Werner Herzog - Encountering the End of our Minds

Ok, so the first actual post since I started this thing a while ago isn't about music, but about movies. How fitting. In the next couple of posts, though, I'll cover topics like booing at concerts, the 2008 Darmstadt Cursus and of course some concert and music reviews.

Werner Herzog's films never cease to amaze me. From the earlier movies like Fitzcarraldo, Cobra Verde and Aguirre, the Wrath of God to the newer documentary-like meditations that include "Grizzly Man" and "Encounters at the End of the World", I am somehow always drawn into his films, not necessarily for what they are, but for what they explore. I can't claim to have seen even a majority of his films, but what I have seen keeps me coming back for more and has led to a few observations.

Technically amazing, Herzog favors a shooting style that is on the slow side while choosing fantastically appropriate and brooding (in a positive way!) musical selections: Popul Vuh being Herzog's band of choice for many early films, and Henry Kaiser in some of the recent ones. The resulting audio and visual textures set up an apt environment for the questions that I find arise in Herzog's work: What drives people to do what they do? How do people interact with their environment, or more importantly, how does an environment act upon them and cause them to make the often extreme decisions that they do? These questions seem to be a nagging force for Herzog, and though he often focuses on extremes of behavior, the result is such that I usually find that I am forced to look at how environments, both cultural and physical, shape "normal" people as well.

For me, the settings and environments in Herzog's films act as foils to his characters and vice-versa. Whereas in the earlier "fictional" films (as well as some upcoming ones), colonial themes provided the backdrop and justification for filming in foreign, "less developed" lands, they also allowed for a certain sense of isolation for the main characters because of a class or cultural disjuncture which allows you to watch their mental process and dissolution unfold as they have to come to terms with the situation that they've been placed (either intentionally or not). Eventually, their situations steer them into madness ("Aguirre..." and "Cobra Verde"), folly ("Fitzcarraldo"), or evil ("Nosferatu"). It is definitely worth mentioning that one of Herzog's favorite actors, Klaus Kinski (see also, "My Best Fiend") was instrumental in illustrating the depths of obsessivenes, mania and folly that people succumb to, which seems to be one of Herzog's focus. In his more recent documentary films, however, we find that these same characteristics are found in normal people as well. In "Grizzly Man", Herzog explores how by living (mostly) alone outdoors for a long time, a man becomes so obsessed and fascinated by bears that he feels he is one himself. His descent into madness ultimately leads to his death, of course. A different take on environments, obsession and extremes happens in Herzog's most recent movie, "Encounters at the End of the World".

Herzog's interest in going to Antarctica seems to lie primarily in finding out why people would want to move to the harshest environment in the world. In exploring the beauty of the place (with amazing cinematography by Peter Zeitlinger and music by Henry Kaiser), we find that the Antarctic is a sort of repository for people's fantasies and obsessions which only get magnified the longer they remain. He finds people who are serial adventure travelers, hippies focused on the demise of language, and a man who is always ready to "escape" situations. In each person, the blank slate of the antarctic, devoid of people and full of strange creatures and phenomena (the otherworldly sounds of seals under the frozen ice are particularly amazing), lets them (and us, actually) project and live their own sort of dream life totally separate from everyday society and politics.

National politics do underlie many of the situations in Herzog's films (colonialism, etc), but the environments allow the characters to transcend this or become symbols of it. In "Encounters at the End of the World", though their work is supported by national research grants (not to mention the need to plant a flag at the south pole), the people seem to use this as a subtext for their own psychic journeys. As each story is told, the question, "what made these people go there?" remains largely unanswered. One of the most telling moments of Herzog's intent to leave this question hanging is when he focuses on a lone penguin who leaves his colony for the mountains, and is destined to die of starvation. It is, to be sure, a little bit heavy-handed and almost silly, but at the same time puzzling and awe-inspiring. And from that point on, it is impossible to view each human character in the movie as anything but some sort of relative of that bird. Apparently people aren't the only ones who make extreme decisions based on their unique environments.

It seems that no matter where the story or documentary takes place in a Herzog film, eccentric characters abound. But the interesting thing about what Herzog does, is making one realize that though the locations are always stunning, remote, or harsh, they could really be anywhere. The slow process of discovery, both of the physical and mental environments, of characters' psyche induces, in me at least, a large amount of self-reflection. The films have a way of becoming so personal as to make the viewer realize this could be "me" under the right circumstances.

I always feel like I should be watching a film every day after seeing one of Herzog's. Its rare that I find the sort of empathy and curiosity that his films cause in other things that I see, but these visual experiences make me want to keep watching with a potentially dangerous obsession all its own.