Herzog's sober irony doesn't always help him with audiences, however. With Fitzcarraldo he appeared to be attempting a David Lean movie, without the engineering team that Lean's budgets could buy. Lean could get that kind of budget because of his literate romanticism, that trademarked "intelligent" gush that drew both high and low audiences. (My enthralled response as a child to Lawrence of Arabia was, in sum, "Ottoman? Arab? I just wanna wear a robe and ride a camel.") Herzog's approach is romantic anti-romanticism--he rises to asphyxiating overviews of his characters to show us the futility of existence.
In Every Man for Himself and God Against All (1974), for instance, Herzog presents that historical question mark Kaspar Hauser as the essence, the idea, of human innocence confronting the plain, sordid, fragmented realities of human interactions and thought. But he doesn't want to push it, even to the temperamentally refined extent that David Lynch's The Elephant Man (1980) later did, thereby reaching a wide audience with a similar anecdote. Herzog wants to stir romantic anguish at the vulnerability of Kaspar's innocence, but he also wants Kaspar's fate to point up how inhospitable humankind is to such innocence, which he doesn't really believe in. There can be an undeniable piquancy in a depiction of the decline, death, or destruction of something you don't believe in (from the Garden of Eden to Puff, the Magic Dragon), but nobody could accuse Herzog of going in for painful-pretty fancies. He assigns blame for the grim situations in his movies, but at the same time to him grimness is just a matter of fact in this world and so the comic-poetic fairy tale qualities that might dominate the work in other hands turn muted, dim in Herzog's.
Herzog is among the least dramatic directors of international repute; he sets up his situations but then pulls back, refusing to shape them dramatically or emotionally. His m.o. has been to estrange us from the drama, the better to make us perceive life as random happenings in a Godless universe. (Herzog's world is the opposite of Dickens's--Kaspar's benefactor can't protect him from exploitation and harm and there's no kindly eye looking down on his suffering.) He's not bombastic but he is ponderous, and his movies can be awfully inert. In Grizzly Man, however, Treadwell's character and fate provide all the dramatic structure Herzog needs and the fact that it's a documentary gives him some investigative and analytic work to do. He can't just stand back and watch as the script he wrote "confirms" his beliefs.
Article comments
1 - Purple Tigress
March of the Penguins as we know it here is not how it was originally made. I understand the French version of the narration had a greater tendency to anthropormorphize the actions of the penguins. The French version is what was seen at Sundance.
Whether or not this is the feeling of the cinematographers is not evident. Perhaps they only wished to make this available to a wider audience. Perhaps this was a decision of the producer. So while the original narration may have bolstered your argument, interviews about the narration (both in English and French) would have further solidified your reasoning.
Also, you should note that while Timothy Treadwell claimed to spend 13 years alone, he was not always alone. There were girlfriends besides Jewel and Amie. That was part of his myth making and Herzog also alludes to this. There are also blogs that testify to tourists who were able to meet and talk with Treadwell while he was in the bush.
One point the documentary doesn't make clear is that they cannot prove that Treadwell was attacked and eaten by the same bear or even eaten by just one bear.
2 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. You're right that I have ascribed the flaws of the American version of March of the Penguins to the moviemaking "team," in which I include the director, screenwriters, and producers. I didn't have the information to ascribe it more particularly. It is also the case that the French version appears to have been worse. IMDB.com lists, for instance, French voice actors for the mother, father, and child penguins.
As for Grizzly Man, Herzog points out when Treadwell's girlfriend is holding the camera. He notes two instances of it. I assume that when he went through the footage he would have noticed the same telltale signs from earlier summers. Maybe not, though. I don't think it makes that much difference, however, if Treadwell was monologuing to someone behind the camera. The content of what he said is the same, even if the situation is somewhat different. Also, as I recall they found human remains and clothing inside the bear they killed. Yes, it can't be proven that that is the bear Treadwell had photographed, but I believe their theory about the bear being older and desperately hungry holds good as a general matter and seems likely. It may be wrong, but again it doesn't change that much. Treadwell was not "studying" the bears in any meaningful scientific way and plainly, judging from the results, was not an expert at reading bear behavior.
3 - ss
Alan:
Thanks for a great review.
'My Best Fiend', 'Aguirre: The Wrath of God', and 'Grizzly Man'
These are the only Herzog titles I've seen so far. I'm going to have to check out 'Fitzcarraldo'.
What's great about these movies, despite the plodding stories, is Herzog's valiant attempt to avoid simple themes in describing irreducibly complex situations.
His attraction to people who do simplify the world down into familiar, palatable terms, and his fascination with the ability these weavers of archetypal fairytales have to get other people to follow them, to their own mutual destruction, his ability to admit this fascination while not romanticizing these characters, makes for something unique.
You're right, he falls into the same trap himself with the nihilism, but perhaps this nihilism is what keeps him from romanticizing his charasmatic, destructive dreamers.
Without it, he might have shot 'Natural Born Killers' instead of 'Grizzly Man'.
4 - Alan Dale
Thanks for the comment. You got Herzog right--he strictly avoids the gratifying simplifications we're used to at the movies. His avoidance has its own pitfalls--cheerless rather than cheery simplifications--but even that is so rare in the movies that it can be bracing even when it's not exactly profound. It can also be lethal (Heart of Glass) but generally it's pretty stimluating. If you have a certain temperament, anyway. I've been watching one Herzog movie after another at home and my boyfriend thinks I've gone off my rocker, except to the extent he thinks I may have found the cure for insomnia.
I'm also glad you pointed out the way that certain of Herzog's mad characters get other people to follow them--the phenomenon that haunted mid-20th century Germany.
5 - ss
Not to mention the turn of the 21st century Muslim world, as well as early 21st century America.
Strange how a 'philosphical' film maker got to the heart of that one so much more cleanly than the 'political' film makers with their conspiracy theories and simple reductions of phantasmagoric situations.
6 - Alan Dale
Interesting. Yes, the direct route doesn't necessarily lead to the most satisfying results when it comes to political movies, as I think The Constant Gardener and Lord of War show.
7 - ss
I liked both those movies, but I walked away a little disappointed in in each case.
Feines death seemed to indulge the messianic urge a bit to much in CG,
and the first hour of LoW, the 'Blow' of gun running part, could have been better.
8 - Alan Dale
Stay tuned--I'm working on a review of Constant Gardener and maybe of Lord of War though I found the latter outright dull. I used to find Nicolas Cage outrageously amusing. What happened?