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Werner’s World: The enigma that is Werner Herzog

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by Philip Moore
A prolific filmmaker, having made around 52 films (features and docs) not to mention the number of films he has appeared in, Werner Herzog is not an easy figure to work out. Beginning his prodigious filmic output in the realm of the fiction film with Signs of Life and the aptly Herzogian titled Even Dwarfs Started Small, his most widely recognised and commercially successful films to date have been Aguirre, Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo, both films also being fictions.

But this seems to be changing, as he is now being recognised for his extraordinary documentary output, and courtesy of the ICA, a season of films, mostly docus (I say mostly as nothing is quite ‘fiction’ or ‘documentary’ with Herzog), is now on.

The mad, mythical and visionary Fitzcarraldo is playing, but so too is The Wild Blue Yonder, a science-fiction romance about alien space travel, which playfully mixes documentary and archive footage with interviews with an alien. For me, the film beautifully expresses Herzog’s visionary cinema. Whether documentary or fiction, Herzog’s filmic quest to bring us untapped, “unembarrassed” landscapes have always made him a compelling filmmaker. For all Herzog completists, there is a scene in Wim Wenders’ (a contemporary of Herzog) essay film Tokyo-Ga, where he “bumps” into Herzog in Tokyo and Herzog’s earnest voice expounds on his quest for ‘pure’ images.
The other films on show include Grizzly Man, perhaps one of his best documentaries to date. Again, the subject matter is utterly Herzogian. The documentary is almost entirely composed of the footage of the bear-obsessed activist Timothy Treadwell who spends much of his time in the company of grizzlies. The story of Treadwell is also the story of many of Herzog’s subjects; individuals who are often marginalised, obsessed and desperate in some way, but who are also prone to myth-making and self-proclaimed fantasies. Treadwell’s vitriolic outbursts – and his hair-cut – reminded me of Herzog’s one time muse, the deranged Klaus Kinski who stars in Fitzcarraldo and who is the subject of another of Herzog’s documentaries, My Best Fiend – a sort of hymn to his tumultuous relationship with the enigmatic and difficult actor.

Another common aspect of Herzog’s work is his fascination with flying and the season includes an earlier documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) and a more recent one, The White Diamond (2004). Both completely different in subject matter, they nevertheless display Herzog’s continued fascination with individuals who are always somehow fringe and perhaps even comical, but his films never exploit and abuse this. Little Dieter Needs to Fly is about a former US air pilot returning to the Vietnam jungle where he was shot down and captured, meeting some of his former captor - an astonishing feat for any filmmaker. Interestingly, Herzog has recently made a fiction version of Dieter Dengler’s story called Rescue Dawn. Starring Christian Bale, the film is scheduled for release this Autumn. Perhaps this will mark a return to Herzog’s fiction phase, although as those fans of Herzog should know, they two are never mutually exclusive and more often then not, the categories of ‘fiction’ and ‘documentary’ often mix and slide into one another.
The White Diamond brings to us the tale of a scientist who has created a floating/flying machine to help in his quest to study the tops of rainforests – a world still relatively unexplored within the scientific community. Although not one of his strongest films, The White Diamond still manages to bring us some extraordinary images and memorable characters.

I am also pleased to see that the ICA have picked Wheel of Time (2003), a wonderful film about one of Buddhism’s largest pilgrimages in Tibet. Again, this film expresses themes and continuations in Herzog’s work – namely an interest in faith and spirituality, but also, the physical experiences of ecstatic moments. These two seemingly contradictory ideas are beautifully consummated in this patient and sensitive study of Tibetan Buddhism.

I have always been surprised at the lack of knowledge fellow documentary makers and enthusiasts have of Herzog’s documentary output.

Herzog is an intense filmmaker. Having produced such a vast amount of films, and still going strong, his work rate and persistent originality are something of a marvel. His challenging and forceful nature has brought to us a cinema of travel, in which a creative restlessness has produced some of the most sublime and bizarre images I have ever seen. The poetics of Herzog’s cinema rest somewhere between the visionary and the documentary, and it is this dynamic disposition, I believe, that has served to bring us films like no other. As a personality, Herzog has also left an impression on me and many others I’m sure, one example being the following: true to his word, Herzog agreed to eat his own shoe after the completion of Errol Morris’s first film, Gates of Heaven (1978), which Herzog said would never get made. In front of a keen crowd of students in a theatre at the University of California, Herzog advises the young and exuberant future filmmakers about how to go about making films, whilst simply tucking into to his leather boot which he had been boiling for the last few hours. It was his serious insistence and emphasis that no matter what, if you want to make a film, go and make a film. Even if it means, as he says, stealing a camera from the university campus.

It is this forceful will and determination that has inspired myself and many others and hopefully, the season of Herzog films will also inspire and captivate you.

See also:

The Worlds of Werner Herzog at the ICA

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