"that's kind of my people"

Jenkem interviews Werner Herzog.  It ain't bad, but certainly not his best interview.

Oh hey just a reminder I spent the first part of coronavirus lockdown watching and reviewing every film by Mr. Herzog here.

Project Herzog Update: Family Romance, LLC

You might remember that last spring, in the beginning grips of COVID, I watched and reviewed almost every film by Werner Herzog -- Project Herzog!

I recently saw his 2019 feature Family Romance, LLC.  Unlike his recent output in the feature film category, I really liked this one.  It's a return to form, echoing his early career attempts at parable and questioning reality in Signs of Life and The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz.  Even better, Herzog shot the film guerrilla-style, with no permits or permission, in Tokyo.  If I'm not mistaken, I also think it's also the first time he's used drone cameras.

It's not perfect, but it's beautiful and affecting in its own way.  And as always, Herzog is the master of endings.

Family Romance, LLC is definitely worth your time.  Not his best (those are here) but pretty good and always taking risks (those are here!).

#ProjectHerzoghttps://t.co/JgschjzFdi

— Antifa #BLM James (@wetcasements) July 7, 2020

Project Herzog Is Complete!

Part I: Overview ("Dignified, Heroic, and Stupid Stupidities")

Part II: Themes ("Do You Dream A Lot Like That?")

Part III: His Best Work ("What a Pity You Can't See the Colors!")

Part IV: His Worst Work ("He'll Shit In His Pants!")

Part V: The Rest ("You Only Have To Show Him Something And He Can Do It")

Now I'm off to watch nothing but Adam Sandler comedies for the rest of my life.  Ciao!

Project Herzog Part V: The Rest ("You Only Have To Show Him Something And He Can Do It")

Project Herzog Part III, his best films (14 of them) here.

Project Herzog Part IV, his worst films (five of them) here.

And the rest, in chronological order:


Herakles (1962)

A student film basically, by a film-maker who never went to film school.  Mixing footage of body-builders with stock footage, the joke is that these modern-day He-Men can't possibly be as manly as the classical hero of the title.  Among the stock footage we see a pile of corpses from the 1955 Le Mans car racing disaster.  Get it?  Funny!


The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1966)

His first narrative film, a group of young men randomly find some military uniforms and weapons.  As a joke they put on the gear and instantly turn from carefree hipsters to bloodthirsty soldiers.  Obvious anti-war themes, with a deranged officer telling us "even defeat is better than no war."  Surprisingly mature, very much worth your time.


Signs of Life (1968)

His first feature.  A relatively straightforward, albeit quirky, anti-war film focusing on a group of Nazi soldiers in occupied Greece.  One of them comes upon a field filled with (desecrated by?) windmills and goes insane.  Herzog was perfectly capable of making mainstream work and thankfully, he soon decided not to.  Excellent Greek folk music for the soundtrack.


Last Words (1968)

Filmed at the same time and place as Signs of Life, this very short film is based around a man who constantly goes around claiming that he does not want to speak.  The best part of the movie is, again, the Greek folk music played throughout.  Also very strange direction from Herzog, who makes his actors often repeat their own lines of dialogue.


Precautions Against Fanatics (1969)

A short film shot at a race course, where Herzog interviews people who train horses.  Of course, they walk around trees for two or three days non-stop.  They eat too much garlic.  Herzog describes this film as a "practical joke" but it's one I'm too stupid to get.  His first use of color film.

Project Herzog Part IV: His Worst Work ("He'll Shit In His Pants!")

Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970)

Even 50 years ago casting an all-dwarf cast must have raised some eyebrows.  And believe me, this is not a film exploring the dignity of the lives of little people.  It's an obscene farce -- something to do with a jail-break from an institution where the former director is now held prisoner himself.  A statement about authoritarianism then?  Well, sure, but one that also involves cannibal chickens, a bloated dead sow, and a monkey crucifixion and procession.  Ends with the grating, satanic laughter of one of the inmates cheering on a shitting camel.  As mentioned, this is Herzog's scapegoat.  It is impossible to believe he made this within a year of his humanist masterpieces Handicapped Future and Land of Silence and Darkness.  Demonic excess.  Casual animal cruelty.  Pure obscenity.  A drunken food fight for good measure.


Queen of the Desert (2015)

A perfect example of just how bad later Herzog feature films can be.  How do we waste the genuine talents of Nicole Kidman, Robert Pattinson, and Damian Lewis?  By making a borderline parody of a Merchant-Ivory film.  Some beautiful shots and nice costumes though.


The Wild Blue Yonder (2005)

Not the only picture where the background story is more interesting than the final product.  Herzog's only foray into sci-fi, he mixes in stock footage of underwater exploration and shots from an actual Space Shuttle mission to tell the story of an alien who comes to Earth with a warning.  And this was actually the original plot to an earlier documentary, Fata Morgana (1971).  It didn't work there.  It doesn't work here.  Any space nerd knows the shuttle isn't capable of getting out of low earth orbit, duh.  Shots of Slab City are always interesting though.


My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done (2009)

With any other director, Michael Shannon is a pretty good actor.  With Herzog, he seems to have just swallowed a handful of quaaludes.  Another colossal waste of talent (Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny) this isn't even a murder mystery -- we know who did it from the start.  A very bad joke involving flamingos is the climax.  Produced by David Lynch, just because.


Salt and Fire (2016)

More bad Michael Shannon.  Something about a volcano that threatens the entire world, but also environmental degradation that led to his two children being blinded.  Scientists run around doing science things.  Terrorists do the same.  I am not ashamed to say I have no fucking clue what the actual plot of this one was beyond the above.  Painful and soporific at the same time.

Project Herzog Part III: His Best Work ("What a Pity You Can't See the Colors!")

Grizzly Man (2005)

Is nature the great comforter of humanity, or the inevitable destroyer of it?  The answer is "yes."  Timothy Treadwell is an obviously troubled guy, but Herzog takes him absolutely seriously as both someone to be admired as a hero, and pitied as a lunatic.  Also interesting that Herzog admits that Treadwell himself has great talent as a fellow film-maker.  The late scene where Herzog tells Treadwell's friend to destroy the audio recording of his and his girlfriend's final moments -- iconic.


Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010)

Is haunting the right word?  Certainly not joyous, but not at all morose either.  Herzog simply films some of the first known human paintings in a cave in France.  The music and sound design are absolutely stunning.  Also, his only film shot in 3-D (and apparently his final one).


Encounters at the End of the World (2007)

I'll admit I'm partial to stories about isolated places like Antarctica (thanks, H.P. Lovecraft) but once again Herzog more than delivers.  Simplicity is the key -- he points the camera at a group of misfit scientists and academics, chefs and engineers and divers, and asks them why they've chosen to spend significant amounts of time in such an isolated, even deadly place, away from family and friends.  The answers are varied, but most of them agree life here is in many ways more edifying than anything the modern world has to offer.  The star of the movie though is, of course, a doomed but freedom-loving penguin.


La Soufriere -- Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster (1977)

An early film and a short one that neatly encapsulates all of Herzog's concerns -- the violence of nature, the fleetingness of human creations (such as entire cities), the embrace of danger in the form of an active volcano that could blow at any moment.  The streets are empty, but no small number of TVs and radios are still on, making for a very strange sort of apocalyptic music.  At a brisk 30 minutes, a perfect gateway drug.

Project Herzog Part II: Themes ("Do You Dream A Lot Like That?")

1.  Nature

One of the funniest things ever recorded is comedian Paul F. Thompkins' impersonation of Herzog.  ("Trader Joe's on Hyperion.")  There is, thankfully, much more.

And it's funny because it's half true.

No doubt Herzog is no typical Romantic.  He sees no easy, seamless connection between humans and our environment.  He sees no ultimate redemption in our willingness to commune with forest or jungle or wildlife habitat.  Shamanism is for suckers.

Famously, in a documentary about Fitzcarraldo, he comments that the jungle birds aren't singing, they're screaming in pain.

But once in a while he gives up the game.  While nature isn't exactly our friend, it's worthy of our respect.  In The White Diamond (2004) he has the opportunity, via the talents of a professional mountain climber, to record footage from a sacred cave behind a waterfall.  It's been untouched by humans for centuries.  He refuses to do so.  Why not?  Out of respect for the locals and their beliefs in part, but tonally it's clear Herzog is more concerned with breaching some unspoken pact with yet another unknowable, physical place.

Nature is not some demi-monde for Christian or Romantic faith, but it is a space like any other that must be respected and analyzed.  There is dirt and trees and plants and life.  And birds, of course.

If only to push back on the stereotype of the cold nihilist yet again, Herzog is by his own admission a lifelong walker and hiker whose only friend growing up was the Bavarian landscape (Portrait of Werner Herzog 1968).

There is a necessarily symbiotic but impossibly absurd relationship between nature and humanity, but a relationship nonetheless.

2.  Dreams

In the recent documentary Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World (2016) Herzog deal with Artificial Intelligence.  Interviewing various experts in the field he has two simple questions for the realization of true A.I. -- Can a machine fall in love?  Can the internet dream of itself?

Again, the portrait of the German nihilist with no concern for human sympathy was partly an invention of the young, angry-ish artist himself and the rise of the German New Wave.  Herzog is no naive Romantic, but he's not at all above asking essential questions as to what we share, even when communication is difficult.

In an early (and quite beautiful, completely essential) documentary Handicapped Future (1971) it's made clear that Herzog's humanism isn't of a sentimental or brotherly love sort, but it is humanism.  It's a humanism of our individual struggles as thinking, imagination-filled creatures.  Very early in the film he interviews a girl in a wheel-chair and asks her about her dreams  -- "Do you dream a lot like that?"  He's audibly taken aback when she tells him she dreams plenty at night, but during the day at school she shouldn't, even while her friends are playing outside without her.

Dreams are what make us fully human, even more than love itself.  To deny dreams, to make it harder for another person to dream their dreams, is the definition of cruelty.  And the modern world can be very cruel.

As a corollary, difficult dreams are more sacred than the easy ones.  Impossible dreams are what make us fully human.

Project Herzog Part I: Overview ("Dignified, Heroic, and Stupid Stupidities")

For about the past two and a half months, almost exactly in conjunction with the coronavirus outbreak here in South Korea and throughout the world, I've watched 63 of Werner Herzog's 66 feature and documentary films.

My first encounter with Werner Herzog came as a college student, when a religious studies professor offhandedly mentioned Aguirre, the Wrath of God as an interesting take on divine inspiration gone wrong.  In any event, I really enjoyed it but I'd be lying if I said I'd fallen in love.  Any Klaus Kinski performance is worth your attention, at least for a few minutes, but I more vividly remember watching it in conjunction with Roland Joffe's The Mission (1986, R.I.P. Ennio Morricone) which deals with similar history and themes.  (Also, a roommate swore the soundtrack to the latter was really good for having sex to.  Memory is always over-determined, just like history.)

Along the way through graduate school I remember seeing Fitzcarraldo (1982) in the context of colonial / post-colonial studies /excesses, and not really thinking too much about it other than the obvious insanity of pulling a ship over a mountain.  (And succeeding.)  And somewhere I watched Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979).  It's Herzog's only pure horror film, and I really loved its slow, ponderous tension, making no compromise to the growing phenomenon of slasher / gore films.  And of course knowing nothing about their on-set relationship, Kinski was riveting.

It was in the mid-naughts, staying with my sister for about a year, that I came across Grizzly Man (2005) just about the time it came out, or maybe a year or so after.  I remember watching it with my sister and her husband and, at the end, not really knowing what to make of it.  Or even to be honest, how to feel about it.  I could sense the deep empathy and curiosity -- who wouldn't throw away the bullshit of modern life to go live with gorgeous, powerful, innocent bears?  But there was also a sense of judgement -- Herzog's constant theme of nature's indifference to humankind -- that never let you forget that Timothy Treadwell was fucking crazy, despite the purity of his intentions.  (John Krakauer's film version of Into the Wild came out in 2007, and I remember that and the sound-track were also big at the time.  Five years after 9/11 and into the forever wars of Iraq and Afghanistan, moving back to nature was a comforting, if pitifully naive thought, for many of us Americans.)

So Grizzly Man was definitely the experience where I had to find out more about this dark, obscurantist German nihilist, who happened to also be capable of deeply human, humane works of both sympathy and critique.

I moved to South Korea to teach English in 2008.  From there I managed to stay up to date with what followed -- Encounters at the End of the World (2007) and Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010).  It's entirely possible that these initial contacts with Herzog have made me remember them more fondly than they deserve, but upon watching (and re-watching where necessary) every film ever made by him I'm still willing to bet that he was at the height of his cinematic powers between 2003 (Wheel of Time) and 2010.  (This includes 2004's The White Diamond.  This is where the title of this first post comes from, as Werner warns a man hell-bent on self-destruction that "heroic stupid" and "stupid stupid" are never the same thing.)

"my butt is getting numb"

Werner Herzog lets us know how he's handling quarantine in his current hometown of LA in this recent interview:

"His original surname was Stipetić (reflecting his Austrian mother’s Croatian heritage) but he reinvented himself, taking his father’s surname long after his father had left the scene. He still has Stipetić siblings; they look at him askance. He chuckles. 'How should I say this? My younger brother is critical of my work. He finds some of my films awful. And my older brother, he thinks every single film I’ve made is lousy and boring. "Argh, you’ve done another one. My butt is getting numb." But this is fine. I’m transparent. I do not hide behind the films or hunker down in the trench. I stick my head up. And I can live with that because I know who I am. I’m at ease with who I am.'”

Herzog interviews are always great, but this one is excellent.

Little James Needs To Write

When I began Project Herzog, my deep-dive into every film ever made by Werner Herzog, I was naively hopeful that maybe my attempt would outlast the coronavirus.  Alas, it's pretty clear to me now that "going back to normal this fall" isn't going to happen.  It might in Korea, with its robust tracing program, but I don't see it happening in the US or UK, not by a long shot.

Anyhow, I'm running into a bit of problem as I reach the "hidden gem / thankfully forgotten" phase of things.  YouTube is pretty generous with material, especially some of the early, short experiments that I figured I might never find.  Strangely though, even some of Herzog's relatively recent feature films have been really difficult to find.  (Thankfully, some might say.)

There have also been a few films where I couldn't find a set of English close captions.  This is actually not as big of a deal as I once thought, because one of my theories is that Herzog's main theme is the excruciating difficulty, if not impossibility, of genuine human communication.  (I speak no German, obviously.)

My students will be taking their final exams in two weeks (very late, I know) but I do have some spare time this weekend to push though on my final assault to the peak of Mount Werner.  It's been worthwhile, but I'm also confident in saying that there are more than a handful of his projects that you can avoid and still live the happiest of lives.  I am eager to point them out!

And there are definitely a few obscurities that you should deal with, warzen and all.  I think that's the main goal here, but I will have a little something to say about each and every work I was able to watch.

Project Herzog

Project Herzog continues apace.  Last night I saw what I considered to be that rarest of things in a Herzog film, a dud -- The Wild Blue Yonder (2005).  But even when's he's not at his very best, WH is still riveting.

Here he re-contextualizes film stock (aboard the Space Shuttle, under the Arctic ocean) to tell a fairly straightforward sci-fi story.  (Something he started doing in the amazing 1992 Lessons of Darkness, which is by no means a failure at all.)  But the technique just doesn't work here.

That said, like pizza, bad WH still delights.  Here, it's the stunning soundtrack.  He recorded music concurrently for this project along with music for The White Diamond (2004), which I'll get to soon.