Werner Herzog: Tracking the borderline

From 1962, when at the age of 20 he made Herakles, to 2009 with My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, Werner Herzog has drawn, on the cinematic sky, a prolific and dazzling constellation of 55 films. Having traveled to the four corners of the earth (literally) and having filmed the strangest places on the planet, he has created a body of work which is unique and unclassifiable, which cannot be placed under any category and which seems to be best suited to only one place – borders. Geographical and existential, imaginary and real borders. Borders that are indistinguishable, mercurial, like quicksand; borders at which the classical distinction between fiction and documentary is in fact invalidated and where the stakes involves reality itself and the ways of representing it. What is it that the German auteur is searching for at the ends of the earth? Nothing less than the sublime; that deeper truth that lies hiding below the surface of the real and which he himself refers to as the “ecstatic truth”. And in order to approach this “invisible” region, he has to pit himself against the limits of reality, of the natural world, of existence and of the medium of cinema per se. This is a dangerous contest, without a safety net, without the security of the studio and special effects, and with the “door always open to the unexpected”, as he says in his wonderful interview in the book published by the Thessaloniki International Film Festival on the occasion of the full retrospective of his work.
The ship climbing up the mountain (Fitzcarraldo) is actually pulled up by human hands; the volcano is actually ready to erupt and the filmmaker and his two cameramen are right there, on the crater rim (La Soufrière); the impenetrable Amazon jungle (Aguirre, the Wrath of God) and the insatiable emptiness of the desert (Fata Morgana) can, at any moment, lead you on a “terrifying journey to perdition”; the Swiss artisan truly flies through the air (The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner); the actors play their parts in a state of hypnosis (!) (Heart of Glass); the 10,000 windmills on the Greek island drive the film’s hero mad (Signs of Life); climbing one of the world’s highest peaks is nothing more than the “conquest of the useless” (The Dark Glow of the Mountains); the virgin forest of Guyana is filmed from above for the very first time (The White Diamond); Klaus Kinski’s threats sound chillingly earnest (My Best Fiend); the oil wells in Kuwait are spewing out death as well as flames (Lessons of Darkness); the caves below the glaciers of the South Pole can trap you there forever (Meetings at the End of the World); while the journey from Munich to Paris to save Lotte Eisner, undertaken on foot, is simply “bigger than life”.
These are not the usual escapades that happenwhile filming, but tough, borderline situations that have to do with the essence of Herzog’s cinematic act and his aim, through the quest for the “unseen” image, to discover the ecstatic truth: a way of stepping out of yourself and, having left the solid ground of reality (an extremely risky proposition), to land there again, with a broader perceptive ability and with your gaze enriched by the experience of a revelatory dimension. It is this experiential life stance that engenders the visionary dimension of his work, which has nothing to do with the filming of dreams, miracles or hallucinations as we know them, sine this is real life “pouring out” onto the screen. Herzog’s films, incredibly earthy and filled with a great inner tension, almost seem to have a body, a nervous system and organs, as they pulsate with a mysterious vital force.
Moreover, at a time when hardly anyone spoke about the destruction of Mother Nature and the problem of the environment (which today – perhaps a little too late – has been placed on the political agenda), Herzog had, through his experiential cinematic act, already underscored it as a dominant issue. He was also one of the first to boldly and candidly turn his attention to life’s human deviations, to the “retarded”, the disabled, the maladjusted (Even Dwarfs Started Small, The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser, Woyzeck, Stroszek, The Land of Silence and Darkness, Nosferatu: the Vampyre), to whatever the norm rejects as “defective”. In fact, in his films Herzog adopts their gaze, in order to better understand their particular truth – rejecting the cinematic convention of “damned” heroes who are good for the box office – through compassion, solidarity and consolation, which is the deeper meaning and duty of every art.
A self-taught filmmaker (“I was never anyone’s assistant”), dedicated body and soul to his work, heedless of commercial dictates and the deceptive lights of the film industry (even though many of his films won awards and were commercial successes), keeping clear of trends, dogmas, movements and waves, he remains a genuine storyteller and an unshakable explorer of limits. Werner Herzog continues to persistently search (even out there, in the wild blue yonder) for those secret landscapes where such images may be hiding that may (possibly) reveal the inner truth of our world.

Thomas Linaras