A spare and unremittingly bleak expression of existential dread, Georg Büchner's hugely influential 1836 stage play, Woyzeck, is credited as the first in western drama to treat a proletariat hero tragically and a major precursor to the modernist theater of Bertolt Brecht. It's been adapted for the screen five times, most notably by lunatic German master Werner Herzog (Aguirre, The Wrath Of God) as a vehicle for his equally lunatic star, Klaus Kinski. Hungarian director János Szász's gripping 1994 version updates Büchner's play in a contemporary setting, but it could easily be mistaken for a century earlier. The portly, bald-pated Lajos Kovács brings a tightly concealed intensity to the titular role, a desperately poor flagman in a trainyard who slowly buckles under the oppression of his pitiless boss (Aleksandr Porokhovshchikov) and his unresponsive, adulterous wife (Diana Vacaru). In an effort to relieve his poverty, Kovács subjects himself to a doctor's questionable scientific experiment, in which he's permitted to eat nothing but peas. Within these minimal psychological boundaries, Woyzeck follows his inexorable descent into madness and violence, sticking closely to his perspective. Szász eschews a more ambiguous portrait in favor of a stark, boldly expressive nod to the shadows and angles of silent-era German cinema, in which a character's mental state was conveyed entirely in visual terms. Though weakened by a now-familiar story arc and Szász's somewhat conventional interpretation, Woyzeck proves it's still possible to achieve that kind of purity.