Ten essen­tial Wern­er Her­zog films

For many younger cinephiles, the films of Wern­er Her­zog pro­vide an ethe­re­al gate­way drug to the world of hard­core Euro­pean art cin­e­ma. I say this not to den­i­grate the qual­i­ty or intel­lec­tu­al depth of the work, but as a fond per­son­al rec­ol­lec­tion of see­ing Aguirre, Wrath of God way too young and feel­ing wor­ried for the actors on screen in a way that was both excit­ing, ter­ri­fy­ing and above all, excit­ing. The images in this film didn’t look like the images in oth­er films.

Her­zog is some­one whose estimable screen cat­a­logue pro­vides both extreme diver­si­ty and sat­is­fy­ing uni­ty at the same time – that is to say, for Her­zog, no sub­ject mat­ter, genre or style is off the table, as long as it sub­tly ascribes to his unique view of the world and human­i­ty. The film­mak­er has spo­ken at length about the mean­ing and ratio­nale for his work, and on occa­sion has stat­ed that he is not a film­mak­er, but a writer, and that the images are processed entire­ly from his thoughts and ideas.

Per­son­al­ly speak­ing, the plea­sure that I have accrued from his films relates to his abil­i­ty to locate poet­ic order amid the chaos and mys­tery of the world, its land­scapes and its peo­ple. He is some­one who proves that you can be a human­ist while also believ­ing that life is lit­tle more than a mean­ing­less night­mare of suf­fer­ing. And so, ahead of a BFI ret­ro­spec­tive of his work, here are my top ten Her­zog essentials.

10. My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done? (2009)

At the 2009 Venice Film Fes­ti­val, the major­i­ty of Her­zog-based ener­gy was trained at the world pre­mière of his nov­el, Nic Cage-star­ring crooked cop thriller, Bad Lieu­tenant: Port of Call New Orleans. Yet, anoth­er, supe­ri­or Her­zog joint rolled out in a sur­prise slot, and it’s a film which def­i­nite­ly gives an affir­ma­tive answer to the ques­tion: is Michael Shan­non the new Klaus Kin­s­ki? The film is Herzog’s take on the ​“true crime” sub-genre, but of course bites its thumb at con­ven­tion, with Shan­non play­ing a fraz­zled actor who becomes so fix­at­ed on his role that he attempts to mur­der his moth­er with a sabre. Con­tains an amaz­ing scene of Shan­non and Brad Dou­rif tool­ing around at an ostrich farm.

9. Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) / Res­cue Dawn (2007)

While he’s not one for sequels, Her­zog is known for revis­it­ing and recal­i­brat­ing his past works, and the sto­ry of Ger­man avi­a­tor Dieter Den­gler pro­vides the mate­r­i­al for mul­ti­ple films and books. Lit­tle Dieter Needs to Fly is a doc­u­men­tary about Dengler’s unlike­ly escape from a Laot­ian POW camp dur­ing the Viet­nam war, with Den­gler him­self on hand to talk through the details. Res­cue Dawn, mean­while, offers a straight fic­tion­al retelling with Chris­t­ian Bale in the lead. It sounds like a stan­dard tri­umph-over-adver­si­ty news­pa­per cut­ting, but Her­zog focus­es instead on the human body’s capac­i­ty for suf­fer­ing and the human spirit’s capac­i­ty believ­ing in impos­si­ble things that may just save our lives.

8. Cave of For­got­ten Dreams (2010)

It wasn’t going to be long before Her­zog dipped his toe into the translu­cent pool of 3D tech­nol­o­gy, and he came up trumps with 2010’s Cave of For­got­ten Dreams. He heads on an expe­di­tion under­ground to the Chau­vet Cave in South­ern France to train his cam­era (and spe­cial lens­es) on the prim­i­tive paint­ings that were cre­at­ed many tens of thou­sands of years ago. The tran­scen­dent spec­ta­cle of see­ing the paint­ings and the hid­den nat­ur­al enclo­sure would like­ly be enough for some view­ers, but as with all of Herzog’s doc­u­men­tary work, it’s his spry, inquir­ing nar­ra­tion that tips this over the top.

7. Griz­zly Man (2005)

Where Her­zog famous­ly espous­es a view of the world as being dom­i­nat­ed by chaos and con­fu­sion, the sub­ject of 2005’s Griz­zly Man, ama­teur envi­ron­men­tal­ist Tim­o­thy Tread­well, lived by a very dif­fer­ent set of beliefs that ulti­mate­ly led to him being killed by a hun­gry bear in the wilds of Alas­ka. The film is almost like Her­zog say­ing to the view­er, ​“See? See what hap­pens when you embrace the idea of har­mo­ny and grace? You will die hor­ri­bly.” It also con­tains one of the great­est, Mon­do-esque scenes in the director’s canon, where Her­zog is filmed lis­ten­ing to an audio record­ing of Treadwell’s death and advis­es the own­er of the tape to nev­er lis­ten to it and to destroy it (advice he lat­er reneged on say­ing it was the prod­uct of his own shock).

6. Fitz­car­ral­do (1982)

With­out mean­ing to sound face­tious, 1982’s Fitz­car­ral­do exem­pli­fies the can-do spir­it of the Her­zog project. The art of film­mak­ing is one that is bound to prac­ti­cal logis­tics and the under­stand­ing of tech­ni­cal process­es, and the famous sequence of Klaus Kin­s­ki organ­is­ing the trans­port of a steam­boat over a hill deep in the Ama­zon Rain­for­est is one of the great metaphors for the toils of mak­ing movies. The film offers jaw-drop­ping spec­ta­cle by the buck­et­load, and you know you’re see­ing images that were cre­at­ed with­out any con­ven­tion­al safe­ty nets. Yet as the years have passed, there’s a faint whiff of colo­nial cel­e­bra­tion to the sto­ry of a man attempt­ing to intro­duce opera to depths of rur­al Brazil.

5. Fata Mor­gana (1971) / Lessons of Dark­ness (1992)

Yes, we’re cheat­ing a lit­tle by dou­bling up this pair of ​“ambi­ent” doc­u­men­taries, but there’s so much visu­al and the­mat­ic con­nec­tiv­i­ty between the two that we thought we’d do a dou­ble-bub­ble. In fact, ​“doc­u­men­tary” doesn’t feel like the right term for Fata Mor­gana and Lessons of Dark­ness, which offer stark images of land­scapes from around the globe and use cam­era posi­tion, edit­ing and music to sub­vert and, in many cas­es, height­en the mean­ing. The slowed-down sequences of bil­low­ing flame clouds in a post-Gulf War Kuwait give the sense of a fan­tas­ti­cal apoc­a­lypse in motion.

4. Stroszek (1977)

A per­son­al, slight­ly left-field favourite among Herzog’s ear­ly mis­sives, 1977’s Stroszek is a com­ic tirade against Amer­i­can cul­tur­al impe­ri­al­ism and is famous for being the film that Joy Division’s Ian Cur­tis was watch­ing before he took his own life. The film marks the sec­ond and final col­lab­o­ra­tion with the mys­te­ri­ous actor and musi­cian Bruno S. who exudes such unortho­dox screen pres­ence that you don’t need to wor­ry too much about fol­low­ing the may­hem of the plot about a Ger­man alco­holic seek­ing (and very much not find­ing) his for­tune on the bar­ren flats of Wis­con­sin, USA.

3. Nos­fer­atu (1979)

We have to remem­ber when we watch Robert Eggers’ forth­com­ing remake of Nos­fer­atu that Wern­er Her­zog already made an excel­lent one back in 1979. If there’s one thing that Her­zog is very much not known for it’s sex and eroti­cism, so this one is very much an out­lier on those terms, as it’s a film which is lift­ed no end by the chem­istry between Klaus Kinski’s Count Drac­u­la and Isabelle Adjani as Lucy Hark­er. It’s a film that’s rich with visu­al metaphor, and uses its cen­tral tale to speak of a world that’s crum­bling from with­in. It’s also not a hor­ror film, but rather a lilt­ing study of a man dri­ven by impuls­es he has no way to suppress.

2. Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972)

If we’re for­mu­lat­ing lists of films that we’d like to see pro­ject­ed on an IMAX screen, then Herzog’s sem­i­nal, shock­ing 1972 his­tor­i­cal epic of colo­nial adven­ture in the Ama­zon would be very near the top of the pile. From its open­ing shot of con­quis­ta­dores fil­ing care­ful­ly along a pre­car­i­ous moun­tain ridge, set to the ambi­ent strains of Ger­man prog band Popol Vuh, to its ago­nis­ing finale with star Klaus Kin­s­ki set adrift on a raft with only mon­keys for pas­sen­gers, it’s still an awe-strik­ing work of imag­i­na­tion and inge­nu­ity that looks and feels like noth­ing else before or since. Its stri­dent and artic­u­late polit­i­cal cri­tique of impe­ri­al­ist plun­der still rings as loud­ly as it ever has.

1. The Enig­ma of Kas­par Hauser (1974)

One thing to say about Wern­er Her­zog is that he’s made an extra­or­di­nary amount of films, and he has tend­ed to make at least one or two great ones for the last five decades and count­ing. Our top four here draw very much from a vin­tage run in the 1970s, and this is per­haps a reflec­tion of the free­dom he was giv­en to tell such tales at a time when fund­ing was nei­ther so restric­tive nor so hard to come by. 1974’s The Enig­ma of Kas­par Hauser is one of his most mov­ing, philo­soph­i­cal­ly rich and least didac­tic works, as it tells of a nine­teenth-cen­tu­ry foundling (played by Bruno S.) who spent the first 17 years of his life chained up in a dark cel­lar with only a toy horse for com­pa­ny. The film charts his sub­se­quent accep­tance into and rejec­tion from bour­geois soci­ety, and where Her­zog has often focused on the chaos inher­ent in nature, this is a film about soci­ety as a phan­tom of struc­ture and log­ic. In the end, chaos is every­where, cer­tain­ty is a myth, and the world – for bet­ter and for worse – will remain a loca­tion of infi­nite mys­tery when your time on it fin­ish­es up. Watch­ing it again now for its 50^th anniver­sary year, you get a sense that it’s one that has influ­enced many mod­ern film­mak­ers, from Gre­ta Ger­wig (Bar­bie) to Yor­gos Lan­thi­mos (Poor Things).