For Madmen Only, September 24, 2007
By Dawoud Kringle "Renegade Sufi" (New York City) - See all my reviews
Adapting a Hesse novel to film is no easy task. In his introduction to Steppenwolf, Hesse said that almost no one under the age of 50 would understand the book; but cest la vie. I first read the book in my teens. I would come back to it several times through the next three decades. It impressed me very differently each time.
Max Von Sidow is perfect as Harry Haller. An outwardly respectable man who is fighting a war within himself between his "human" and "animal" nature. He meets Hermine, the woman who helps him find some enjoyment in his life. A jazz musician named Pablo completes the picture, with his "refreshments" that permit Harry to enter the Magic Theater. Therein he comes face to face with all the repressed elements of his psyche; and after a series of crisis, comes to accept the whole of his being; and "Laugh with the Immortals".
There are some parts of the movie that are a bit dated. Some that are very very "European" for an American palete. Some that could have been done a bit differently (and it would be interesting to see how a talented director of today, with an appropriate CGI budget, could handle this). but all in all, it is a very good movie.
http://www.amazon.com/Steppenwolf-Max-von-Sydow/product-reviews/B000FUF7EO/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R1KKJBML1WVICG
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The surreal 70s...to the max, February 15, 2007
By LGwriter "SharpWitGuy" (Astoria, N.Y. United States) - See all my reviews
Fred Haines' 1974 film version of this Hermann Hesse novel appears to have been heavily influenced by the psychedelica very much in vogue in the swingin' sixties and the early seventies. Replete with color negative footage, Czech-style animation, wacky over the top music, all kinds of disjunctive jump cuts, a blatant anti-war sequence, sensual sex that winds up meaning very little, and a whole heck of a lot of European-style psychobabble dialogue, it nevertheless conveys the spirit of the novel on which it was based.
The character referred to in the title, Harry Haller, played by Max von Sydow, is a dissolute writer unsure of all aspects of his life, and it's this uncertainty that attracts him to--and/or that brings to him two entities: 1) Hermine, his "muse", played by Dominique Sanda, and 2) the Magic Theater, of which she is, in fact, a part, but which is also frequented by Pablo, the saxophone-playing sensualist and Maria, the ultra-sexy woman who obviously symbolizes--more than Pablo or Hermine--pure sensuality.
But essentially, says Hesse--channeled through Fred Haines--none of these entities are real. In fact, it's tough to tell who or what is real and that is the real point of the film, it seems. We live and eventually die and go through life as participants in a play whose meaning is lost to us. All kinds of psychological symbolism and related stuff is in this film, but rather than trying to interpret it all--or any of it, for that matter--better perhaps to say that here's an oddity, a curio, a semi-fascinating period piece that smacks of its time and gives the viewer--along with concert footage of the Grateful Dead, for example--a snapshot of what the early seventies were all about.
Worth seeing for this reason, Steppenwolf is a film that may not necessarily be remembered easily but on the other hand is not necessarily forgotten right away either. Somewhere in between...
http://www.amazon.com/Steppenwolf-Max-von-Sydow/product-reviews/B000FUF7EO/ref=cm_cr_dp_synop?ie=UTF8&showViewpoints=0&sortBy=bySubmissionDateDescending#R254GZM4TZWK40
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