Werner Herzog discusses ‘Stroszek’, David Lynchm and Ian Curtis’ suicide
As the electrifying presence fronting Joy Division, Ian Curtis shaped his musical style and aesthetic on punk progenitors like David Bowie and Iggy Pop. Joy Division sought controversy befitting of the punk movement in their name, an English translation for a group of concentration camp prisoners forced into prostitution by the Nazis.
Beyond this reference, the band were known for their Nazi-like fashion, reflective of that worn by Bowie during his ‘Thin White Duke’ years. This infatuation with Nazism was undoubtedly nothing more than an obsession for shocking history rather than any aligned ideology. Alas, this didn’t stop Joy Division from garnering a small fascist following before their outlook was clarified.
Tragically, on May 18th, 1980, Curtis, aged 23, took his own life at his home in Macclesfield, following a lengthy struggle with depression related to his epilepsy medication and deteriorating marriage. According to Deborah Curtis’ memoir Touching from a Distance, Curtis had been watching the German movie Stroszek when she checked in on him a few hours before his death.
“In the early hours of the morning in Barton Street, Ian had been watching the Werner Herzog film,” Deborah wrote. “When I arrived, he had almost finished a large jar of coffee and was helping himself to another mug of the thick black mixture. He asked me to drop the divorce, and I argued that he would have changed his mind by morning.”
“After I had gone, Ian made himself still more coffee,” she continued. “In the pantry was the all-but-empty whisky bottle from which he squeezed every last drop. He listened to Iggy Pop’s The Idiot. He took [our daughter] Natalie’s photograph down from the wall, retrieved our wedding picture from the drawer and sat down to write me a letter.”
Over the years since Curtis’ death, speculation has arisen regarding his choice of final film and LP. The Idiot, Iggy Pop’s debut solo album made with Bowie during their residence in France and Germany, ends with ‘Tiny Girls’, which contains the lyrics: “Well the day begins/ You don’t want to live/’Cause you can’t believe/ In the one you’re with/’Cause you know her tricks/ And you know her past”.
‘Tiny Girls’ is thought to be behind Curtis’ choice to play the record; contrastingly, Herzog’s Stroszek had been aired on aerial TV. Allegedly, the American filmmaker David Lynch had watched the same movie transmission.
In a Q&A with the BBC, Herzog was once asked about the connection between his movie and the two famous viewers. “There’s an interesting coincidence regarding your great film Stroszek,” Jason Parkes of the BBC began. “Reading about the suicide of Joy Division singer Ian Curtis in the book Touching from a Distance, we learn that he watched Stroszek before killing himself. While reading Faber’s Lynch on Lynch, David Lynch talks about being in the UK filming The Elephant Man and seeing Stroszek on TV.”
“Curtis and Lynch appear to have been watching the transmission of the same film at the same time,” he continued. “Although it’s a huge simplification, the reactions of the two viewers appear to swing between a complete enchantment of life and self-destruction. Do you find this reveals something about your work?”
“It is a very heavy question,” Herzog began his reply. “There is no frivolity in answering this. I cannot really argue. It is as it is. I wish this singer was still alive and hadn’t seen Stroszek at that moment. But deep at the bottom of my heart, I do believe that Stroszek was not the reason that he killed himself. I do believe that he must have had some very, very serious deeper other reasons, and he may have, and I’m very cautious, he may have used the film as a ritual step into what he was doing.”
“Regarding David Lynch when he was doing Elephant Man, which is a wonderful film, I do not know. I actually know David Lynch personally, and I should speak to him and ask him. There’s no real answer to that question, only regret that a young man committed suicide. That’s a fact that is sad, which is very, very serious and is very disquieting.”
Stroszek, released in 1977, is a German tragicomedy. It follows the titular alcoholic who, recently released from jail, seeks a new life in America with his companions, an elderly man and a sex worker. Watch the official trailer below.