Found this in the times this morning:
Quote:
Werner Herzog's New Direction
EVERYBODY is the center of their universe," the Dalai Lama remarks in Werner Herzog's "Wheel of Time." If so, that's not the only thing this Buddhist holy man has in common with the British inventor of a one-man helium dirigible and a New Age naturalist devoured by a grizzly bear: each of them is the subject of a Werner Herzog film.
Mr. Herzog may no longer be the art-house and film-festival star he was during the 1970's, at the height of the old New German Cinema. But as demonstrated in three recent features - "The White Diamond," "Wheel of Time" and "Grizzly Man," all opening over the next few months - Mr. Herzog has become one of the greatest and most original of documentary filmmakers. This 63-year-old director is a celluloid conquistador who has more in common with Robert Flaherty and the explorer-cinéastes of the silent era than with anyone else working today.
Even Mr. Herzog's fiction films had documentary subtexts. Many were shot in difficult locations - jungles, mountains, deserts - and most involved an element of physical risk. In his first feature, "Signs of Life" (1968), he dared Greek authorities to arrest him by deliberately flouting a local law regarding the use of fireworks. Maintaining that "humiliation and strain are essential parts of filmmaking," Mr. Herzog has specialized in movies resulting from some self-imposed ordeal, both for him and his associates. The filmmaker put the cast of "Heart of Glass" (1976) under hypnosis; he has often said he pulled a gun on his star, Klaus Kinski, to keep him on the Amazon set of "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972).
Just as such films have strong documentary elements, his documentaries are subjective, poetic and difficult to classify.
"I think he's created a genre that's all his own," said Karen Cooper, the director of Film Forum, which will soon show "The White Diamond" (June 1-14) and "Wheel of Time" (June 15-28). Ms. Cooper sees Mr. Herzog's documentaries, nearly all explicated by the filmmaker's voice-over narration, as building on the "ruminative essays Agnès Varda and Chris Marker created in the 50's and 60's."
Still, if Mr. Herzog's name is barely mentioned in academic histories of nonfiction film, he hardly sees himself as traveling in the documentary mainstream. (Indeed, he took unmistakable glee in playing himself in Zak Penn's recent mockumentary, "Incident at Loch Ness.") The ironic manifesto posted on Mr. Herzog's Web site (http://www.wernerherzog.com) begins by declaring that "so-called Cinéma Vérité is devoid of vérité."
"It reaches a merely superficial truth," he continues, "the truth of accountants." His own documentaries are predicated, he has said, on "imagination" and "fabrication."
Mr. Herzog is drawn to the truth of self-invented, larger-than-life loners; "My Best Fiend" (1999), his most widely seen documentary, is a portrait of Kinski, the ferociously temperamental actor with whom he made five features. Other subjects include the ski-jump champion Walter Steiner ("Ecstasy of the Great Woodcarver Steiner," 1973), the pilot and P.O.W. Dieter Dengler ("Little Dieter Needs to Fly," 1997), and the hectoring religious broadcaster W. Eugene Scott ("God's Angry Man," 1980). In addition to extreme personalities, Mr. Herzog has also gravitated toward fantastic landscapes. "Fata Morgana" (1970) tries to document the mirages of the Sahara; for "La Soufrière" (1978), he visited the evacuated island of Guadeloupe to film an active volcano on the eve of its eruption.
"Lessons of Darkness" (1992), shot in the Kuwaiti desert in the aftermath of the first gulf war, is the culmination of Mr. Herzog's romantic doomsday worldview, as well as the most obvious instance of what he calls "the ecstatic truth." Opening with a fabricated quotation from Blaise Pascal, the filmmaker frames his exploration of cataclysm in terms of science fiction or the Book of Revelations, using a telephoto lens and avoiding establishing shots to render the ravaged landscape even more apocalyptic. (Early in the movie, the camera pans across what seems to be a distant mountain range but is actually, according to Mr. Herzog, "just Caterpillar tracks only a foot high.")...
EVERYBODY is the center of their universe," the Dalai Lama remarks in Werner Herzog's "Wheel of Time." If so, that's not the only thing this Buddhist holy man has in common with the British inventor of a one-man helium dirigible and a New Age naturalist devoured by a grizzly bear: each of them is the subject of a Werner Herzog film.
Mr. Herzog may no longer be the art-house and film-festival star he was during the 1970's, at the height of the old New German Cinema. But as demonstrated in three recent features - "The White Diamond," "Wheel of Time" and "Grizzly Man," all opening over the next few months - Mr. Herzog has become one of the greatest and most original of documentary filmmakers. This 63-year-old director is a celluloid conquistador who has more in common with Robert Flaherty and the explorer-cinéastes of the silent era than with anyone else working today.
Even Mr. Herzog's fiction films had documentary subtexts. Many were shot in difficult locations - jungles, mountains, deserts - and most involved an element of physical risk. In his first feature, "Signs of Life" (1968), he dared Greek authorities to arrest him by deliberately flouting a local law regarding the use of fireworks. Maintaining that "humiliation and strain are essential parts of filmmaking," Mr. Herzog has specialized in movies resulting from some self-imposed ordeal, both for him and his associates. The filmmaker put the cast of "Heart of Glass" (1976) under hypnosis; he has often said he pulled a gun on his star, Klaus Kinski, to keep him on the Amazon set of "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" (1972).
Just as such films have strong documentary elements, his documentaries are subjective, poetic and difficult to classify.
"I think he's created a genre that's all his own," said Karen Cooper, the director of Film Forum, which will soon show "The White Diamond" (June 1-14) and "Wheel of Time" (June 15-28). Ms. Cooper sees Mr. Herzog's documentaries, nearly all explicated by the filmmaker's voice-over narration, as building on the "ruminative essays Agnès Varda and Chris Marker created in the 50's and 60's."
Still, if Mr. Herzog's name is barely mentioned in academic histories of nonfiction film, he hardly sees himself as traveling in the documentary mainstream. (Indeed, he took unmistakable glee in playing himself in Zak Penn's recent mockumentary, "Incident at Loch Ness.") The ironic manifesto posted on Mr. Herzog's Web site (http://www.wernerherzog.com) begins by declaring that "so-called Cinéma Vérité is devoid of vérité."
"It reaches a merely superficial truth," he continues, "the truth of accountants." His own documentaries are predicated, he has said, on "imagination" and "fabrication."
Mr. Herzog is drawn to the truth of self-invented, larger-than-life loners; "My Best Fiend" (1999), his most widely seen documentary, is a portrait of Kinski, the ferociously temperamental actor with whom he made five features. Other subjects include the ski-jump champion Walter Steiner ("Ecstasy of the Great Woodcarver Steiner," 1973), the pilot and P.O.W. Dieter Dengler ("Little Dieter Needs to Fly," 1997), and the hectoring religious broadcaster W. Eugene Scott ("God's Angry Man," 1980). In addition to extreme personalities, Mr. Herzog has also gravitated toward fantastic landscapes. "Fata Morgana" (1970) tries to document the mirages of the Sahara; for "La Soufrière" (1978), he visited the evacuated island of Guadeloupe to film an active volcano on the eve of its eruption.
"Lessons of Darkness" (1992), shot in the Kuwaiti desert in the aftermath of the first gulf war, is the culmination of Mr. Herzog's romantic doomsday worldview, as well as the most obvious instance of what he calls "the ecstatic truth." Opening with a fabricated quotation from Blaise Pascal, the filmmaker frames his exploration of cataclysm in terms of science fiction or the Book of Revelations, using a telephoto lens and avoiding establishing shots to render the ravaged landscape even more apocalyptic. (Early in the movie, the camera pans across what seems to be a distant mountain range but is actually, according to Mr. Herzog, "just Caterpillar tracks only a foot high.")...
More here: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/movie ... 8hobe.html
Video for Werner Herzog's "Grizzly Man" was shot by Timothy Treadwell, who was killed by a bear while a camera recorded the sounds.
Hmmm. I haven't seen any of these. Herxog's stuff that I have seen has been terrible, Even Dwarfs Started Small, to just ok, Kaspar Houser. But I do see how his style could translate well to documentary, since he already prefers a very exterior approach to his characters. I need to see Aguirre, but right now, judgeing from the caption from that clip. it seems like he's up to his usually.
Eh, I think I might wait to see Grizzly Man.