Overview:
Don’t ask me to choose between Errol Morris and Werner Herzog. The two friends, and for my money the greatest documentarians of the last 50 years, make such engrossing, well made films that I couldn’t take just one. We’ve had a wealth of releases from them in the last few months, and the latest is New Yorker’s Werner Herzog Shorts.
The collection contains three short films Herzog made in the late 1970s. They each run under 45 minutes, and showcase Herzog’s absolute mastery at making an engrossing film.
The first film, The Great Ecstasy of Sculptor Steiner, shows a rarely seen side of Herzog, the fan. His love of both the sport of ski flying and his admiration for Steiner are as interesting to watch as the skier himself, and Steiner’s story of fear and performance is riveting. The word that comes to mind, and it could describe all of Herzog’s work is “lyrical”. Breathtaking slow motion photography captures Steiner in flight as some odd, tall bird. The score also perfectly compliments the images, slow and beautiful.
Next we get How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck, Herzog’s look at the World Championship of Auctioneering. This is probably the closest to a traditional effort on the disc, as we are presented with interviews of the oddball competitors and a full twenty minutes of footage of the contest itself. The draw for Herzog was clearly the language, the near total lack of meaning (to the untrained ear, at least) to what these men are quite literally singing. In the booklet that accompanies the set, Herzog refers to it as “the music of capitalism”, and it is a beautiful thing to listen to. Perhaps this is the Gregorian chant of America.
Finally, La Soufriere is an absolutely stunning film, and one that fits perfectly into the Herzog oeuvre. Another look into the stubborn madness of man, the film deals with a soon to erupt volcano, and the handful of men that refuse to flee its wrath. Herzog hears of a single man that has not evacuated the tiny island, and rushes there with a camera crew to document the last days of both the man and the island. But once he finds this seemingly insane islander, he is an old man with simple reservation and seemingly reasonable motives for staying. Herzog then almost demands that you compare him to a filmmaker that would rush into danger, instead of just refusing to leave. Who is crazier, the native man or the German artist that drives towards clouds of poison gas? A remarkable, haunting film with oddly compelling imagery, and an evocative score.
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Article comments
1 - Aaman
Good report on an interesting dvd