Werner Herzog
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
That's nice and all, but what does it have to do with Herzog?
- tarpilot
- Joined: Thu Jan 20, 2011 10:48 am
Re: Werner Herzog
You mean you're not hotly anticipating Kaspar Hauser 2: Isolate Harder?
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
I haven't seen that one so the reference was lost on me.
- manicsounds
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 10:58 pm
- Location: Tokyo, Japan
Re: Werner Herzog
Well, looks like Herzog has something for his next documentary subject...
-
- Joined: Sat Nov 29, 2008 4:35 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
Apologies if this is not the best thread, but what's up with the lack of older Herzog stuff on blu ray? Anchor Bay had those two big box sets years ago..
I also recommend his reading of 'Go The F*ck To Sleep'
I also recommend his reading of 'Go The F*ck To Sleep'
- Professor Wagstaff
- Joined: Tue Aug 24, 2010 11:27 pm
- domino harvey
- Dot Com Dom
- Joined: Wed Jan 11, 2006 2:42 pm
- miless
- Joined: Sat Apr 01, 2006 9:45 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
I really want to watch a Werner Herzog "crazy cat video" reaction videoWhat other animals do I like...I like cats, because they're so strange sometimes. And you see them on the internet, the crazy cat videos for example, and I'm a fan of them. What else, what other animals? Well that's basically it.
- hearthesilence
- Joined: Fri Mar 04, 2005 4:22 am
- Location: NYC
Re: Werner Herzog
Before Grizzly Man, the only time I ever saw Herzog's name was when Roger Ebert would mention him, as part of his lifelong championing of his work, so I'm glad he's no longer an obscure figure unknown to most. But it's also a bit off putting how his star persona has sucked up most of the attention rather than his work, especially since some of it has been quite good (Grizzly Man, the death row docs). Much of it's his doing and but some of it is no fault of his own (I recall too many casual viewers spending way too much attention on his thick accent when Grizzly Man blew up), so there's plenty of blame to go around.
- Drucker
- Your Future our Drucker
- Joined: Wed May 18, 2011 9:37 am
Re: Werner Herzog
Within my circle of friends and acquaintances, the people most in love with viral Herzog stories/videos are also the people that have seen his films, so there's plenty of room for both!
- Manny Karp
- Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 5:22 am
Re: Werner Herzog
I do think it's a shame, though, that his work simply isn't what it used to be in terms of challenging content and beguiling, awe inspiring style, and it's hard not to correlate this dip with his popular reverence among the general public and his status as a "personality" as much as a filmmaker.
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
That's a unique opinion. Certainly for me, but this seems to have some wider critical consensus, his work as a documentarian is where he is at his strongest with some of his best works coming after this popularity arose (I'm sticking with Grizzly Man as the time). Since then he's made Into the Abyss, Encounters at the End of the World, Happy People, and a few smaller things which at least maintain the level of his previous work.
- Manny Karp
- Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 5:22 am
Re: Werner Herzog
His post-Lessons of Darkness doc work just doesn't appeal to me nearly as much as the previous stuff, though I do like Little Dieter, Gesualdo, and Encounters. His fiction films offer an even more marked decline, in my opinion, since as far back as Cobra Verde, though I liked Wild Blue Yonder and Rescue Dawn.
I also think it's not his work as a documentarian that is what should be rated so highly, as his willingness to smudge the lines between doc and fiction, which I don't think he does so much or as well any more. There's also the issue of those he influenced using his tactics: Harmony Korine, Joshua Oppenheimer, Carlos Reygadas, etc. While poor imitators don't necessarily reflect poorly on the original, it does give pause that time has passed and the artist has reached a saturation point where he needs to dig in or try something new. All I see Herzog doing is a sort of dilution of his earlier work.
I understand his delight at having a larger audience, and I've never once seen or read an interview with him that embarrassed me, but there is still something a little unseemly about the cult of personality. Well, money and status are what get films made, understandably.
I just cannot take seriously any claim that something like Grizzly Man is greater than Lessons of Darkness, but again I understand why the former is so critically and popularly loved, being much easier to write about (gawk at) and distance yourself from as an audience.
I also think it's not his work as a documentarian that is what should be rated so highly, as his willingness to smudge the lines between doc and fiction, which I don't think he does so much or as well any more. There's also the issue of those he influenced using his tactics: Harmony Korine, Joshua Oppenheimer, Carlos Reygadas, etc. While poor imitators don't necessarily reflect poorly on the original, it does give pause that time has passed and the artist has reached a saturation point where he needs to dig in or try something new. All I see Herzog doing is a sort of dilution of his earlier work.
I understand his delight at having a larger audience, and I've never once seen or read an interview with him that embarrassed me, but there is still something a little unseemly about the cult of personality. Well, money and status are what get films made, understandably.
I just cannot take seriously any claim that something like Grizzly Man is greater than Lessons of Darkness, but again I understand why the former is so critically and popularly loved, being much easier to write about (gawk at) and distance yourself from as an audience.
-
- Joined: Sat Mar 29, 2014 8:48 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
You're forgetting Cave of Forgotten Dreams, which grossed over $5 million in the U.S. box office alone. I do agree with the crux of your argument, though. As for Manny Karp's side, sometimes I find myself wishing his modern fiction films (so much as that distinction accurately applies to any of Herzog's films, ever) were as good as what he was making in the 70s and early 80s, but it's hard to get too upset about that, what with the great documentary work he's been doing. Besides, Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans is pretty great.knives wrote:That's a unique opinion. Certainly for me, but this seems to have some wider critical consensus, his work as a documentarian is where he is at his strongest with some of his best works coming after this popularity arose (I'm sticking with Grizzly Man as the time). Since then he's made Into the Abyss, Encounters at the End of the World, Happy People, and a few smaller things which at least maintain the level of his previous work.
Of course it is also worth pointing out that, shortly after Grizzly Man, Mr. Herzog started popping up more commonly in mainstream entertainments as an actor: Jack Reacher, and episode of Parks & Recreation, that kind of thing. So of course a whole lot of people know him and his personality from that stuff, and have little to no idea of his work as a director.
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
I left it off because I think it is a fair bit weaker then the other films. His making of for the score, Ode to the Dawn of Man, actually works better for me though this is all subjective.
I don't fully understand the comment of reality mixing. Sometimes he has by incident done that like with Fitzcarldo, but since Even Dwarfs Started Small I can't think of any of his films which earnestly mix documentary and stagings in the way I'm understanding the comments to mean.
I don't fully understand the comment of reality mixing. Sometimes he has by incident done that like with Fitzcarldo, but since Even Dwarfs Started Small I can't think of any of his films which earnestly mix documentary and stagings in the way I'm understanding the comments to mean.
- Manny Karp
- Joined: Sat Jan 02, 2016 5:22 am
Re: Werner Herzog
His frequent use of non-actors (often disabled or the like) in fiction films (Even Dwarfs, Bruno S.) often incorporating some of their own history or experiences, his methods for particular films (such as the supposed hypnotizing of the entire cast for Heart of Glass), his somewhat Marker-esque use of stock or location footage to augment or even suggest a film's content (Lessons, Wild Blue Yonder) as well as films like Fata Morgana or Where the Green Ants Dream which I think are pretty well accepted as examples of what I'm talking about.knives wrote:I don't fully understand the comment of reality mixing. Sometimes he has by incident done that like with Fitzcarldo, but since Even Dwarfs Started Small I can't think of any of his films which earnestly mix documentary and stagings in the way I'm understanding the comments to mean.
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
I figured you might bring up Green Ants, but I think it very decisively should not count since it is shot as a regular scripted film and the mythology of the film is openly admitted as a fiction. It really should not count in the least. Hypnotizing as well seems just a method of developing performance, but doesn't really insist documentary onto the fictional works. You could be making a point with Bruno S, but casting people as themselves is a fairly common technique even done regularly in Hollywood with figures such as Eminem and Jackie Robinson among others. It adds to a sense of realism, but doesn't blur the lines into making one think that what they are seeing is anything other then a staging. Even considering the choice of a disabled or otherwise unusual actor it only works to create a sort of realism typically (though I think like Lynch Herzog's usage is more toward surrealism) rather then intruding the ideas of documentary. It also is a relatively common technique with war and horror movies using amputees with intense regularity. I simply don't see here the type of blending that, say, Robert Kramer does.
That said you do have me on Fata Morgana and maybe Lessons.
That said you do have me on Fata Morgana and maybe Lessons.
- matrixschmatrix
- Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
I think it's worth noting that he's not shy of making stuff up in his non-fiction films, either- the entirely fanciful albino alligator segment in the aforementioned Cave comes to mind, but I know it's something he's done before. Also, while he's not actually the director, Incident at Loch Ness is pretty explicitly a fictional film in the guise of a non-fiction one.
- solaris72
- Joined: Tue Nov 02, 2004 3:03 pm
- Location: Baltimore, MD
Re: Werner Herzog
In Encounters the bucket head "training" sequence is his own invention.
- knives
- Joined: Sat Sep 06, 2008 6:49 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
I think his lies are a major reason why his documentaries, especially lately, are more interesting then his staged films. Herzog's a more compelling myth maker then he is a teller of truth. Also he seems much more interested in expanding upon reality until it no longer exists then shrinking it.
- matrixschmatrix
- Joined: Tue May 25, 2010 11:26 pm
Re: Werner Herzog
I think I've heard him describe what he's interested in is 'ecstatic truth', which he defines as,
I think that's a major part of the Herzog mythos- his admiration for maniacs and dreamers springs from it, somewhat, as Herzogian heroes are almost universally people who themselves refuse to be constrained by the merely factual.Only in this state of sublimity [Erhabenheit] does something deeper become possible, a kind of truth that is the enemy of the merely factual. Ecstatic truth, I call it.
- Antarctica
- Joined: Thu Dec 31, 2015 10:48 am
- Location: United States
Re: Werner Herzog
Herzog on Pokemon Go
https://www.facebook.com/LoandBeholdFil ... 199012500/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
https://www.facebook.com/LoandBeholdFil ... 199012500/" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
- Quot
- Joined: Tue Sep 12, 2006 12:11 am
Re: Werner Herzog
One more notch in the Herzog legacy belt...
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World Official Trailer 2
His responses to Elon Musk and the guy who talks about robot-filmmaking are priceless, and oh so typically Herzogian.
Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World Official Trailer 2
His responses to Elon Musk and the guy who talks about robot-filmmaking are priceless, and oh so typically Herzogian.
- Roger Ryan
- Joined: Wed Apr 28, 2010 12:04 pm
- Location: A Midland town spread and darkened into a city
Re: Werner Herzog
Herzog deadpans quite a few zingers in his narration for Lo and Behold, enough that it's obvious how aware he is regarding his narration-style's impact on popular culture. Then again, he seems to be having more fun with the subject matter of the new film than with his last few documentaries.