Happy Birthday Herzog
Tuesday, September 5, 2017 at 2:34PM by Jason Adams
Film director Werner Herzog is marking three quarters of a century on this planet today - a planet that he has probably explored the weirdness hidden away at every single obscure corner of. We should cherish him while we have him, people - even if some of his more recent efforts have been iffier than most. Go see every damn one, reviews be damned.
Funnily enough last night I was reading a review of the Twin Peaks finale (no spoilers here, don't worry!) that called that series mastermind David Lynch "American pop culture's answer to Werner Herzog," and I got to thinking about these two directors in relation to each other. Besides Herzog and Lynch easily making my list of Top Five Greatest Living Film-makers I don't usually think about them in relation to each other, but it's not an invalid point.
So here, for Werner's birthday, let's latch him onto the zeitgeist's momentarily hottest art-house auteur, and list three similarities, with one glaring dissimilarity...
Similarity #1 - Little People
It's become morally suspect to link the vertiginously challenged to surrealism nowadays, and with good reason - I do wonder if The Wizard of Oz might one day go the way of Gone With the Wind for similar reasons? But there's no disputing that both Herzog & Lynch have exploited the uncanny sensation the diminutive instill in the not so. Lynch is of course referring back to Oz, because well as a general rule Lynch is always referring back to Oz.
Herzog's take, on the other hand, in the form of his 1970 surrealist masterpiece Even Dwarfs Started Small, reads as a much more complicated spin to me - the titular dwarfs are symbols inside an allegory, but they're also, in his humanist hands, people outside of the mainstream that he is entirely fascinated in, which would become the main thrust of his entire career.
Similarity #2 - Grace Zabriskie
Speaking of folks outside of the mainstream, both Herzog and Lynch seem to be the only folks willing to give one of our greatest living actresses roles worthy of her magnificent talents, and able to harnass the riveting electricity she emits on-screen. Her Sarah Palmer on Twin Peaks, both original and new flavors, has been a live-wire of bottomless grief and horror for the actress, and her small role in Inland Empire is the sort you never forget. But my favorite performance of hers will probably always remain that of Michael Shannon's twitchy mother in Herzog's underrated My Son My Son What Have Ye Done, a domestic nightmare made all the more nightmarish by Zabriskie's relentless and transfixing eccentricity.
Similarity #3 - Blond Maniac Breakdowns
All I want to see in this world before I die (well besides a rom-com starring Zabriskie and Udo Keir) is a Freddy vs Jason type showdown between Klaus Kinski in Fitzcarraldo and Laura Dern in Inland Empire. An off-center request, to be sure, but now that I have offered it as a possibility (hey isn't this what CG was invented for) I dare you to unthink it.
Dissimilarity #1 - Women
There have been some dunderheaded think-pieces written about David Lynch's "woman problem" over the past several weeks thanks to one too many shrill wives showing up on Twin Peaks, but Lynch has mostly built his career upon his profound love for women and a fascination with pointing his camera at the actresses that play them. (Give me everything Dern has done in front of him or give me death.)
But Herzog, besides a couple of examples otherwise (one of which was our #2 above) has not shown a ton of interest in making movies about women - the main thrust of his career has been about the stereotypical male quest to dive dumbly into the world's hearts of darkness. Think of the uproar that's met the forthcoming reboot of Lord of the Flies starring women to get a sense of why his fascinations haven't really meshed with so-called "feminine" concerns.
His Queen of the Desert with Nicole Kidman in 2015 was seen as a stab at righting that imbalance, but then the most interesting performance in the movie (by Robert Pattinson as TE Lawrence) showed where Herzog's interests still lay despite the effort, and I left that movie wondering what a proper Herzog remake of Lawrence of Arabia might've looked like. Alas.
Happy birthday, Werner! Here's to 75 more!
Reader Comments (5)
Werner Herzog. Gets shot and takes it as if it was nothing. What is more badass than that?
And "Fiztcarraldo" is amazing
@Jaragon-My favorite Herzog film. He had the balls to drag a steamship on top of a mountain without visual effects.
Excellent post.
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