Radical Dreamer - the films of Werner Herzog

Herzog is the director of films like Aguirre (Wrath of God), Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man. He has also become a pop-culture phenomenon in the US. He has an accent all of his own, as they say in the programme.

In this post I'll write about some of the things which struck me, how he sees the world and his place as an artist in it.

There are recurring ideas which come up throughout the documentary - the way that memory works, how it can't be trusted for the past. And also its relationship to how we construct reality. Herzog says :

"Each individual shapes its own movie. We live partially in a world of fantasy that we have created. How does memory relate to that?"

There is a pattern of story that the director always returns to - a man chasing an almost impossible dream and through sheer force of will, making it happen. This sums him up as well, pretty well.

Herzog grew up very poor, in a small town in the South of Germany, after the war. His father left when he was young. He remembers being hungry - they would get a loaf of bread and his mother would mark out the days of the week on it. But sometimes, they would have finished it by Friday.

He remembers his mother saying, when they were begging her for food - "if I could cut it out of my own ribs, I would, but I can't."

He presents us with wonderful juxtapositions. On a frozen lake in Siberia where monks pray to the spirit in the lake, he places skaters amongst them. The start of one documentary (Woodcarver Steiner), is a long, beautiful shot of a ski jumper, The camerawork is exquisite from beginning to end, as the blades of the skis become abstract, black lines against white and the crowd below. He says :

I start to invent, or I start to stylise, but in such a way... it is not lying it you. It gives you an almost ecstasy, a different position. A different perspective, an illumination.

Another good lesson in finding unexpected stories, unexpected juxtapositions is his documentary The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner. It is about a world class ski jumper who is a wood carver. His is a ski jumper at a dangerous time in the sport, when the equipment has become so good and they can fly so far, that any small ripple in conditions can cause them to crash. It is a study in bravery, attention to detail, pushing oneself to attain an apparent unachievable end. Risking one's life for something that one doesn't need to do.

Herzog appears as a character in the film, giving it another layer of commentary and narrative. It makes it stronger.

When I watched the film Fitzcarraldo, there is a scene where the tribe lift a massive tree trunk, on which the pulley system for getting the steamship over the mountain will rely. Watching it, it made me think - this is maybe what it looked like, lifting the Calanais Stones.

So I was surprised to see in the documentary, Herzog in Carnac scouting locations when he came across the great standing stones - four thousand of them. it was one of the elements that went into the spark of inspiration which led to the film Fitzcarraldo.

I was scouting locations in Brittany, I had come across a place, Carnac, where there are four thousand gigantic rocks erected. And I said to myself, I'm not going to leave here until I know how I would do it. And I developed some sort of stone age technology.

And a friend of mine came to Munich and he said "I have a great story. There was this rubber baron, José Fermin Fitzcarraldo. He moved a ship from one river system to another one, across an isthmus. And he disassembled the ship into hundreds of parts and all of a sudden I said, I have a film. But it has to be a steamboat, over a mountain, pulled with stone age technology. And it has to have the music of Caruso.

When they first tried to pull the steamship up the mountain, Herzog said that it didn't budge an inch. A person with an almost impossible goal, making it happen by sheer force of will.

The original cast didn't include the actor Klaus Kinski - it included Mick Jagger and Jason Robards. But Robards grew ill and because of the irregular electricity current, having a defibrillator on location didn't work. Jagger had to go to Europe to tour with the Rolling Stones.

And so the actor Klaus Kinski was given the role. A role, Kinski said, that he always knew he was destined for.

Imagine being in the Amazon with a film crew, terrain even diggers can't navigate, hundreds of extras, a steamship and ... Klaus Kinski.

At one stage Herzog takes out a notebook with tiny writing in it, miniscule, needing a magnifying glass to see it. It's from when he worked with Kinski. It's only now, after all that time has passed, he says, that he's able to deal with it.

There's some archive footage of Kinski roaring at Herzog and the producer, swearing at them, a ball of thunderous rage. He has an exciting, dangerous presence on screen, but one can only imagine what it was like to be in the jungle with him.

Again, with Aguirre, there are scenes in it which you can hardly believe. Shot like a documentary, he took his cast, crew (and wife) down the river on rafts and shot what happened. Can you just fill this risk report in Mr... oh... he seems to have gone...

There's one scene at the end of the film, I won't spoil it and I really recommend watching it, where it's impossible not to think... how on earth did he film that?

In one scene in the documentary Herzog walks on a beach in the Canary Islands where he is working. He likes the pebbles as they are so round - rounded by ten thousand years of washing up on the beach, he says. He's aways looking behind things and finding the connection. You can see when he walks around, he's always live to the environment, always linking things in his mind.

He has a certain energy that events are attracted to, like a mobile ley line. In one scene he is doing a simple interview with a journalist and a stranger shoots him with an air rifle.

He doesn't raise his voice, apparently. Even in the footage where Kinski is screaming at him, he remains quiet and centred. But he's the kind of person who can convince Christian Bale to be hung upside down with a wasp's nest stuck to his face.

He has a connection to nature, comparing himself to a waterfall that is his favourite place in the world. It's a good comparison. When he wants to go in a direction, that's what he will do, even with mountains in the way.

Radical Dreamer is available on the BFI Player.