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Posterity Can Kiss My Ass |
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Great Ecstasy of Filmmaker Herzog by Peter Wintonick
Most of Werner Herzog's six decades have been about the gargantuan struggle to wrestle ecstatic truth out of the hands of sham artists, bureaucrats, factualists, mythomongers, verité liars, and those who would analyze him. Although he is most known for his feature films (Aguirre: Wrath of God; Fitzcaraldo; Kaspar Hauser; Nosferatu; Invincible, etc.) only a dozen or so of his 46 films could be considered narrative fictions. The rest are what he calls "documentaries" in quotation marks. I've always considered him a major documentarian since he's has made so many of them. For Herzog: "The boundary between fiction and "documentary" simply does not exist; they are all just films. Both take "facts," characters, stories, and play with them in the same kind of way." One World is pleased to offer a fine cross-section of these "documentaries." Most struggle with the definition of the form itself, between the false factualism of traditional orthodocs and Herzog's own interpretative dance with the creative re-working of reality. Herzog might claim to be apolitical, but in a very real sense these films are about the body politic in its broadest vision, the rights of the ordinary heroes in extraordinary circumstances, the triumph of the humanist will, the merge of landscape and mindscape, optimism and hope. These are the tools for change we all must wield. It is a battle to find the truth in illusion, the fact in fiction. It is a lesson in hope and light within the ether of darkness. But first a few facts. Most of them are close to the truth. You can decide. Werner Herzog's real name is Werner H. Stipetic. He was born September 5, 1942 in Munich. From the moment he could think he knew he would make films. He never had a choice about becoming a director. At 14 he began to travel on foot. He almost walked all around the edge of the German border frontier. In 1974, he walked from Munich to Paris to see his friend and mentor, Lotte Eisner who was dying. He briefly converted to Catholicism. He has problems seeing filmmaking as a real profession. He thinks bureaucracy kills filmmaking. His family shared a rooming house in Berlin with Klaus Kinski. He once lived in Manchester and has traveled extensively in Africa and South America. At 15, Werner entered a script writing competition and won. He taught himself filmmaking. He never attended a film school. In 1963, he accepted a Fulbright grant to the University of Pittsburgh, where he lasted three days. He always writes scripts very quickly, like a manic. He made his first phone call at 17. In 1962, using the salary earned working nights as a welder, Herzog made his first film. He is a cinemanthropologist, a neologistgic word he would hate. He is an-analytical. He once said: "Cinema comes from the country fair and the circus, not from art and academicism." His goal is to find out more about humankind, and film it. His films resonate with collective consciousness. He is a poet, although he probably would object to such labels. Most things that critics and cinephiles say and write about him are untrue. Most of the facts in this paragraph are not false. His reputation thus sullied, he refers to such distortions as his "doppelgangers," media fabrications that roam the globe independently of himself. He tries to be a good soldier of cinema. He does not exploit people. He has hypnotized actors for a movie and asked people to pull a large ship over a mountain. He is not mad. He has a reasonable ego. No one has been killed in the making of his movies. He almost died many times over. He is a mythographer. He is part of the second wave of the Post-War, Oberhausenist, reconstructivist New German Cinema movement. He is a surrealist in the tradition of pre-war German Mountain films. He is not part of any movement. He has no doppelgangers or equals. He is not a genius. Herzog's own mother said: "When he was in school, Werner never learned anything." After his parents divorced his mother raised Werner and his brother. When a bomb destroyed their house, they moved to a village called Sachrang in Barvaria. He grew up poor. He was introverted as a child. He has had three wives and three children. His office is in Germany. He lives in California. He is controversial. He is a collaborator. He once worked in a Mexican rodeo. Most of what you've heard about Werner Herzog is untrue. He has concern with craftsmanship, non-dogmatic expressionism, innocence, landscapes, language, poetics, music, bridging communication gaps, compassion and the holiness found in real people. He has directed opera and written books. He works extensively with the physically challenged. He has said: "I am a hard-working man and that's that. There is no romanticism in me. Posterity can kiss my ass." He was forced to eat his shoe. So that, in a walnut shell, is Mr. Herzog. Taking up the inflammatory advice he gave me and my friend so long ago, I want Werner to come to my country, Canada, and walk to the North Magnetic Pole. For some mysterious Herzogian reason, it is in the process of changing its position and is moving, ever so slowly, toward Russia. I will help him make a film about it. It will go to the Cannes Film Festival. Or maybe not. -- Peter Wintonick, One World associate curator |
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