STEPPENWOLF
Directed and Written by FRED HAINES
Having been co-opted by street-corner mystics and turned into an advance man for the love generation, Hermann Hesse is much the worse for wear. The studiously mystical German novelist liked to ruminate about higher realities, exalted consciousness, spiritual quest—all topics that have become fashionable since his death in 1962.
In this film, made from his most popular novel, Hesse takes a fearful pummeling at the hands of one Fred Haines, who visited similar punishment on James Joyce in his screenplay for Ulysses (1967). The protagonist of Steppenwolf,...