German director Werner Herzog has blazed a unique career in film. An incredibly independent filmmaker, he has worked with brilliance in feature narratives and documentaries. His films, fiction or not, are full of powerful and iconic images, and his relentlessness in getting what he wants on screen is legendary. Almost to the point of infamy, though his reputation of being reckless is largely unfair.
His two best-known works probably remain Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972) and Fitzcarraldo (1982). Both were filmed on trecherous locations in South America, and both star the legendary nutball/thespian Klaus Kinski. Aguirre tells of a Conquistador traveling deeper and deeper into the jungle in search of riches, but as the expedition starts to go out of control Aguirre slips ever more quickly into madness and death comes for them all. Fitzcarraldo is about an enthusiastic Opera promoter who wishes to bring the beauty of that music to the natives far upriver. When they hit an impasse he becomes obsessed with the idea of pulling his large steamboat over a mountain. As great as the films both are, they are equally as known for the amazing behind-the-scenes tales of the productions. The latter is chronicled in Les Blank's great documentary Burden of Dreams (1982). And while it is an astounding exposé, it also cemented Herzog's reputation as an obsessed madman himself.
Werner had already earned that reputation with the most famous of his early documentaries, La Soufriére: Waiting for an Inevitable Catastrophe (1977). In that piece, Herzog and a skeleton crew of two cameramen traveled to the island of Guadeloupe in the West Indies. The large volcano on the island was predicted to erupt, but Herzog was fascinated by the news report of an old man who refused to evacuate with the rest of the population. When Herzog arrived, the city was a ghost town overrun by starving animals left behind. The last of the scientists left too, shortly after Herzog arrived, as their instruments told them the volcano would explode at any minute. Undeterred, Herzog and his crew traversed the peak and found the man, as well as two others who refused to leave. Ultimately the volcano did not erupt, even though there was every seismic indication that it would happen.
Though staying on the volcano truly was risky and dangerous, Herzog claims his other films are very safe, despite the impression created by Burden of Dreams and the infamous legend of Klaus Kinski.
Herzog worked five times with Kinski, an actor most directors found unmanageable for even one entire film. In addition to Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo they also made Woyzeck (1979), Cobra Verde (1987) and a re-make of F.W. Murnau's Nosferatu (1979). Years after the controversial actor's death, Herzog made an autobiographical documentary about their complex and turbulent collaboration called My Best Fiend (1999) revealing Kinski to be a madman and a saint, a lunatic and a genius, both dangerous and gentle.
While Kinski is the best known of Herzog’s actors, he also made two remarkable films with the mysterious Bruno S. The first was Every Man for Himself and God Against All (1974), which was retitled The Enigma of Kasper Hauser in the U.S. It is based on the famous 19th Century German mystery about a grown man who showed up in a town square one day, unable to speak, barely able to stand and baring a cryptic note. For reasons that remain unknown today, this man was raised in near total isolation in a makeshift dungeon and treated like an animal. The question and depiction of how a human being would develop if deprived of both humanity and the natural world is fascinating. Just as mysteriously he was murdered, leaving his tormenter and their motives forever unknown. Bruno S., the man Herzog cast as his Kasper Hauser, believe it or not had a similar background, having been horribly abused as a small child which caused him to regress and lose his speech, then spending all of his formative years and much of his life in institutions for the insane and criminal prisons.
Herzog's second and so-far final film with Bruno is Stroszek (1977). This is a fictional film but follows a character with a backstory and temperament very much like Bruno S.'s. This time he plays Bruno Stroszek, recently released from prison where he has spent most of his life. He has no social skills and delights in playing music on the streets. He befriends a hooker and an older man who is very much like himself, and after brutal run-ins with a local pimp the three characters flee for the freedom of America. But will the Midwestern United States ultimately hold a better fate for these wayward souls?
In both films, Bruno S. is mesmerizing on screen, and in Stroszek especially Herzog mixes in many other non-actors, some of whom also have dark and odd histories similar to their characters. Werner's ability to get documentary-like naturalistic performances from amatures seamlessly melded into fictional narratives is quite a feat. Both Kasper Hauser and Stroszek are every bit equal the masterpieces of Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, though they are lesser known...if only because they don’t have Kinski in them.
Some of Herzog's other career highlights include the surreal Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) with an all Little People cast that rivals and pre-dates any kind of weirdness David Lynch is capable of, the documentary The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner (1974) about a shy but talented ski jumper, Little Dieter Needs to Fly where a German-born American fighter pilot describes his ordeal as a prisoner in the Vietnam War and his miraculous escape and Lessons of Darkness (1992) where Herzog takes his cameras to the burning oil fields of Kuwait in the wake of the first Gulf War.
Last year Herzog achieved mainstream attention with his Grizzly Man (2005) where he assembled years and years of self-shot footage of Timothy Treadwell, an activist/nutball who felt a kinship with the bears in an Alaskan refuge, only to be mauled and killed by them after over a decade of cohabitation. Wheather or not you find Treadwell's actions insane and the conclusion inevitable, the portrait Werner paints is fascinating and fits in perfectly with the Herzogian themes of the beauty and oblivion of the natural world.
This year has seen a sadly limited release of a project called The Wild Blue Yonder (2006) which is an almost impossible-to-define mix of satire and stock footage, tied together by scenes of Brad Dourif as a depressed fellow from a race of incompetent intergalactic space aliens (see my review HERE). His next film is Rescue Dawn, which is a dramatic recreation of the events in Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Christain Bale stars as Dieter, and the cast also includes Steve Zahn and Jeremy Davies as fellow P.O.W.'s.
Herzog is one of my very favorite filmmakers. If he's working in fiction, documentary or blending the two I'm always interested in seeing what he has put on the screen.
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"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
"Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It bosses the enzymes, directs the pineal gland, plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to Film is more Film." - Frank Capra
Last edited by Holden Pike; 02-25-20 at 10:27 AM.
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