Me And Werner

One of my goals for this plague is to watch all of Werner Herzog's documentaries.  Like a lot of folks, I was entranced by his 2000's masterpieces -- Grizzly Man, Encounters at the End of the World, and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.  There's a lot of great, weird stuff from his earlier career though.

So far I loved La Soufriere, which in 30 minutes pretty much encapsulates his major themes -- the indifference of nature to man's suffering, the inevitability of death (probably a horrible one), and modernity's deluded attempt to stave off all these things.  But I'm also enjoying what I'd call the curveballs -- Little Dieter Needs To Fly is really hard to even describe, and the ending shot is truly subversive in the best sense of the word.  The Dark Glow of the Mountains is worth it just to see Reinhold Messner, perhaps the manliest of manly men ever, breaking down into tears remembering the death of a friend.  Ballad of the Little Solider, about child soldiers in Nicaragua, is just brutal in its unflinching, naturalistic approach to the sheer insanity of proxy wars.

So I'm no closer to running a marathon or writing my first novel, but I'm pretty content to see this though.