Herzog Is Different
And that’s why he is a great teacher.
Truffaut once called Werner Herzog “the most important film director alive,” you might think of this as a gross exaggeration of the influence of the German genius on today’s cinema. But that’s probably because you are looking at film from the point-of-view of most current directors and their style. Today we handle movies as a product of design, something carefully crafted to make the audience feel a specific emotion at a particular moment. The gonzo nature of Herzog filmmaking opposes that idea completely. Herzog films are not designed but discovered. That’s why he is so important; he’s almost alone in that category of filmmaker.
The man pulled a boat up a mountain to shoot ‘Fitzcarraldo,’ has looked down at active volcanoes, and gone into the most secluded parts of the Peruvian jungle to get the shot he wanted. With Herzog’s films, you get this feeling of adventure. It’s almost like his artistic choices are not guided by the culture that surrounds him or by any push from the mainstream, but by his curiosity, he follows it and takes his camera with him. That’s why you feel like Herzog himself is telling you “Hey! Hey! Look at this I’ve found” when you’re watching his fiction or documentaries.
It’s virtually a complete philosophical break with the current state of the industry. The drive for more CGI has turned movies into something that’s literally created out of nothing, from 0 to 1 to the screen. Herzog captures images; he does not build them from scratch. The world is his canvas which he captures with his incredible vision. That’s why he is so vital to today’s filmmaking, training the eye to capture moments is a very different skill than manufacturing them on a computer somewhere hidden from the world.
That being said, Herzog has never been constrained by reality to tell his truth. He’s been known for making up quotes.
“In the film I did about the oil fires burning in Kuwait, starts off with a quote from Blaise Pascal. And it’s a beautiful one. It says, ‘The collapse of the stellar universe will occur like creation, in grandiose splendor.’ But Blaise Pascal did not say that. I did.”
Herzog plays with the elements he takes from the real world, he mixes and mashes them into something he feels expresses a deeper meaning. He’s not concerned with the exact facts, which he calls ‘the accountant’s truth”. He cares about extracting more “profound truths” to illuminate his audience. But when he’s asked about what does he mean by “truths”, Herzog says he should not be questioned about it — a true artist.
The stories about his strange antics in film sets are many; some call him crazy, others a genius. But what is genuinely undeniable is his capacity to capture the attention of millions of people around the world by showing them what he is interested in. His passion spills over the screen and into the audience, who are left mesmerized by the German’s stylings.
Having such a different style from most directors makes Herzog the perfect teacher, he speaks from experience and honestly. Tough but fair.
Learn with the master of gonzo filmmaking the art of capturing images for film now.
WERNER HERZOG teaches FILMMAKING at Filmarket Hub’s TRAINING.
