STROSZEK

Doug Pritchard from Albany, NY writes:
I find it frustrating that American filmmakers cannot make a film as good as this one is. The whole story of misplaced hopes and lost dreams on the dreary American landscape is more powerful in it's telling than many films have been. The action of this film moves us from birth to death in a philosophical journey of the soul. The arrival of these obviously hopeful and distraught people on American shores is like the rebirth many immigrants went through when they escaped their own countries and arrived here. Dreams of streets paved with gold and the easy credit of American commerce is the undoing of many yet, here we see the disaster of it all. One doesn't have to be a recent immigrant to experience the foibles of modern credit like our characters do. They exemplify it though and it is to their peril that they do not understand it. The closing scene where we hear the solitary gunshot is most powerful. That it is done near a roadside zoo with it's caged animals is perfect because it portrays the cage our man has put himself into. There is only one way out, he takes it. Like many powerful financiers of the twenties who lost everything he does the only thing which will solve his problems. The gunshot is his goodbye to his problems and the beginning of his new life. A shame that American studios cannot produce movies such as this. They are in need of lessons from directors who understand cinema and should study films of this type. Maybe they will be able to improve the fare they offer to us.