BRUNO S. IS PROBABLY NOT WHO YOU THINK HE IS

By TOM LITTLEWOOD

However, after hearing him recount his own life story, it seems very fitting that he spends his days playing on familiar street corners in his old neighborhood, just as he has for the past 50 years. Of course, there were the “Herzog years”, when he was catapulted into the limelight with Kaspar Hauser and Stroszek (he still has the posters and clapper boards on the walls of his shoebox flat), before returning to his previous life as the estranged street musican. The effect of this sudden elevation to celebrity has clearly hardened him and, in a way, driven him even further away from what people who get paid to write cleverly like to call “normal society”.

Bruno’s flat itself in a tiny three-room abode. Junkroom to the left, another junkroom to the right, and kitchen out the back. The entire floor and most of the wall space is jumbled with trinkets and oddities collected during a life on the street. Conversation with him is almost as convoluted as the interior of his flat. He goes off on bizarre tangents, often bursting into song or poetry, which seems to act as a kind of safety mechanism against delving too deeply into his own past. However, there were moments while talking to him, where you could really see his eyes light up with the enthusiam and optimism of his younger self, before disillusionment forced him into reclusion. As corny as that sounds, it was a really special moment. I hope watching the show will give people a better idea of exactly who this guy is than some janky documentary or Herzog interview.

By TOM LITTLEWOOD 2 years ago

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