Werner Herzog | Pushing to the Extreme

Werner Herzog has become an obsession to me recently, a unique auteur unlike any other filmmaker. An incomparable force that can make any topic the most fascinating thing you'll hear about that entire week. He's been making both feature films and documentaries since the late 60s and has continued to do so ever since, covering a variety of topics– man versus nature; the brutal, unforgiving environment of planet earth and the impact it has on humans that are trying to conquer it. His most famous documentary Grizzly Man exemplifies this perfectly. Timothy Treadwell tries to coexist with wild grizzly bears in the Alaskan wilderness, thinking he is forming relationships and a connection to another species, only to be killed brutally alongside his girlfriend by one of the bears. The surviving audio of the event is one of the most haunting things to be put in a documentary.

Many of Herzog’s films revolve around people who are true to themselves or trying to figure who they are, living their life the way they want no matter what others say or think of them, like Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre (both played by Herzog’s infamous frenemy Klaus Kinksi) or real life individuals captured in documentaries. In La Soufrère, Herzog and his team talk to one of the last men in an abandoned town that lies on an active volcano due to erupt in the Caribbean. In spite of his circumstances, the man does not fear death and happily relaxes beneath a tree. In his film Encounters at the End of the World, Herzog interviews many people at different stations all over Antarctica; people who aren’t afraid of being themselves, going to the titular end of the world to escape who they once were and start afresh in one of the only parts of the world where the judgements and societal pressures of the modern world aren’t pressing down on them.

Herzog has become an eccentric director over the years, and a true individual on an artistic level, never bowing towards studio mandates or the whims of others. He makes the art that he makes because it is a natural compulsion.

“If I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams and I don't want to live like that. I live my life or I end my life with this project.” - Werner Herzog in Burden of Dreams (1982)

In his 1982 film Fitzcarraldo, Herzog achieves the impossible, just like the titular character, by pulling a  320 tonne boat over a mountain in the depths of the endlessly deep Amazonian Rainforest. This is the most famous example of the impossible dreams that Herzog is able to realise in several of his films. Herzog is a  filmmaker with a true pioneering spirit, unbroken and untamed by the world around him, doing things his own way and risking death trying. He seems to have been to hell and back on multiple film productions, climbing active volcano territories, having his camp burnt down in the Amazon, and even being shot while doing an interview with Mark Kermode (which seemed like the least of his concerns.) Every subsequent watch of a Herzog film invites us to understand the human condition on a more intense level, and by focusing on unique individuals allows the audience to engage in a more worldly experience. I always look forward to the next Werner Herzog watch and to have my mind expanded by his unique perspective on our world.

Written by Michael Tasker | IG: @thegoldenecstasy | LB: Haelcim