the cinema of WERNER HERZOG DIRECTORS’ CUTS 2 Other titles in the Directors’ Cuts series: the cinema of EMIR KUSTURICA: notes from the underground GORAN GOCIC the cinema of KEN LOACH: art in the service of the people JACOB LEIGH the cinema of WIM WENDERS: the celluloid highway ALEXANDER GRAF the cinema of KATHRYN BIGELOW: hollywood transgressor edited by DEBORAH JERMYN & SEAN REDMOND the cinema of ROBERT LEPAGE: the poetics of memory ALEKSANDAR DUNDJEROVIC the cinema of GEORGE A. ROMERO: knight of the living dead TONY WILLIAMS the cinema of TERRENCE MALICK: poetic visions of america edited by HANNAH PATTERSON the cinema of ANDRZEJ WAJDA: the art of irony and defiance edited by JOHN ORR & ELZBIETA OSTROWSKA the cinema of KRZYSZTOF KIESLOWSKI: variations on destiny and chance 3 MAREK HALTOF the cinema of DAVID LYNCH: american dreams, nightmare visions edited by ERICA SHEEN & ANNETTE DAVISON the cinema of NANNI MORETTI: dreams and diaries edited by EWA MAZIERSKA & LAURA RASCAROLI the cinema of MIKE LEIGH: a sense of the real GARRY WATSON the cinema of JOHN CARPENTER: the technique of terror edited by IAN CONRICH AND DAVID WOODS the cinema of ROMAN POLANSKI: dark spaces of the world edited by JOHN ORR & ELZBIETA OSTROWSKA the cinema of TODD HAYNES: all that heaven allows edited by JAMES MORRISON the cinema of STEVEN SPIELBERG: empire of light NIGEL MORRIS the cinema of ANG LEE: the other side of the screen WHITNEY CROTHERS DILLEY the cinema of LARS VON TRIER: authenticity and artifice CAROLINE BAINBRIDGE the cinema of NEIL JORDAN: dark carnival CAROLE ZUCKER 4 the cinema of WERNER HERZOG aesthetic ecstasy and truth brad prager WALLFLOWER PRESS LONDON & NEW YORK 5 A Wallflower Press Book Published by Columbia University Press Publishers Since 1893 New York cup.columbia.edu Reprinted 2011 Copyright © Brad Prager 2007 All rights reserved. E-ISBN 978-0-231-50213-9 Wallflower Press® is a registered trademark of Columbia University Press. A complete CIP record is available from the Library of Congress ISBN 978-1-905674-18-3 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-905674-17-6 (cloth) ISBN 978-0-231-50213-9 (e-book) A Columbia University Press E-book. CUP would be pleased to hear about your reading experience with this e-book at [email protected]. 6 CONTENTS Acknowledgments Introduction: Framing Werner Herzog 1 Madness on a Grand Scale 2 Madness on a Minor Scale 3 Mountains and Fog 4 Faith 5 War and Trauma 6 An Image of Africa Conclusion: Cinematic Poesis Filmography Sources and Bibliography Index 7 8 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This book has been a pleasure to write, not only because it has afforded me the opportunity to reflect on Werner Herzog’s work, but also because so many people have been motivated to share their thoughts about his films with me. I am glad for the opportunity to acknowledge their contributions. I had the good fortune to have been contacted by Silke Panse as she was organising the conference ‘Werner Herzog’s Cinema: Between the Visionary and the Documentary’ at the Goethe Institut in London in 2005. I am grateful to have participated and for the opportunity to discuss the varied conference presentations, in particular those of Timothy Corrigan, Alan Singer, Erica Carter, Paul N. Reinsch and Helen Hughes. Guido Vitiello generously shared resources and materials with me, and Roger Hillman continued to discuss Herzog’s musical choices with me long after the conference was over. I am especially grateful to Graham Dorrington, who was candid in sharing his experiences, and to Silke Panse who provided many thoughtful comments on this book when it was in manuscript form. Some of the ideas in these pages originated during the time I spent at Cornell University. I am still grateful to Peter Uwe Hohendahl, David 9 Bathrick, Geoffrey Waite and Peter Gilgen, among other faculty in the Department of German Studies. Additionally, Jaimey Fisher and Barbara Mennel have remained generous colleagues since that time and have continued to provide me with feedback and new source material, especially about German cinema. My colleagues at the University of Missouri have been supportive of my film research. Roger F. Cook and Carsten Strathausen have been key participants in the Program in Film Studies and have provided me with ample opportunity to pursue this project. Other colleagues, including Valerie Kaussen, Stefani Engelstein, Sean Ireton, Kristin Kopp, Monika Fischer and Megan Mckinstry are always willing to share their work, thoughts and opinions, many of which appear in one form or another in these pages. I also benefited from Mark Gallagher’s insights as well as those of Sandy Camargo, both of whom are now affiliated with other institutions. In connection with my work at Missouri I am also glad to be in regular contact with members of the German Department at Washington University in St Louis, in particular with Jennifer Kapczynski and Lutz Koepnick. I consider myself very lucky to have been put in touch with Wallflower Press, who are charting a fine new path in film publishing. This seems in no small measure to be due to the work of their Editorial Director, Yoram Allon. I am especially grateful to him as well as to Jacqueline Downs, Editorial Manager, for their careful approach to 10 their work and for their thoughtful input during the production stage. Partial sections of some of the following chapters have appeared elsewhere. A portion of chapter three appeared in the Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 20, 1 (2003), 23–36 (as ‘Werner Herzog’s Hearts of Darkness: Fitzcarraldo, Scream of Stone and Beyond’), and part of chapter six appeared in Film Criticism, 28, 3 (2004) 2–20 (as ‘The Face of the Bandit: Racism and the Slave Trade in Herzog’s Cobra Verde’). These passages appear here by permission. I am grateful to the editors of those journals for their assistance. On a personal note, I would like to acknowledge a number of close friends. I first noticed Even Dwarfs Started Small and Aguirre, Wrath of God many years ago in the company of Michael Richardson. I have been fortunate for his long-standing and continued friendship. I am also indebted to Andrew P. Hoberek, Noah Hering-man, Elizabeth J. Hornbeck and Gregg Hyder. Specifically, I thank Elizabeth for her opinions on Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, Andrew for his interest in Grizzly Man and Noah for his thoughts on Heart of Glass. I am also especially grateful to my sister Danielle for her take on My Best Fiend. My family continues to be a source of great support and I am always thankful for them. Most of all, I owe gratitude and far more to Estelle Tarica, my love, who is always there for me. 11 B.P. July 2007 12 13 INTRODUCTION Framing Werner Herzog Werner Herzog is not a director who calls upon others to speak on behalf of his films. There are few filmmakers who reflect so eloquently and at such length on their own work; Herzog’s extensive interviews with Paul Cronin in Herzog on Herzog (2002) were antedated by a long history of public self-representation over the course of which it became increasingly clear that he was a director who could intelligently elucidate his background, his films and his filmmaking practices, and that he was someone who took pleasure in doing so. Alternating between pensive and polemical, Herzog over time surpassed both Klaus Kinski and Bruno S. as his own most compelling protagonist. Given the specific contours of the character he created for himself – of his personal stylisation – it comes as no surprise that he declares himself a competent mesmerist. Anyone who has watched Burden of Dreams (1982), the documentary about the making of Fitzcarraldo (1982), or his later film Grizzly Man (2005) will likely find themselves hypnotised by the sound of his voice. To some it seems sage, to others paternalistic, and to some it is just quintessentially German. He is found 14 everywhere in his own films such as in My Best Fiend (1999), where he has the last word in his relationship with the notoriously rambunctious Kinski, or in Wheel of Time (2003) in which he shows that he is undaunted by a personal audience with the Dalai Lama. However, all of this articulate self-presentation can be problematic. Because of his omnipresent commentary – because he has been more than happy to supply philosophy to accompany his cinematic poetry – Herzog casts a long shadow over most attempts at interpretation and critique. Writing about Herzog offers a special challenge in that one is writing about a subject who has made clear his overall distaste for scholarly analysis. Occasional academic observations that suggest, for example, that Herzog’s technique does not measure up to his material have done little to mitigate the impression that his films offer something superior to the debates that attend them. His own reflections on his artistic choices, coupled with his comments on the pitfalls (and the banalities) of academic enquiry, have lent support to the sense that when one writes commentary about Herzog’s ‘ecstatic’ works, one has committed the error of – in the words of one critic – tap dancing in church (see Peucker 1984: 193; citing Jan Dawson). In other words, Herzog’s films seem to obtain a height from which scholarly, analytic prose can only detract. At the same time, however, accepting the position that Herzog’s works should be received with reverent silence, as though we ourselves were under hypnosis, or with 15 only those analytic tools that have been supplied by the director himself fails to do justice to his body of work.