Lebenszeichen

I watched Herzog's Signs of Life tonight. IMDB summarizes the plot: "On Crete, a wounded German paratrooper named Stroszek is sent to the quiet city of Kos with his wife Nora, a Greek nurse, and two other soldiers recovering from minor wounds. Billeted in a decaying fortress, they guard a munitions depot. There's little to do: Becker, a classicist, translates inscriptions on ancient tablets found in the fortress, Meinhart devises traps for cockroaches, Nora helps Stroszek make fireworks using gunpowder from grenades in the depot. Slowly, in the heat and torpor, Stroszek goes mad, drives the others from the fortress, and threatens the city with blowing up the depot. With care, the German command must figure out how to get him down."

This was Herzog's first feature film, made for under $20,000 dollars. The netflix sleeve claims that this film was the inspiration for Kubrick's The Shining, which became obvious from the start. The main difference was that Herzog never used the plot to create fear or suspense. The insanity just is. The boredom just is. I felt sort of dead watching it as a result. I never got really excited about the film. That doesn't mean I didn't like it. I really liked the auxiliary characters, Becker and Meinhard. Their personalities and character development were perfectly done. The subtitles were the worst I've seen on a Herzog film. Lots of prepositions were wrong, plural when something should be singular...it wasn't good. I'll have to listen to the director's commentary to see if he mentions it. I believe he has discussed his concerns about subtitles before, so it surprises me how poor this set was. I certainly wouldn't call this a favorite Herzog film, but as usual it was very good. I don't know why I even bother 'reviewing' them, since I know I will drool over all of them anyway.