauser learned to tell was true. The most touching detail was the discovery that the man had unusually soft feet.
Kaspar Hauser appeared in 1828, a time which in art is known as the Biedermeier period. The English translation for the term is nosegay, the term bieder" means something like meek, conformist or even cowardly. In culture it meant kind of bourgeois pretty pretty", frail, introverted, apolitical. The makers of this movie took great pains to create settings that seem to come right out of Biedermeier paintings. They were awesomely effective, I must say in admiration. The sites and locations are very well chosen. I particularly liked how domestic animals and birds were integrated into the scenery I never remarked this in a movie before. Of course, Kaspar Hauser as a person is as anti Biedermayer as can be and a misfit if anything.
The background" of this movie is pure evil. For all the considerable kindness Kaspar Hauser receives from Biedermeier society, it is not capable to dispel it. In the end Kaspar Hauser comes stumbling into a Biedermeier garden with an expression of amazement in his face and his waistcoat covered with blood. He has been stabbed, no one knows where, why or by whom. It is all in the background, or the substructure. But it happens, almost like in H. G. Welles Time Machine. On his deathbed Kaspar Hauser tells an unfinished story he has thought out (on the screen transformed into a badly flickering Super8 footage one of the very few weak points of the movie), and the final point is made, namely that even an unfinished story is worth being told. In this case I could not agree more.
The script is excellent. There is an emotional side, where speculation about this true story is admitted, and in contrast the protocol" of the officials, scientists and theologians who make Kaspar Hauser the subject of their curiosity and their studies. The protocol" part is clearly delivered as a comedy, embodied by the protocolist himself, a Dickensian geezer. Any scientific and philosophical approach to the Hauser phenomenon is presented as complete albeit generally well intentioned humbug, and in the end one is as helpless an saddened as in the beginning. But at least these people collected a lot of data which let one assume that the story Kaspar Hauser learned to tell was true. The most touching detail was the discovery that the man had unusually soft feet.
Kaspar Hauser appeared in 1828, a time which in art is known as the Biedermeier period. The English translation for the term is nosegay, the term bieder" means something like meek, conformist or even cowardly. In culture it meant kind of bourgeois pretty pretty", frail, introverted, apolitical. The makers of this movie took great pains to create settings that seem to come right out of Biedermeier paintings. They were awesomely effective, I must say in admiration. The sites and locations are very well chosen. I particularly liked how domestic animals and birds were integrated into the scenery I never remarked this in a movie before. Of course, Kaspar Hauser as a person is as anti Biedermayer as can be and a misfit if anything.
The background" of this movie is pure evil. For all the considerable kindness Kaspar Hauser receives from Biedermeier society, it is not capable to dispel it. In the end Kaspar Hauser comes stumbling into a Biedermeier garden with an expression of amazement in his face and his waistcoat covered with blood. He has been stabbed, no one knows where, why or by whom. It is all in the background, or the substructure. But it happens, almost like in H. G. Welles Time Machine. On his deathbed Kaspar Hauser tells an unfinished story he has thought out (on the screen transformed into a badly flickering Super8 footage one of the very few weak points of the movie), and the final point is made, namely that even an unfinished story is worth being told. In this case I could not agree more.