The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser

I don't know why I'm thinking of this movie now. I saw it by pure chance several months ago. We were staying at a friend's house, before our new apartment in Philly was ready, and the movie was on top of her DVD player. I'd seen a couple Werner Herzog movies before, and remembered liking Fitzcaraldo very much. The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser is a great, nearly perfect, movie. It's superficially simple plot seems a fantastic contrivance, but is based on a true story: a young man is found in a German town, barely able to speak, barely able to walk. He has apparently lived his life in chained in a cellar, with little or no human interaction. The movie follows the attempts to teach Kaspar how to live in society (and also attempts to exploit him). The performance by Bruno S. as Kaspar is remarkable, and the movie never stoops to the maudlin level one would expect from an American movie of the same subject. Indeed, the facts of the case of Kaspar Hauser are laid out quite frankly, with no attempt to explain many of them, or to tie up the story into a neat package. The movie's unexpected ending left me puzzled by my brief encounter with Kaspar, but deeply affected. I don't know the answer to the mystery of Kaspar Hauser, or even which one of the mysteries in the movie I thought most needing explanation, but I'm glad I got the chance to puzzle over them.