Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog Stipetic, better known as Werner Herzog, was born in Munich, Germany, on September 5, 1942, in the middle of World War II, when the fateful Adolf Hitler ruled his country. His father was German and his mother Croatian, and when a bombardment was about to destroy his house, they decided it was better to go to the deepest countryside in Bavaria, to the small alpine town of Sachrang. They would return to Munich when Werner had turned 12, but in the meantime his father, with almost wandering concerns, abandoned them. A misfit at school, but with cultural concerns and a desire to see the world, Werner began university studies in Germanic history and literature in Munich and Pittsburgh. He would frequently travel to exotic places, such as unknown parts of Germany itself, plus Sudan, the United States, Mexico, where danger lurked. After all, we are talking about the filmmaker who inLa Soufrière , films next to an erupting volcano .

His fascination with cinema was born early, since at the age of 19 he filmed his first film, the short Heracles ., where he draws a curious parallel between the Greek hero and the regulars of the gyms. In this dedication, for which he did not carry out formal studies, he was inspired by reading an encyclopedic article on the Seventh Art, there he found out everything he needed to start filming, which included a camera. When it came to getting hold of one, he was not very orthodox, as he stole it from the Munich Film School. As an explanation, he said that “he did not consider it a theft, but only a necessity, he had a kind of natural right to the camera, a tool to work with.” In any case, Herzog did not lack enthusiasm and the desire to work to finance himself, who worked as a welder in a factory to pay for his first film, which he made through his own company.

From the beginning of his career, Herzog has been interested in man subjected to extreme challenges, which he captures in a genre, the documentary, which he will never abandon, the perfect complement to his work of fiction, and in which it is common for him to act as narrator. . In this regard, he achieves his first masterpiece with El país del silencio y la oscuridad (1971), where he shows with exquisite sensitivity the humanity of deafblind people; he also addresses childhood disabilities in the moving Uncertain Future (1971); the extraordinary dignity of the protagonists of these works is quite a contrast with the horrors of a Nazi Germany then not so distant in time. Also notable are The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969) andThe great ecstasy of the wood sculptor Steiner (1971). The truth is that as a documentarian, Herzog demonstrates a sixth sense to detect unusual subjects to which he prints great passion. For example, he doesn’t hesitate to address his difficult relationship with actor Klaus Kinski in My Close Enemy (1999). He strikes a perfect and far from easy balance of his amazement in his look at a man who lives with bears in Grizzly Man (2005), his only Oscar nomination. He explores incredible places that challenge humans to access in Encounters at the End of the World (2007) and Cave of Forgotten Dreams.(2010). He gave an account of his indefatigable search when he said that “I would go to Mars if necessary, to find pure images, since it is not easy to find them on this earth.”

Truly, nothing stops Herzog when it comes to considering the challenge of making a film, and he wanted to document this and be an example in the short film by Les Blank, Werner Herzog eats his shoe . The German filmmaker, as an incentive for Errol Morris to film a documentary about pet cemeteries, told him that the day he got down to it, he would eat a shoe. Morris did not comply, but the day the cursed film Heaven’s Gate by Michael Cimino was released, it seemed appropriate to him to live the ritual of shoe ingestion, recorded on celluloid by Blank.

In fiction he debuted in 1968 with Signs of life , the tribulations of a German paratrooper who during the war is sent to Crete to spend his convalescence, where the forced inactivity drives him crazy; earned him the Special Jury Prize in Berlin. Landscape and adventure are common elements with his documentaries. He dazzles the Spanish conquistadors of America with his gaze and his duel with the nature of the jungle in Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972). An excessive and romantic film, with an operatic tone, a line that can also be seen in the also jungle- like Fitzcarraldo (1982), thanks to which he was distinguished as best director at Cannes. The extreme shooting conditions produced conflicts between Herzog and Kinski, and inAguirre the director came to threaten his protagonist with a weapon. Herzog will frequently take true stories of his for films, which he adapts to the cinematographic format; This also occurs in The Enigma of Gaspar Hauser (1974) –Grand Prize of the Jury at Cannes–, about a young man who was locked in a basement for years in the 19th century, and who, once released, has the help of a teacher to reintegrate himself. in society. His interest in misfits, extreme personalities, and those who suffer injustice is also seen in Dwarfs Also Started Small (1970) and Stroszek (1977).

The comments he made in 2006 about the liberties he takes when dealing with stories based on reality, regarding the film Rescue at Dawn , may also apply to his earlier works: “If we only paid attention to the facts, we would end up working as accountants . If you discover here or there a modified or imagined fact, I suppose it will be a triumph of the accountants to communicate it to me. But I search for light for a deeper truth, an ecstasy of truth, something we experience once in a while, in great movies or literature. I imagine, I stage, I use fantasy. That alone sheds light. Otherwise, if you’re just going after the facts, please, buy the Manhattan phone book. It contains four million exact facts. But they shed no light.”

He dares to emulate his compatriot FW Murnau with the vampiric Nosferatu (1979) . Another fairly loose and not too exciting remake is Corrupt Lieutenant (2009), supposedly inspired by Abel Ferrara ‘s film . Regarding the possible difficulties in understanding his cinema, Herzog addressed a hypothetical viewer in the following terms: “They are not my dreams. I think all these dreams… are yours too. And the only distinction between you and me is that I am able to articulate them.” Indeed, seeking and sharing with the public the capacity for wonder is part of the film philosophy of the German filmmaker.

Werner is a restless man, who in the 80s and especially the 90s moves through new fields such as theater and opera. His personal life includes three marriages, and some complicated sentimental relationships, from which three children have been born. He considers himself lucky not to have taken a flight for which he had a ticket, fatally crashed, while filming Aguirre ; There was only one survivor, to whom he dedicated in 2000 one of his documentaries, Julianes Sturz in den Dschungel .