Although we won't have class next week because of Thanksgiving, I would like you to watch two Herzog-focused documentaries and post in a slightly more substantial way on our blog than usual.
Les Blank's Burden of Dreams is the first doc I want you to watch. And the other one (which I showed the beginning of in class a few weeks ago) is My Best Fiend by Herzog himself. Burden of Dreams is free on Hulu with a trial subscription, and My Best Fiend is free on Shout! Factory without one. Both films can be purchased and watched on iTunes or Amazon for $2.99 as well.
For this week's beefed-up post, please let me know what more you feel you learned about Herzog - the man, the director, the Bavarian - from watching these two documentaries. Because I would like your comments to be even more thoughtful and thorough than usual, please take time to point out certain moments from the films that support and further explain your insights. The more specific you are and the more you tell me what stood out for you - about Herzog, about his process, or really about anything in the films that caught your attention - the better.
I look forward to hearing what you thought about these works, as well as how watching them contributes to your understanding of this director and his oeuvre. And as usual, please be sure your comments show up on our blog by no later than Wednesday, December 2nd at noon!
"The harmony of complete and overwhelming and collective murder." I really enjoyed this scene in Burden of Dreams about the jungle and how Herzog interacts with it. I've always got a sense from Herzog that he is very aware of his myth and plays with it as much as he can. He hides behind it and allows the personna of a perfectly calm film director become him but there are moments in these documentaries where the real Herzog, in my eyes, comes through. As the screen shot says above, the trees are in misery and the birds are in misery. The jungle is terrible and he claims he is still in love with it, but he seems almost forced to say it to maintain his peaceful image. He is immensely stoic but Fitzcaraldo almost broke him, it seems. It made him expose his white hot emotional core, just for a moment. He admitted he hated the jungle and didn't want to be there any longer, before he can regain control of himself and throw his myth up again as a smokescreen. I feel like Herzog presents a very heavily edited and well managed version of himself to the world. Herzog the man is just a myth and he wants it that way, he is his own legend and that allows him the freedom to do as he pleases because it is all what the mythical Herzog would do. My Best Fiend feels very curated to me, Herzog is taking us on a tour of the places he's shot with Kinski to talk about how misunderstood he was and how his fits could be worked through. But I feel like it is just Herzog bragging about his ability to manage Kinski in a way no one else could have. It is still a good film to watch and I've enjoyed it but it just feels like another piece of the self-constructed Herzog myth. Burden of Dreams feels more real, with Les shooting it instead of Herzog and it is certainly impressive to watch them haul the ship up the mountain. I loved the scene where they celebrate moving the ship for the first time and the cables break and the ship slides back own, but they don't care in the slightest. Herzog is a fascinating man, that is for certain and these two films reinforce his myth and how he presents himself to the world.
ReplyDeleteSometimes the making of a film can be more interesting than the film itself and I believe this is the case for Fitzcarraldo, which is saying something because Fitzcarraldo is a great film. However, Burden of Dreams is real. It shows you how Fitzcarraldo was made and it doesn't take anything away from it because Herzog practically lived out the film behind the scenes. I agree with Jake in that Herzog consciously constructs his image and we see proof of that in how Herzog tackles the rumors that were spreading about the conditions of the film shoot. There were rumors that people were dying and that an actress was severely injured in a car accident and even though it wasn't true Herzog called them up and said it was true and worse than they thought and they ended up not talking about it anymore because all they really cared about was whether or not Herzog was responsible. Herzog didn't really care what other thought of him but he did have to speak with a tribunal in Germany after these rumors were brought up. What I really love about burden of dreams is getting to hear Herzog speak while filming it. In the book, he's reflecting on a past time but here we get to see Herzog complaining about nature, saying that it's full of obscenities and that he loves nature against his better judgement. He then compares nature to filming which is interesting because he's a film director. So if filming is full of obscenities and he loves filming against his better judgement, then this is Herzog's burden of dreams. It's the contradiction of hating to do something you love because the outcome might be worth it. Herzog even says that he belongs in a lunatic asylum after filming Fitzcarraldo but he also knows that unlike other people, he can articulate his dreams. Which is why he makes movies in a sense. He also says, "no one on earth can make me happy about my film. Not until my end of days" Basically, to me, Herzog says he won't be satisfied until he's dead and has lived a life of filmmaking and challenging nature.
ReplyDeleteHerzog similarly challenged nature by working with Kinski so many times and I'd have to agree with Jake again in that My Best Fiend was more planned than Burden of Dreams for clear reasons. Burden of dreams is the documentation of a film that was near impossible to make and could've turned out completely different. My Best Fiend is after Kinski has died and features Herzog taking a walk down memory lane in order to prove to the world that Kinski was a genius and not a madman. Herzog was attracted to Kinski's spirit the same way he's attracted to stories. Like Herzog's characters, Kinski is driven, inspired and obsessed. I think Herzog probably saw himself in Kinski and did his best to show the world a more sane toned down version of himself. The difference between the two is that Herzog knew how to construct his own myth and Kinski just let his myth write itself.
While watching these two films about films, I was startled. I’m not sure whether it is a good or bad startled, but I now know I would follow Werner Herzog to the death. The strange part one must think about during both films is that as ridiculous as the events sound, they actually happened. The making of the film itself is something out of an epic.
ReplyDeleteWerner Herzog is a man with incredible courage. During Burden of Dreams, Herzog is accused of arms trafficking, creating a canal, boiling natives alive, raping women, and the architect of the Holocaust. How on Earth can a film be completed under such tremendous stress? Furthermore, the nature of the film (pulling a ship over a mountain) must still be accomplished during all this duress? Outstanding. I picture myself in Herzog’s shoes, and even in moments when things were going correctly, the native actors would move around or start to laugh. The stakes could not be higher; during Burden of Dreams, Herzog calmly sits aboard the boat and states that if the ship goes any farther downstream filmmaking will have to stop for 1/2 a year due to engine failure.
To consider the lack of experience of the native actors and all other factors, Herzog still waited two days for the perfect light to film a scene on the river. He had to wait for parts to fly in from different countries, and the parts when they arrived were not correct. Camps were not meant for this long of an occupancy and supplies began to dwindle. Filming on the rapids causes the cameraman to almost lose a hand (watching the scenes during this shoot are hilarious and insane). Yet the film is somehow finished. ‘(The jungle is) misery, birds screech in pain,’ Herzog says with utter disdain.
To imagine all of this film was made with Kinsky filling the leading role is a nightmare of infinite proportion. In My Best Fiend, we try to comprehend why Herzog would put up with such a horrendous personality. From a man who thinks he is Jesus Christ to Fitzcarraldo, someone must have held him down—someone with equal parts perseverance and heroism… Enter Herzog. They are perfect opposites that balance the scales. My Best Fiend piles on the drama and stress of filmmaking for Herzog. At one point he brings up rooming with a hunchback woman in a cottage with nine children and guinea pigs for food. You simply cannot make this up. Follow Kinsky’s rants with literal attempted killings, as Kinsky shot rounds into an extras’ tent.
At a breaking point Herzog calmly threatens Kinsky that if he walks off set he will be killed. It is seen as a joke, but knowing Herzog’s determination and grit I have no doubt that the man is a filmmaking deity on Earth, and therefore, possesses the right to kill if need be. Even the native people offer to kill Kinsky for Herzog.
There are truly no words to describe this director whom I thought I had a grasp on. Even if one or two of his films don’t resonate, to appreciate them for heroic feats of cinema is an absolute and unquestionable truth. It is sadistic that not every youngster knows Werner Herzog by name along with every one of his films. I now understand the message Herzog has been trying to drive through, but the message is through experiencing his filmmaking and toil only. I cannot do it with words.
"It's not only my dreams. My belief is that all these dreams are yours as well, and the only distinction between me and you is that I can articulate them, and that is what poetry or painting or literature or filmmaking is all about. It's as simple as that. I make films because I have not learned anything else, and I know I can do it to a certain degree. It is my duty, because this might be the inner chronicle of what we are, and we have to articulate ourselves. Otherwise we would be cows in the field."
ReplyDeleteWerner Herzog has become a bit of a role model for me throughout this class. I relate to him in a way that I don't believe I fully understand, though I feel that to fully understand oneself is an exercise in futility. Herzog is a dreamer, and unapologetically so. He makes decisions that are reckless, at others' expense, at times endangering the lives of others in pursuit of, in his own words, 'chronicling' something greater. By some he is vilified for this, and on certain accounts his detractors are not wrong. But I believe that Herzog has allowed himself to retain a necessary naivete, without which no greatness can be achieved. Risk is necessary if reward is desired. I too, do not wish to live in a world where there are no lions anymore.
Herzog exists solely for his art, living by it and simultaneously he is willing to die for it. There is a passion within him that burns hot enough to threaten to kill his lead actor and then himself without a second thought when it means keeping his production together. A passion that leads him to take risks most won't. Is it mad? Absolutely. Did greatness come of his madness?
Werner Herzog takes film to a level the average movie goer would probably see as insane- and it may be insane, but that doesn't mean it's not admirable.
ReplyDeleteIn Burden of Dreams, Herzog's dream to make Fitzcarraldo seems to be as important to him as living. To see a dream so passionate be carried out through thick and thin till completion was really something inspiring to see.
Klaus Kinski is in many ways the only person I could see being that close to Herzog. For Herzog's silent reserved crazy, an abrasive outrightly insane personality is the perfect counterpart.
A lot of what I learned in watching these films coincided with the reading material assigned in the Herzog book. There were even verbatim moments that I recalled. It's fascinating to actually see Herzog explain moments of his filmmaking process, rather than just read about it. In My Best Fiend, Herzog constantly explained how much of a pain in the ass it was to work with Kinski, but he couldn't resist. It was almost as if he saw himself in Kinski, and that's how he sort of describes it at one point. It reminded of a previous job I had in which I worked with someone I could barely tolerate. He was a very aggressive manager, but at the end of the day, he did a good job. He was very hard to get along with, but I respected everything he did for the company. Sometimes, it's the people that you can't stand that makes working that much more worth while. One of my favorite moments from the film was when Herzog explains threatening to kill Kinski if he were to leave the set of Fitzcarraldo. A bluff, but a threat nonetheless. I couldn't imagine a relationship like that in which I have to tell someone "I'll kill you." Yet, that's what Herzog recognized, eventually being able to compete with Kinski's tantrums with his own "silent" threats.
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