Werner Herzog: greatest living director?

Yes, some scenes are staged. Painfully funny so, in some cases, like the "talent" show and the woman who just goes on and on in this monotone voice about her "adventures" (all made up I'm sure) like travelling across Africa in a garbage truck.
Love it, Werner.
Those were the scenes that made me laugh the hardest, along with the "buckethead" survival in a snowstorm sequence near the beginning.

Made for Discovery Films, Herzog goes to several basecamps or outposts to talk with the "travellers" and scientists who do research or work in Antarctica. Their stories vary greatly, and they're all interesting in one way or another.
Herzog assures us that he did not set out to make "another film about penguins", and his voiceover/narration is here to assault you. He speaks *seemingly* omnipotently, with a thick Bavarian accent. His pronounciation of some words should give you a laugh too. I've come to love his voiceovers. A Herzog voiceover is something that's hard to forget...He asks a researcher who studies penguins about gay penguins.
The man says he's never seen any evidence of that but he goes into a story about situations where you have two male penguins and one female..
Herzog asks if he's seen any penguins go crazy.
The man says "No, but they do get disoriented sometimes.."
Funny funny stuff. (and I'm paraphrasing here- go see the fucking film. It's the best non-fiction film of the year (with much staging in it :)

We learn about seals and how they survive in such a climate, and how they make noises to communicate with each other that sounds like Pink Floyd? I laughed at this bit. Herzog has some scientists put their heads to the ice and listen to the symphony of seal-speak.

He gives us a tour of Shackleton's original camp, preserved as it originally was, 100 years ago. He also shows us vintage stock footage of the Shackleton expedition and the recent underwater/under-ice footage that brought him to Antarctica in the first place.
That footage is astonishing.
It's like footage from another time-space continuum.
Another planet.
Strange sea-creatures, floating, intrauterine-like, with celestial voices, choirs accompanying it. Very Kubrick/2001...
Darling, Let's not ask for the stars
We already have the moon

Wonderful film, a triumph in a career of triumphs.
Herzog also has some philosophies that he presents in direct and not-so direct ways. This is a film that should give you a lot to think about. The shots inside ice caves, the shots of the vast, barren Hoth-like South Pole are quite arresting, quite visually stunning. There's also volcanos on that continent- we get great P.O.V. shot of the mouth and rim of a massively huge volcano, where researchers have set up equipment and cameras to monitor the volcanic activity. More laughs in this scene too...just watch it.

The scenes with the ice divers was incredible as well.
Any fan of cinema or travelling or pursuit of knowledge, check this Masterwork out. Extremely entertaining and extremely compelling.

"oddly revealing distillation of his career-long nexus of obsessions"?

Pretty fancy speak for Herzog just doing what he loves.
The lost penguin sequence was funny as hell to me as well.
I laughed hard man. I thought it must be all staged, what with Herzog's dead-serious voiceover and just the premise of it.
The penguin wasn't really lost either- he had a purpose didn't he?
He walked out there alone, determined to meet his fate, no?
I can't remember Herzog's exact words over the footage of the penguin waddling across the vast ice but I was laughing, man. It just seemed ridiculous to me.
And everybody around me in the theatre wasn't laughing either, which I found strange- I guess they bought into Herzog's making the scene haunting and disturbing. Who else would dream up such a scenario? Do you actually believe that there are penguins who can't take it anymore and decide to go their own way?
To face certain death? Who have no sense to stay where the food is? Where the fellow penguins are?
This is an example of a penguin losing it, and that point was already dismissed. Penguins don't do this.
Herzog is provoking the viewer.
I found it hilarious and awesome.

Very true that Herzog is dealing with themes of nature and man and existence in general.

I haven't seen The Wild Blue Yonder- I was going to buy it on DVD last year sight unseen but the HMV I where I used to shop in Ottawa sold out. I haven't gotten around to ordering it yet. Same with the Criterion Burden of Dreams.
This thread will be complete someday...
And I'm sad to say that I will only be seeing a handful of films at Toronto this year- work requires my presence...Movies do not pay my bills... ha ha

jOHANN--i MOVED YOUR eNCOUNTERS remarks over to a thread for that new film. Can you re-post this there? So we can have the film indexed separaely.

I don't know how to do it without re-typing it.

You need to learn how to cut and paste. It's really easy--and an essential tool of computer use.

Scan the text you want to copy with your moush clicker, and hold down Control + C.

Click into the new space where you want to past in the text. Hit Control + V. It will be transferred there.

My head hurts...

All this technical jargon..
Help me Obi-Wan Kenobi.
You're my only hope...

Heart of Glass


Everything is in this land, and Everything is RUBY.

Heart of Glass is a very mysterious and enigmatic film, one that defies anyone to predict what will happen from one moment to the next. It's so esoteric that it will test the patience of just about anyone. I can easily see most regular moviegoers getting completely bored and confused without a solid narrative.

I loved it and was totally engaged, and that's because of my profound interest in Werner Herzog's films. Heart of Glass opens with the unique and disturbing music of Popul Vuh over an image of Hias, a prophetic herdsman, who has a major role in the film with his premonitions. Hias speaks some unsettling words about the end of the world, looking "into the cataract" of the collapsing earth, experiencing vertigo as he's caught in an undertow, which draws him, "sucks me down".

It's a dank and bleak landscape all around him, and some powerful outdoor/nature shots grab your peepers and hold you entranced at different points throughout the movie. Three stories unfold in this movie, one of Hias and his visions, one of the Ruby Glass, a mysterious red glass that whose maker has just died, and the townsfolk want to know the secret of how to make it, how to blow or form that particular type of ruby red glass. And of course the "buried layers of mass hysteria"- (from the interior DVD sleeve notes).

This film is famous in Herzog's filmography for the fact that he hypnotized all of his actors and had them perform hypnotized.
It creates an unsettling ambience and gives the viewer an alienation that is hard to describe. This is a very hard movie to review. To me it was totally poetic and beautiful overall, but the scenes in and of themselves don't seem to have points or purposes, other than to establish the fact that everyone is superstitious, paranoid, in great fear and on the brink of madness.

Herzog was inspired by a German folk legend, according to the DVD liner notes. I guess the "Ruby Glass" had a powerful effect on some townsfolk in Germany at the start of the Industrial Revolution.
There are haunting images, specifically of nature/forests, the blast furnaces where glass is created/blown, and the final ten minutes were particularly poetic to me, in an otherworldly, oddly detached way. The aerial shots of the massive jagged rocks of an island in the ocean were awesome to witness.
At the one-hour mark there is a sequence of the glas blowers at work that is beautiful. No dialogue for about 3 or 4 minutes, just the artisans blowing and forming and shaping glass into various objets d'art. (A horse is made at one point- very beautiful to see)

Don't ask me to explain it anymore than I have.
See it yourself and make sense of the bizarre mise-en-scenes.
It's one hell of an inscrutable work of cinematic art...

The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser


A caravan reaches a city...


This film is proof Werner Herzog can do the "period film".
The settings and costumes and music are excellent.
It's early 19th century Nuremburg Germany, and the story is true.
Herzog dramatizes the story of Kaspar Hauser.

The "Enigma of the Century" is a man who appeared in the town in 1828, from nowhere, abandoned by his "caregivers".
He couldn't walk and only made grunting sounds. He couldn't speak or write or understand barely any stimuli. The reason for this is he was locked in a dark cellar for God knows how long, given only bread to eat. He'd never had any contact with people, animals or even trees. The opening titles tell us To this day no one knows where he came from- or who set him free.

Herzog cast Bruno S. to play Kaspar, a man with a somewhat similar background to Kaspar's. He was treated horribly in his youth too (he spent 23 of his first 26 years in institutions), and Herzog is on record saying that the story of Kaspar Hauser is also the story of Bruno S. When Herzog found him, he was a street musician and a factory worker, age 40.
He gives an oddly beautiful performance, transforming from a hopeless reject of society into a man who has his own reasoning and even play a piano. He very very slowly understands things and events around him in his unfortunate situation. He is molded by being taught how to walk, write, eat, speak (a great scene is a little girl trying to teach him a rhyme), bathe, learn about Christ:
For the peace of God is higher than all mortal coils....Keep our hearts in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen
At one point near the end of the movie he runs out of church and says:
The singing of the congregation sounds like awful howling! Then the pastor starts to howl! He is urged back to the church.
Kaspar endures being a circus freak, with 3 others in a sideshow, all of them dubbed "The Four Riddles of the Spheres": The Tiny King (a midget), The Young Mozart (a total joke- he's a sullen, mute lad, who the ringmaster says is completely engrossed in the zones of twilight, Hombrecito, a Spanish/ Indian wildman who plays the flute and Kaspar, "The Foundling".


Bruno S. has a presence. His eyes are intense, alive.
He embodies the character in an oddly appealing way.
Herzog says that he is very grounded, that he is the only one in his orbit who has logic- everyone else is exploiting him or pushing him in directions that aren't really in his best interests.
Watch it yourself. It's a unique movie, with a very unique protagonist. I drew similarities with A Clockwork Orange, even though the two films are polarly different. 2 completely different times and places. Some UFI: The adagio that is heard at one point is the same one that the Doors covered and Oliver Stone used over the grave shots of Jim Morrison in The Doors. My ears perked up when I heard that. (It was composed by Remo Giazotto).

I would like to know where Herzog got the footage of Kaspar's dream on his deathbed- the desert caravan with all the camels- it looked really old.

Stroszek



Who knows what fate will bring?


This is an appropriate film to watch after seeing The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser. It's another showcase for the unique "acting" talents of Bruno S, last name: STROSZEK.

Herzog promised him the role of WOYZECK, an adaptation of a theatre fragment by Georg Buchner. But he soon realized that Bruno was not the man for the part of a soldier going insane. (Klaus Kinski was cast in his place). Bruno was quite upset about it and Herzog promised to write a movie for him. Stroszek is that movie. It's way more autobiographical than Kaspar Hauser, and even uses Bruno's apartment, musical instruments & Berlin haunts. He basically plays himself, a terrorized man who helps out a woman named Eva and experiences massive grief for his troubles. His wacky old man neighbor is the other major figure in this tragic movie, and all three of them decide to escape their shitty situation by planning a move to Wisconsin, USA.
An American redneck who lives in a mobile home that knows the old man from an air force base in Ramstein writes and says they can live and get set up with jobs easily. Eva convinces Bruno that it's a great decision, after all, everybody in America is rich!
How are they going to finance this move?
Eva will come up with the money. How? As a Ho, of course. Her stock in trade! She's great with the fucky-fuck!
Sure enough, she raises the money to get the old man, Bruno and herself to New York. Beautiful skyline shots of NYC- they are tourists briefly and then head to Wisconsin.

Everything seems to go well- Bruno gets a job helping at a mechanics' garage, Eva lands a gig waiting tables at a truckers' diner, and the old man(Clemens Scheitz) thinks he's discovered a way to measure animal magnetism! All's well, right?
Nope.
The American Dream morphs into an absolute nightmare.
I won't tell you what happens. You have to see for yourself how this "dream move" disintegrates into the most bizarre, warped tragedy ever filmed.
I just wish Herzog would've shown us EXACTLY what happens to the three of them. We're left to our own ideas as to what the actual end is for these 3 souls but we're given a fairly good indication, and it ain't very rosy...

Much has been made of the bizarro ending with the dancing chicken, the piano-playing chicken, the drum-playing duck and fireman rabbit. Yes- they are real and they are quite disturbing.
Check it out for yourself.
It's a movie you'll never forget.
Bleaker than hell, odd to the max, the only thing that I truly enjoyed was the sexiness of Eva Mattes.

A film that could only come from the mind of Werner Herzog.
And it's the only one in his whole canon that is set in modern/contemporary times (1976 Berlin and USA)

* and I heard that Adagio again! This time it was on a piano..and very brief... I take it to symbolize the tragic trajectory to come...*

Even Dwarfs Started Small


Possibly the greatest cult film ever made.
Why?
Mentally ill German midgets in an insane asylum take over the place. Or is it an insane asylum? Might as well be...it's an institution of some kind...
They overthrow the dictatorship that mars their tortured existence. They tear down their Master's favorite palm tree with fire and ropes. They try to get 2 of their fellow inmates to wed and consummate the union, against Hombre's wishes. (Hombre is one of the main characters who giggles in a most disturbing way- Herzog even ends the film with his fucked up giggling).
And that's just SOME of the insanity contained in this picture....

One of the midget ladies collects insects and dresses them up in wedding attire. 2 blind midgets who wear goggles are tormented and they engage in weird behavior most of the time. Pepe, a rebel midget, is lashed seated into a chair, while the sole management midget tries to reclaim order.

The film is black and white, with no sense of time. (Amazing for a 40-year old piece of work)
The movie is timeless, like a forgotten David Lynch film.
Seriously, if you didn't know Herzog made it, you'd without a doubt say it was Lynch. It's got real David Lynch aspects, Eraserhead aspects. What can I say? The midgets kill a pig, they crucify a monkey and they smash evrything from typewriters to dinner plates in a miasma of chaotic insanity. Some midgets are taller than others, and to hear their German voices yell and scream and talk like Alvin, Simon and Theodore chipmunk is beyond surreal.
I was just stunned watching it.
How did Herzog make this?!
How is this film not banned?
It's jaw droppingly shocking and powerful.
Wow.
I'll always be haunted by this one.....

Stroszek and Dwarfs have a truck going round and round in circles in them for periods of time. I'll be on the lookout for the same in all his other films. (Like Kubrick and his bathrooms..)

BTW, not a single non-"little person" is seen in "Dwarfs"- every scene is midgets/dwarfs. There are nude shots of naked ladies in a magazine, but that's it for adult humans over 4 feet tall being seen in it.
There are some absolutely unforgettable images in the movie.
I can't even really describe them. But there were a couple shots that I wouldn't have minded in an 8x10- framed. One of the midget girls is sexy to me...(I know, I'm a little warped.)

Nosferatu the Vampyre



Mother Superior.....stop the black coffins!


Fantastic film. Brilliant and very powerful.
Great evocative music and images, with truly impressive cinematography and musical flourishes by Popul Vuh & Florian Fricke. (with some Wagner and Charles Gounod pieces thrown in for good measure).

Herzog has said that F.W. Murnau's 1921 Nosferatu is the greatest work in German cinema history. He remade it way better in my opinion, adding the cinematic oomph that the story needed even though the original is quite fine in and of itself.
I don't know if I prefer Francis Ford Coppola's version better or Herzog's. They're both Masterpieces to me. Both certified classics.
Herzog's might have the slight edge due to the better and more believable performance of the role of Jonathan Harker, played by Bruno Ganz. He's perfect as Harker. Keanu Reeves was badly miscast. Dull as fucking cardboard. And Isabelle Adjani is also way better in the role of Harker's flame than Winona Ryder, but Winona was OK.
As far as the role of Dracula goes, both Gary Oldman and Klaus Kinski did it phenomenal justice. Both were Class.
But Kinski has that extra little wierdness, he gets the character down so cold it's truly chilling. I felt he should've won an Oscar.
I mean shit, how mesmerizing and creepy is he in Herzog's version? It's utterly awesome how freaky and profoundly strange he is. He's replaying Max Schreck's bone-chilling example from the silent days, yes, but wowza is his aura in this film the bomb....

Not only is he able to make your skin crawl, but he makes Dracula sympathetic. He makes you feel sorry for his longings, another reason why I feel he deserved an Oscar. He is 100% in the skin of this character. Balls to the wall as an undead creature "haunting like a black wolf".

The locations, settings, costumes, ambience are all perfect.
The sailing ship and the whole production design terrifically evoke 1850 Weimar and Transylvania. (At least I think they do- I've never been to either place in my life).

There's no gore and very little blood here. This is a riveting character study, not an out-and-out horror film. It's simply beautiful to witness. An essential film to watch for film buffs.
Arguably the best adaption of the Dracula legend ever lensed.
Herzog endured critical heat for just re-shooting Murnau's original, but this lifts the whole thing to a new, astounding height. A remake that was well worth the effort and came off pitch perfect. It's absolutely perfect. It's dark, it's lyrical, it's sheer cinematic poetry to me.

Lessons Of Darkness


One of the greatest films I've ever witnessed.
I happened to see it with a friend today who's uncle was on a Canadian team to put out the fires of Kuwait. ("Red Adair" was his company). He gave me a very valuable commentary on it. Herzog is not political one shred in Lessons of Darkness. I wrestled with whether or not to keep the politics out of a review and I can't.

It just angers me so much.

George Bush Senior is responsible for one of the greatest natural disasters ever bestowed on the earth. (And not just his son). Because of money and his desire for complete control over the oil those oil wells were set on fire. 700 of 'em. The government basically told Bush to go fuck himself because he wanted 100% control of the oil.
The fires were figured to take 2 years to extinguish. It took 6 months. Herzog took a small film crew to Kuwait to film the disaster in a way that shames CNN beyond your wildest imagination, with only one month left before the last fire was put out. He got absolutely astonishing footage. We see an absolute wasteland of oil sands where nothing will ever grow. Vegetation and animal life are all but extinct there. Giant lakes of oil that stretch farther than Lake Superior. Teams of workers work to cap the oil taps and extinguish the oxygen supply with dynamite. It made all the men millionaires. It's a very specific job, containing these types of fires.
The pressure of the oil spewing from the ground is insane.
The flames reach up for miles it seems.

Herzog filmed this part of the world with aerial shots and points of view that just stun you into silence. Arresting images indeed, Oscar... Holy shit.

I'll write more about it tomorrow.
This film deserves more time and consideration.
I just saw it and I'm in a state of mind that leaves me numb.
One thing is for sure, the "Christian" George Bush Sr. ain't ever getting into heaven.

Yes, nobody really wants to admit that it was Daddy Warbucks Bush who instigated the actions that led to the oil wells being turned on and set ablaze, to burn and spew black smoke billowing bigger than any cloud formation you've ever seen in your life.
Don't let anyone tell you that Saddam was the problem with Kuwait. He was out-muscled by an even bigger dictator: "Poppy"
Bush Sr. Do your own research on it.
I was told POINT BLANK by someone related to a man on the ground who put out the fires that that disaster was 100% Bush's fault. Bush wasn't "protecting the oil fields"- that's a steaming pile of black-as-oil horseshit. Believe me.
There's an article from the Huffington Post from November 13th 2009 (less than 2 weeks ago!)by Jackson Williams that references it. Search/google "Bush oil buddies divvy up Iraqi oil".
You'll find out.


The dilemma was "do we let the taps burn out?"
Or do we cap them, lessening the massively catastrophic devastation to the environment? The decision was made to cap them. Herzog gives us mute glory in images to illustrate this task.
The film is only 54 minutes, but it might as well be a 3 hour opus, that's how great it is. That hour rocketed by for me.
It's utterly staggering how amazing Lessons Of Darkness is.
The shots of the bubbling molten oil was poetic. Just as if he was filming lava from a volcano. In one scene you see an oil worker toss a molotov cocktail into the spewing flame of a well that explodes on impact. Incredible. What a historic record! Herzog should be recognized/awarded for this film. It's just harrowing and riveting at the same time, with glorious camerawork. Celestial helicopter shots. Just like the opening credits of Kubrick's The Shining. Elegant and powerful imagery that no one else on the planet has ever achieved. This documentary is exactly the kind of journalism we need: poetic presentation of historic, in-the-moment circumstantial chaos and destruction. How else can you get that elemental and ethereal "Ecstatic Truth" that Herzog has been mining his whole career?
His crowning achievement is Lessons Of Darkness.
See it. Think about it. Marvel at it.
It's just plain astounding.

Mirage

PARADISE ON EARTH?


This is one of the masterpieces of cinema.
And to think it was never going to be released by Herzog!

It's the most poetic film in his whole filmography.
He shot miles and miles and miles of footage in the Sahara desert that was edited by Beate Mainka-Jellinghaus into a 76-minute visually breathtaking documentary.
Narrated by German film theorist Lotte Eisner, it's peppered with excerpts from the Mayan creation myth Popul Vuh and has wonderful music on the soundtrack. A mix of Leonard Cohen, bizarre "brothel music" and choirs, among other music pieces.
The music just washes over you with the images.
It's just shot after shot and slow, endless tracks in remote areas of Africa. Glorious. You see some oil taps on fire in it just like Lessons of Darkness, so I can see why Anchor Bay released the two films on the same DVD.

If you want narrative, look elsewhere. This film is an experience for your intellect and your emotions. You FEEL this movie, you don't watch it. You just get taken away on clouds of brilliant cinematography with divine music pumped through it.
It's very similar to 2001: A Space Odyssey in that the images are exceedingly powerful, complimented by genius musical selections.

It's short, but with the stunning visuals, you won't complain about it. You could show it on loop for eternity and feel completely at ease that someone on this earth captured a barren landsape in way that brings out the raw beauty that people don't normally associate with climates of this type.

It's another high-ranker in Herzog's canon.
Maybe it claims the top spot.
Someone could debate that.
The man was a born filmmaker, who is open to any artistic possiblity that crosses his mind and lenses.
I learned that the word "Lightning" is "Blitz" in German, and that only drowning men see Jesus Christ for what he is.
Thanks to Leonard Cohen and Werner Herzog.
The best musical/cinematic pairing in history?....