Coming to America
in which I apologize for my wack country and beg everyone to please still give it a chance
“The sea ended right there before his eyes. As he watched the final surge of each wave as it drained into the sand, the final thrust of mighty power that had come down through countless centuries, he was struck by the pathos of it all. At that very point, a grand pan-oceanic enterprise that spanned the world went awry and ended in annihilation.”
- Yukio Mishima
How you gonna argue with a ritualistic suicide motherfucker?
When I was 22 years old I spent a month backpacking around Italy with two of my friends, who were at the time going through a very weird break-up that I wasn’t fully aware of until I pieced together the clues of their arguments over non-issues and gradually got pissed off about being tied down to a traveling romantic meltdown. But the trip was the first big international jaunt I had ever taken and it was still a lot of fun. This was some old school pre-smartphone shit (I’m old) so we had barely anything planned ahead. We were sleeping on the streets of Rome and the rooftops of Milan, occasionally splurging on a hostel in some building that was already old when my mother’s grandparents left Palermo for the promise of America.
We ended up crashing for a few days at a hostel in Taormina, Sicily, which I guess is a tourist destination for bougie Euros but we didn’t know that at the time. I discovered gelato and sacrificed my vegetarianism for the best meal I’ve ever had in my life, prepared for us by a flustered cleaning lady who walked in on us while we were failing to prepare ourselves a dinner, took one look at our sad state and shooed us out of the kitchen so she could make us a proper feast. On our final night in the hostel we got white-girl-wasted and wandered the ancient cobblestones with two of our temporary roommates, a woman from Australia and another woman from Colombia. We were having a blast, all borderline blind-drunk, when my new Colombian friend threw me against a very old wall and proceeded to very thoroughly ream me out over my inherent privilege as an American male and her perception that I wasn’t properly appreciating that privilege while we were doing identical things in the exact same place in an equal state of inebriation. I was bewildered and ready to be annoyed, but then she broke down in tears and spent roughly an hour describing her (pretty rough) life in Colombia while the Australian woman rubbed her back and we all took turns vomiting. I don’t remember anything that she said, but I did wake up the next morning with a wild hangover and a determination to learn everything I could about the world and the United States’ fucked-up place within it.
So I spent the rest of my time overseas getting drunk with Italian punx and sneaking into museums, then went home to begin my new life as a Genuinely Concerned American. I won’t bore anyone with the timeline of my political awakening, as it’s very unremarkable and probably pretty similar to a lot of your own. I think we can all agree that the current geopolitical status of the United States of America is pretty goddamn abysmal and my only strong assertion is that anyone who is genuinely surprised by this just hasn’t been paying attention. This is understandable. Nobody does insidious cultural propaganda with as much dedication and aplomb as our great nation, and the equally harmful echo chambers of all persuasions & endless bogs of misinformation stretch liberally from sea to shining sea. Plus there’s all these great television shows that everyone keeps telling me I have to watch! Also, most of us are overworked and still pretty fucking poor and don’t have the time or resources to read every book that Verso drops or take regular trips to other parts of the world to broaden our horizons.
Luckily, as always, there’s cinema. It does a world of good to step outside of the Hollywood spam factory as often as possible and peruse those “International” aisles of the imaginary videostore of your dreams that doesn’t physically exist anymore and is now just referred to as “the internet.” The Earth undeniably will die streaming (props to A.S. Hamrah), but what other options have we got these days? So stream away! Perhaps no medium can better encapsulate the universality of the human experience than film, that most perfect combination of sound & vision, abstract ideas rendered tangible for mindful consumption, a veritable conduit for empathy. Jean-Luc Godard obnoxiously said “the cinema is truth 24 frames per second,” but he’s right, and what will a steady diet of truth lead to but understanding? You can learn anything at the movies. You can travel the world! But perhaps it could be more useful to investigate what the world thinks of you? For this entry I’m going to focus on two different films by two different non-American filmmakers and their very different interpretations of life in these United States.
STROSZEK (1977) dir. Werner Herzog
Werner Herzog is the Teutonic mirror of the entire world’s madness. But madness itself is not necessarily a positive or negative thing, and Herzog’s entire exhaustive oeuvre compellingly argues that it’s the only thing about humankind that makes us interesting. The spectrum of his work is simultaneously vast and precise, ranging from nature documentaries (that inevitably settle on various human lunatics’ particular obsessions with the natural world) to absurdist comedies that never shy away from the inherent darkness which makes all humor possible. Herzog celebrates the darkness by illuminating it with a genuine inquisitiveness that renders even the most unfathomable depths of pain into a study on why exactly life is worth living, and a meaningful life (whatever that means to you) the only human pursuit that actually counts for anything. To watch 2005’s Grizzly Man stoned out of your gourd and stifle maniacal laughter is not to downplay the tragedy of Timothy Treadwell’s death, but rather to celebrate the bizarre passions that he pursued without compromise before the tragedy took place. And the previous year’s The White Diamond may ostensibly revolve around a kooky airship engineer’s attempt to alleviate the guilt he feels over the accidental death of his collaborator, but Herzog makes sure to remind us that this depressing quest for redemption takes place in the same world where a random employee can set a boombox on a cliff and breakdance effortlessly over a glorious waterfall. It’s also possible that Herzog just likes recording all of the weird stuff that he sees and listening to himself talk and doesn’t really give a shit about anything. That’s cool, too.
The man himself is an official legend, and not just for the cinephiles of the world. His personality has transcended the confines of film fandom to the point where your favorite aunt has probably listened to him reading “Go the Fuck to Sleep” on YouTube and my favorite black metal band’s fist full-length includes his awesome and hilarious (due to its sincerity) diatribe about how the birds in the jungle don’t sing, but rather “screech in pain.” His uncompromising approach to filmmaking remains unrivaled, and the anecdotes about him cooking & eating his shoe and being literally shot during an interview (and still finishing it!) are equalled only by his eternally reliable ability to turn a post-film Q&A session into a confrontational dressing down of every single audience member that you will be quoting to your friends for the rest of your life. Nerdy cinema cops will forever debate whether his documentaries aren’t objective enough, but they miss the point. For Herzog, as with Godard, everything is cinema. His documentaries can in fact feel like the curated experience of loose fiction, and his features are richly awash in the small details and local idiosyncrasies that most filmmakers excise in favor of artifice. The distinction between fact and fiction disappears within his Church of the Image, and the only thing left to be worshipped is life itself, in both its deadening drudgeries and the fantasies and obsessions we construct in order to escape them. Of course he lives in Los Angeles!
The titular character of Stroszek never quite makes it to the West Coast. A talented street musician who also happens to be a total drunk, we’re introduced to him as he’s finishing up a stint in jail and attempting his reentry into Berlin. The film stars the man known simply as Bruno S., in a role that Herzog specifically wrote for him. Beaten as a child to the point of temporary deafness, Bruno S. spent most of his life in and out of institutions and as a child was supposedly subjected to experimental treatments (i.e. beatings) during the Nazi era. Elements of his real-life trauma seep into both the screenplay and his performance which, in true Herzogian style, probably shouldn’t even be referred to as such. We are witnessing Bruno S. as he actually is, portraying a mildly fictionalized version of the life that he actually lived. Klaus Kinski may understandably receive the lion’s share of praise for his work with Herzog, but Bruno S., in the two films he made with the director, quietly hums with an authenticity that you can’t really squeeze out of a professional actor. While Kinski positively devours everything in his path with a wild-eyed shrieking banshee narcissism, Bruno S. soaks up the world’s rejection like a sponge and transforms it into broken dialogue and observation that you gradually realize is the pure, boozy poetry of the truly downtrodden.
In the film, Stroszek and his two companions, the elderly Scheitz (adorable non-professional actor Clemens Scheitz) and sex worker Eva (the fantastic Eva Mattes, of several Fassbinder films) flee the violent harassments of Eva’s pimps by planning an escape to the American midwest, where Scheitz has a nephew. A wry humor permeates the film from the onset, with the pimps exuding a legitimate menace immediately undercut by their ridiculous outfits and bizarre tendency to pile nearby items on top of their victims. The comedic timing of everyone involved feels effortlessly casual, but this is never an outright comedy (no matter what IMDB says). Eva is in very real danger and after a particularly nasty assault our desperate trio make their way to America by boat (Scheitz believes that airplanes are “built all wrong”). In America everyone has money, they mistakenly believe, swept up into the perpetual advertisement that has lured the outcasts of the world to this land once so thoughtfully cultivated by the Native Americans who have since been brutally relegated to the annals of popular culture’s whitewashed mythologizing and the disrespected kitsch of roadside attraction. But it isn’t all America-bashing for Herzog; he finds the bizarre value of dreams unfulfilled within every hokey character depicted, all of them the sons & daughters of history’s scattered immigrants after all.
Herzog’s foreign interpretation of the United States (many years before he would choose to relocate here) can best be summed up by the minor subplot of two tractor-mounted neighbors, locked in a silent dispute over an unowned patch of land between their properties. Every single cold Wisconsin day they spend patrolling their respective boundaries, perched atop otherwise unused farm equipment, making the rounds with a rifle in one hand and a steering wheel in the other, wordlessly threatening one another with death should either attempt any claim on the worthless sliver of soil. What Bruno, Eva and Scheitz ultimately discover isn’t the absolute freedom from entrapments that they are seeking, but rather the hollow and much-celebrated freedom from perpetual awareness of them. In America, Bruno realizes, the abuse is rarely physical but instead spiritual and always dealt “politely, with a smile.” But there is some tenderness here, too, seen in Eva’s friendly interactions with her customers at the diner where she works and the lovable dirtbag camaraderie amongst Scheitz’s nephew and his workers at the auto garage. Even the spectacle of a motor-mouthed auctioneer selling off the mobile home that our hapless German refugees have lost to the bank and its always-smiling representative is depicted with the sense of fascinated wonder that Herzog feels for all of the quirky little rituals of myriad human societies all over the world. He’s never pointing a camera to say “look at these crazy Americans,” but rather “look at these crazy human beings.”
That’s not to say that Herzog, or this film in particular, is especially optimistic. As things inevitably unravel for Bruno, the cyclical nature of human folly and its eventual outcome (only escape?) rolls toward him like a tractor with nobody at the wheel. Eva, bored with her increasingly domesticated lifestyle and frustrated by Bruno’s increasing alcoholism and inability to navigate the American way of life or understand her need for independence, leaves for Canada with some truck-driving regulars. Having lost their home and hardly capable of understanding why, Bruno and Scheitz embark on a failed robbery spree to rectify the “conspiracy” against them. The downward spiral culminates in what is probably Herzog’s most perfectly executed final stretch, Klaus Kinski slumped over in madness on an errant raft covered in monkeys notwithstanding. Before being treated to the absolute joy of an incredible dancing chicken (sadly trapped forever within its loop of coerced performance), we witness the crystalized essence of Herzog’s American impression: a distraught man in an ill-fitting cowboy hat, with a rifle in one hand and a frozen turkey in the other, riding an empty ski lift up and down a dry mountain while his unoccupied truck slowly circles a parking lot strewn with beer cans, all under the bewildered but unconcerned gaze of a Native American employed as a caricature of himself. Ain’t that America?
LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO AMERICA (1989) dir. Aki Kaurismäki
And now for something relatively the same, but altogether different. Just over a decade after Herzog rubbed our faces in the mirror, Finnish filmmaker Aki Kaurismäki made his own version of the American road movie that leaves a decidedly less pessimistic (but still totally honest) impression. Himself a bit of a joker and an admitted boozehound, Kaurismäki’s films tend to universally balance on that fine line between comedy & tragedy with an impressively steady approach, although wobbling pretty frequently in the direction of the former. Like Herzog, he finds of most interest those lives lived outside of the margins, and he excels at highlighting the woefully unrecognized dignity of quiet, unnoticed survival in those wilds. Unlike Herzog, his humor is always intentional and extremely funny. I never get the impression that his work is reaching for any underlying truth or ecstatic revelation; this is a true cinema of the proletariat and the subtle grind toward something as seemingly basic as a life beyond misery. Did I mention that he’s funny?
Kaurismäki likes to focus on the twin pillars of the working class and the refugee crisis. A vocal critic of his nation’s policy of refugee refusal and an economic class system that renders workers essentially powerless, perhaps his droll sense of humor functions as both an artistic cry of exasperation and an attempt to subvert the pain of a seemingly doomed struggle against the sociopathic lack of concern displayed by the world’s ruling elites. Or maybe he just likes jokes. And the jokes, as they are, never stop coming. This is comedy in a deeply deadpan register. Visual gags abound, characters deliver their lines with an almost total lack of emotion, and timing is everything. It can be risky to attempt such apparent lightheartedness when dealing with issues as heavy as low-wage drudgery and the political minefield of immigrant desperation, but Kaurismäki never tells a joke at the expense of his characters. They are uniformly resilient and, despite their existence as little more than sketches never more animated than necessary, they’re wholly human. In Kaurismäki’s world everyone is struggling, but they’ll all eventually figure it out. And everybody smokes.
Leningrad Cowboys Go America is a breeze of a picture, clocking in at under 90 minutes. Character development hardly seems necessary when your characters are a largely silent gaggle of Siberian rockabillies with preposterously exaggerated quiffs and Wicked-Witch-of-the-West shoes to match. The Cowboys are urged by their lovably corrupt manager Vladimir (Kaurismäki regular and extremely cool dude Matti Pellonpää) to take their band to America, where people will buy anything. They are followed by Igor (the impossible-to-type Kari Väänänen), a simpleton who dreams of joining up but is coldly rejected because his quiff is just too short. Once in the States, Vladimir continues to swindle them out of everything while drinking a seemingly endless supply of beer, they are told by a New York promoter to head to Mexico and play a wedding, they survive on raw onions, a literally frozen and presumed dead bandmate accompanies them in his coffin the entire time, and Jim Jarmusch sells them a car. On their journey through the South they play a handful of noticeably segregated bars (welcome to America) to varying degrees of acceptance and eventually meet up with a long-lost relative who becomes their new frontman (his performances are a highlight). They finally do make it to Mexico and play the wedding. Nothing much happens, and yet the audience is steadily chuckling the entire time. Like all of Kaurismäki’s protagonists, the movie just works.
This is a road movie in its most elemental form. Anyone who has had the mixed fortune of taking a long drive through the less glamorous byways of America will recognize the scattered landscape of garish advertisements, rundown businesses and dive bars, and local color that most Hollywood movies go out of their way to erase and replace with some forced imitation that they’ve calculated will be more compelling to your average audience. Kaurismäki soaks up these details like a Texas pickup’s seats drink sweat. By the end of the film we haven’t really learned much, but we’ve observed plenty. Over the course of the journey, Vladimir has been rejected & welcomed back into the fold and Igor is finally admitted into the band as the road manager, but not before carrying a giant dead fish across several state lines and bonding with an American barber who can’t make his sad little quiff grow but can play a soulful blues number in his shop chair. Everyone populating the Deep South that Kaurismäki discovers exudes a bone-deep love of music and a fierce appreciation of a hard-earned good time. The Leningrad Cowboys discover rock’n’roll itself while crammed uncomfortably into a car full of beer cans with a casket on the roof, shooting through its very cradle like a frozen bullet.
By the time they get to Mexico, everyone is friendly and the music is better than ever. A bottle of tequila magically thaws out the frozen corpse of their late bandmate who immediately rejoins them mid-song. This is a film nearly devoid of tension, where all manner of difficulty (the theft of their car’s engine, a brief stint in jail after being arrested by an aggressive New Orleans cop with a gigantic revolver in his holster, the literal death and subsequent revival-by-booze of a comrade) can be overcome with a stubborn dose of persistent plugging-away. The climax in Mexico is a few registers below celebratory, but that’s not because it isn’t a happy ending. Kaurismäki knows that no matter where we may be in this world, life is an endless string of occurrences that don’t necessarily count as victories or defeats, just more of the same. The aggressions of class warfare and the indignities forced upon refugees everywhere are a tragedy and must never be accepted without challenge, but common people from Siberia to Sinaloa should also remember to appreciate the little comedic moments we find in between our struggles. The pan-oceanic wave of misery crashes against all of our shores, but annihilation can still be laughed at.
*America’s got tracks. If you’re trying to get into the headspace of a sweaty drive across the nation’s least desirable zones, I’d recommend either EP by Oklahoma City miscreants CHAT PILE. This is ugly, miserable (and really good) music that isn’t afraid to laugh at the cascading waves of rotten cultural filth that is currently drowning us all. Play it loud.