The sequence that opens Werner Herzog's eponymous adaptation of Georg Büchner's play defines and encapsulates the entire film. The visceral has always been the most direct modality of artistic communication, perhaps even the most efficient. Even if this film means, for us, the first contact with Woyzeck, at the first glimpse of Klaus Kinski, beaten like a dog, wallowing desperately through a series of repetitive movements, like meat going through the grinder — we know it then, as if we had always known him: that is Woyzeck. And in fact, he cannot fail to appear familiar: Woyzeck is the man of old, of always, and, simultaneously, the promise of modern man, and its resounding failure.
