Thing that I often love about early Werner Herzog movies is how incredibly simplistic and also minimalistic they actually are. Often it got made by literally just an handful of crew-members and everything got shot within just a couple of weeks, on location.
For this movie Herzog and Kinski team up once more, only days after finish shooting "Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht" together. I won't call it their best collaboration but it is a very interesting one.
What really makes this movie is Klaus Kinski and his character. Like so often, he plays a troubled person, that gets kicked around by about every person around him. He's kind and quiet but at the same time it's also very obvious how disturbed he actually is beneath the surface. It's a great characters study, in which a man slowly snaps and breaks down completely. This is really were the movie its interesting aspects all come from, since honestly the movie has very little else to offer. But that's OK, since it's still really more than enough!
I can understand this movie coming across as quite pointless and slow to some. It has a very simple and straightforward story, that is entirely set in a small town, somewhere in the distant past. Admitedly, I also felt that way at times but luckily the movie slowly but steadily manages to suck you in to its world and the main character's mind, making this movie a very compelling and effective one.
I had really no idea what to expect from this movie beforehand but as it turned out it was one great and intriguing little movie to watch, greatly directed by Werner Herzog and acted out by Klaus Kinski!
8/10
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