Alexandre Rockwell wrote, produced, and directed this film based on an account by Georg Büchner - nineteenth-century German author of Woyczeck and Danton's Death - of the life of visionary poet Jakob Michael Reinhold Lenz. Rockwell has approached the film with a Bressonian simplicity of dialogue and a non-theatrical representation of story-line - and has shot it, incredibly enough, in the streets of New York. He comments:
“Lenz was considered an eccentric by his contemporaries in Germany. He drew sharp contrast with prevailing aesthetics, taking a naturalist ideology to its limits.... He was sent to Waldbach to stay with Pastor Oberlin (1740-1826) who had a reputation for ‘pacifying troubled spirits.' The only record of Lenz's stay in Waldbach is Paster Oberlin's journal.... I chose to film the novel (based on Lenz's life with Oberlin) because of its avoidance of artistic style.... Büchner's approach to documenting the life of Lenz was a frame-work with which I could film a story-line as a document.... I found people of the street to enact the story. I see New York as a Pre-Historic environment...in the sense of timeless and unconscious. Lenz would be the camera I would carry into the wilderness of New York.... The soundtrack of Lenz will accompany his inner struggle...a dynamic juxtaposition of solid human vocals.... There is a serenity of soul in human expression as brought on by singing regardless of time or culture. The city sounds...appear random and insane....”