This movie is pretty much a failure. It's an interesting failure, but a failure. There's just not a whole lot that really works.
I somehow had forgotten that this was the movie where he used hypnotized actors the whole time, and I guess that adds a bit of interest to the film, but I'm glad that I was able to watch it w/o that knowledge--although I did find myself thinking a few times, "Why is everyone acting like zombies?" There are whole sections where the actors just stand there and proclaim their lines, and I'm not sure it would've made much difference had they been hypnotized or instructed to act hypnotized.
What I mainly thought while watching it was, "Here's a bit of proof that it really is hard to do a film like Lynch and get it right."
It seems like Herzog is at his best when he creates a situation in which he's inherently out of control and films the results. Even in Fitzcarraldo, for which he got the reputation of being a maniacal control freak, a lot of the things that are most interesting are the result of the difficulties involved in undertaking such an insane project, so there's so much that is just beyond his control, no matter what he does. Here, though, it seems like Herzog is in control of nearly every action, and nothing is quite as interesting, somehow.
The only part that really worked the way it was intended was the final bit about the two islands with the narration by the prophet guy. Herzog is just great at using long tracking shots of beautiful extreme landscapes with perfect music and sounds overlayed. The island was breathtaking, and the long shot all the way around with the lone figure standing on the precipice is pure Herzog at his best--the type of thing that I want to find a word for, something better than "Herzogian." Also, the shot from the inside of the little boat that they're rowing out to see was pretty incredible, followed by one of Herzog's many long takes of flocks of birds, another thing that he captures like virtually no one else.
There were a few other mildly interesting bits, but overall it felt like a lot of flailing around trying to find something interesting. Which is still interesting, and you have to give him credit for really trying to create something unique. But it's just never really interesting as a finished project. That's not a criticism; it's a description.
Also, the opening shots were very good. He'd already figured out how to do all that at this point in his career. The mist cascading over the wooded hills; the cattle idly chewing away at the grass in the foggy morning; and all those broad landscape shots that I think were maybe being filmed as a projection onto heavy cloth? Pure Herzogian goodness.
Showing posts with label Herzog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Herzog. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
Thursday, August 16, 2007
Rescue Dawn
(8/2/07 alone, at Embarcadero Center, 4:00pm)
1) The thing is, it's a very good movie, but it's hard not to wonder why exactly Herzog made it. Somehow, by making it into a well done war/prison/survival/escape movie, the movie becomes less compelling than the story as told in "Little Dieter Needs to Fly."
2) Probably because of "Little Dieter," it was impossible to ever really feel like Bale was actually the character he was portraying, in the way it normally when watching a good movie. Not at all to fault Bale's performance.
3) My favorite pure poetic/Herzog moment from "Little Dieter," was when the slo-mo napalming video was played with the weird bouncy tribal/folk music over it. Herzog uses the same bit of film here, this time zoomed in on specific parts, with more traditional movieclassical music played over it. Again, the result is that it's not as compelling here as it was in "Little Dieter," or at least not in the same way.
4) Is this in some way a kind of indictment of the traditional Hollywood war/prison/survival/escape-type film? Nothing specifically about the movie itself made me think that, but reflection on the differences between this and "Little Dieter" has made me wonder. I need to see "Little Dieter" again. Even if that wasn't Herzog's intention, I think this movie ultimately functions that way. "Indictment" is the wrong word.
5) Yet another. I was way more disturbed by Dengler's recounting of his friend's death in "Little Dieter" than I was by the portrayal of it here. Here it just felt kind of like another in a long line of such events being dramatized in a movie. There it was singularly horrifying. I need to watch both of these movies again.
1) The thing is, it's a very good movie, but it's hard not to wonder why exactly Herzog made it. Somehow, by making it into a well done war/prison/survival/escape movie, the movie becomes less compelling than the story as told in "Little Dieter Needs to Fly."
2) Probably because of "Little Dieter," it was impossible to ever really feel like Bale was actually the character he was portraying, in the way it normally when watching a good movie. Not at all to fault Bale's performance.
3) My favorite pure poetic/Herzog moment from "Little Dieter," was when the slo-mo napalming video was played with the weird bouncy tribal/folk music over it. Herzog uses the same bit of film here, this time zoomed in on specific parts, with more traditional movieclassical music played over it. Again, the result is that it's not as compelling here as it was in "Little Dieter," or at least not in the same way.
4) Is this in some way a kind of indictment of the traditional Hollywood war/prison/survival/escape-type film? Nothing specifically about the movie itself made me think that, but reflection on the differences between this and "Little Dieter" has made me wonder. I need to see "Little Dieter" again. Even if that wasn't Herzog's intention, I think this movie ultimately functions that way. "Indictment" is the wrong word.
5) Yet another. I was way more disturbed by Dengler's recounting of his friend's death in "Little Dieter" than I was by the portrayal of it here. Here it just felt kind of like another in a long line of such events being dramatized in a movie. There it was singularly horrifying. I need to watch both of these movies again.
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser
(written 8/23/07, 11:14pm)
2nd time.
The opening shot of this movie is, I think, better than anything else that follows it, but not because the rest isn't really good. The opening shot is one of the most pure examples of that thing that I mostly only find in Herzog movies that I rarely find anywhere else. There are some other good examples of it throughout the movie, but the opening shot presents it without any connection to anything else, so it's not diluted in any way by the narrative around it.
Could a whole film be made of nothing but these moments? To what extent is "Fata Morgana" an example of that? I don't know... I need to watch "Fata Morgana" again...
The German title is kind of amazing, but I guess "The Enigma" is really a better title. Hard to say, though. I like the way the German title works on a more purely poetic level, I'd say. Or, at least, an associative level. It's not just a name for the movie but adds something to the meaning of it. (meaning? ugh...)
The weird flattened shots that are maybe supposed to be through Kaspar's eyes are also good examples of that Herzogian thing; also, the scene with the blind guy playing the piano, and that amazing little song he sings. I wish I knew if it was really a song.
Even though the penultimate scene with the doctors satisfying their perverse curiosity by taking Kaspar's body apart and dissecting his brain is an obvious Romantic argument by Herzog against the dispassion of science and I probably wouldn't agree with him about it exactly, the scene works in exactly the way he wants it to. Those scientists are fucking dicks. Put Kaspar back together!
Another example of pre-Lynching Lynch: the scene when Kaspar runs back to the doctor after being stabbed, with his arms in the weird position the whole time he's running and his mouth open in a silent scream (is it silent? I definitely remember expecting it to be silent, but now that I think about it he may have actually been making some nows when he ran on screen, just not a normal "OHMYGODIVEBEENSTABBED" noise.) Bruno S. pulls it off exactly.
Overall, though, I just can't buy into Herzog's argument that Kaspar is somehow "smarter" than the nineteenth-century intellectual straw men Herzog surrounds him with. It's a definite example of Herzog getting in his own way. Sure, there were many problems with nineteenth-century thought, but trying to make it like someone who just has pure thought, undiluted by society, will naturally turn into a person who says things that make more sense or are more amusing to a twentieth-century audience is kind of silly. Things we think now will seem kind of dull to people in a hundred years; not necessarily because they are dull, but because that's just how these things work.
Also, like The Elephant Man or many other movies, this is an example of allowing the audience to congratulate itself for being morally superior to "humanity," by presenting an intriguing character who is obviously misunderstood by the cretins around him. The audience gets to feel good about itself for understanding in a way none of the other characters in the film do, and it's not because the film has opened up a way into the character in such an effective way, but just because that's how the film's set up. In The Elephant Man and, I think, most examples of this type of thing, it's tolerance for the grotesque or, more generally, "tolerance" in general, that the audience gets to feel good about. Here, it's more along the lines of seeing through the superficialities of intellectual thought. I just can't trust that type of thing unless the film has tried equally as hard to make the other viewpoint as understandable, but I'm not sure if that could really be done.
Aguirre, though, doesn't fall into this habit of forcing the audience into identification with some character. The audience most likely does identify the most with the dark-haired chick in Aguirre, but she's not really a major character. Anyway, it's not like Herzog isn't capable of making a movie in such a way that doesn't try to make the audience feel good about itself, but that's obvious how much of Kaspar Hauser works.
Which is sort of like something I remember thinking about while watching it this time: that this is one of the few Herzog movies where part of what is so fascinating about the movie is the psychology of the protagonist. In that way, I suppose, the film kind of has to try to make the audience identify with Kaspar, so that the opening up of his mind can be as fascinating as Herzog wanted it to be. But in the end I guess I have to say I prefer the more Herzogian stuff in other Herzog movies. Need a better way of describing that...
2nd time.
The opening shot of this movie is, I think, better than anything else that follows it, but not because the rest isn't really good. The opening shot is one of the most pure examples of that thing that I mostly only find in Herzog movies that I rarely find anywhere else. There are some other good examples of it throughout the movie, but the opening shot presents it without any connection to anything else, so it's not diluted in any way by the narrative around it.
Could a whole film be made of nothing but these moments? To what extent is "Fata Morgana" an example of that? I don't know... I need to watch "Fata Morgana" again...
The German title is kind of amazing, but I guess "The Enigma" is really a better title. Hard to say, though. I like the way the German title works on a more purely poetic level, I'd say. Or, at least, an associative level. It's not just a name for the movie but adds something to the meaning of it. (meaning? ugh...)
The weird flattened shots that are maybe supposed to be through Kaspar's eyes are also good examples of that Herzogian thing; also, the scene with the blind guy playing the piano, and that amazing little song he sings. I wish I knew if it was really a song.
Even though the penultimate scene with the doctors satisfying their perverse curiosity by taking Kaspar's body apart and dissecting his brain is an obvious Romantic argument by Herzog against the dispassion of science and I probably wouldn't agree with him about it exactly, the scene works in exactly the way he wants it to. Those scientists are fucking dicks. Put Kaspar back together!
Another example of pre-Lynching Lynch: the scene when Kaspar runs back to the doctor after being stabbed, with his arms in the weird position the whole time he's running and his mouth open in a silent scream (is it silent? I definitely remember expecting it to be silent, but now that I think about it he may have actually been making some nows when he ran on screen, just not a normal "OHMYGODIVEBEENSTABBED" noise.) Bruno S. pulls it off exactly.
Overall, though, I just can't buy into Herzog's argument that Kaspar is somehow "smarter" than the nineteenth-century intellectual straw men Herzog surrounds him with. It's a definite example of Herzog getting in his own way. Sure, there were many problems with nineteenth-century thought, but trying to make it like someone who just has pure thought, undiluted by society, will naturally turn into a person who says things that make more sense or are more amusing to a twentieth-century audience is kind of silly. Things we think now will seem kind of dull to people in a hundred years; not necessarily because they are dull, but because that's just how these things work.
Also, like The Elephant Man or many other movies, this is an example of allowing the audience to congratulate itself for being morally superior to "humanity," by presenting an intriguing character who is obviously misunderstood by the cretins around him. The audience gets to feel good about itself for understanding in a way none of the other characters in the film do, and it's not because the film has opened up a way into the character in such an effective way, but just because that's how the film's set up. In The Elephant Man and, I think, most examples of this type of thing, it's tolerance for the grotesque or, more generally, "tolerance" in general, that the audience gets to feel good about. Here, it's more along the lines of seeing through the superficialities of intellectual thought. I just can't trust that type of thing unless the film has tried equally as hard to make the other viewpoint as understandable, but I'm not sure if that could really be done.
Aguirre, though, doesn't fall into this habit of forcing the audience into identification with some character. The audience most likely does identify the most with the dark-haired chick in Aguirre, but she's not really a major character. Anyway, it's not like Herzog isn't capable of making a movie in such a way that doesn't try to make the audience feel good about itself, but that's obvious how much of Kaspar Hauser works.
Which is sort of like something I remember thinking about while watching it this time: that this is one of the few Herzog movies where part of what is so fascinating about the movie is the psychology of the protagonist. In that way, I suppose, the film kind of has to try to make the audience identify with Kaspar, so that the opening up of his mind can be as fascinating as Herzog wanted it to be. But in the end I guess I have to say I prefer the more Herzogian stuff in other Herzog movies. Need a better way of describing that...
Aguirre the Wrath of God
(written 8/23/2007, 10:51)
2nd time. The first time I saw this was on my 25th birthday, and I wrote a poem out of it. At the time, it was maybe the second or third Herzog movie I'd seen, and I was still trying to figure him out. I definitely had not decided he does things in his films that are completely different from the way most movies work, and seem in some ways more related to poetry than to novels. Although generally there's still an overall narrative around them, I'm referring mostly to isolated scenes in Herzog movies, whose power is not at all taken from the narrative of the movie, but are just perfect images or bits of film or whatever exactly you call them...
Before the movie, they ran a preview for "Le Doulos," during which some annoying guy behind me clapped loudly when the name of the lead actor (who was also the lead in Breathless) was shown. Same guy clapped really loudly when the words "Directed by Werner Herzog" were on screen. Yeah, I get it, you've seen Breathless... you know who Werner Herzog is (although, really, why the hell would be be attending a double feature of Herzog movies if you didn't at least know who he is?)... Shut up!
The movie definitely seemed a lot slower the first time I saw it. I was surprised to find out this time that it's actually only slightly under two hours long. It felt far tighter, this time. Also, definitely a different translation, which confused me at first, because the first line of my poem, "In the morning I read mass, then we descended through the mountain pass," was taken from the subtitles, and this time it was translated as "In the morning I read mass, then we descended through the clouds." Frankly, I like the second translation better, but no idea if it's more accurate or anything.
I had this distinct memory of Klaus Kinski hunching his way across the screen, and in the middle of his crossing turning his face out toward the camera so his blue eyes shone, but that never happened. I must have invented it. It would've been a cool shot, though, in a very Herzogian way.
I still think one of the most interesting things about this movie is how I feel just much fear (not exactly fear, but some kind of anxiety) for the actors on the rafts as I do for the characters, if not more. This doesn't seem like a mistake on Herzog's part, but rather kind of the point. You just can't fully surrender yourself to the idea that these are sixteenth or seventeenth century soldiers because it's obvious that the people on the rafts really seem to be in danger, and because they danger seems real and not "real," we direct our anxiety to the actors and film crews instead of the characters and their situations. The only other examples of this I can think of come from Herzog movies, for the most part. Although it's exactly what I found so amazing about the car chase scene in Tarrantino's half of Grindhouse: the whole part when the stunt-chick's on the hood of the car, she appears to be in real actual danger as a person not just as a character, which makes the whole thing so much more thrilling, or actually thrilling in a completely different way, than even the most exceptionally choreographed action/chase/stunt scene in most films. We never really worry about Matt Damon in The Bourne Ultimatum; we only worry about Jason Bourne. Is it ethically okay for Herzog to do this? I certainly would not want to appear in one of his movies.
There are so many incredible scenes in this movie. The horse scene. Aguirre chasing the monkeys around the dying raft. The tiny jungle creature baby (a sloth?) The boat in the tree. (Did Herzog plan the boat in the tree, or did he find it? Either way, it's a supremely poetic shot.)
Also one of the few Herzog films where I think the dialogue lives up the movie Herzog has shot around it.
I really had not been expecting this movie to be as good as it was before I watched it the second time. Right now, I'm practically vibrating with how great this movie is. Absolutely worthy of that word. I think I had a hint of that after watching it the first time, but it was a little bit outside at the time of my realm of understanding of movies.
2nd time. The first time I saw this was on my 25th birthday, and I wrote a poem out of it. At the time, it was maybe the second or third Herzog movie I'd seen, and I was still trying to figure him out. I definitely had not decided he does things in his films that are completely different from the way most movies work, and seem in some ways more related to poetry than to novels. Although generally there's still an overall narrative around them, I'm referring mostly to isolated scenes in Herzog movies, whose power is not at all taken from the narrative of the movie, but are just perfect images or bits of film or whatever exactly you call them...
Before the movie, they ran a preview for "Le Doulos," during which some annoying guy behind me clapped loudly when the name of the lead actor (who was also the lead in Breathless) was shown. Same guy clapped really loudly when the words "Directed by Werner Herzog" were on screen. Yeah, I get it, you've seen Breathless... you know who Werner Herzog is (although, really, why the hell would be be attending a double feature of Herzog movies if you didn't at least know who he is?)... Shut up!
The movie definitely seemed a lot slower the first time I saw it. I was surprised to find out this time that it's actually only slightly under two hours long. It felt far tighter, this time. Also, definitely a different translation, which confused me at first, because the first line of my poem, "In the morning I read mass, then we descended through the mountain pass," was taken from the subtitles, and this time it was translated as "In the morning I read mass, then we descended through the clouds." Frankly, I like the second translation better, but no idea if it's more accurate or anything.
I had this distinct memory of Klaus Kinski hunching his way across the screen, and in the middle of his crossing turning his face out toward the camera so his blue eyes shone, but that never happened. I must have invented it. It would've been a cool shot, though, in a very Herzogian way.
I still think one of the most interesting things about this movie is how I feel just much fear (not exactly fear, but some kind of anxiety) for the actors on the rafts as I do for the characters, if not more. This doesn't seem like a mistake on Herzog's part, but rather kind of the point. You just can't fully surrender yourself to the idea that these are sixteenth or seventeenth century soldiers because it's obvious that the people on the rafts really seem to be in danger, and because they danger seems real and not "real," we direct our anxiety to the actors and film crews instead of the characters and their situations. The only other examples of this I can think of come from Herzog movies, for the most part. Although it's exactly what I found so amazing about the car chase scene in Tarrantino's half of Grindhouse: the whole part when the stunt-chick's on the hood of the car, she appears to be in real actual danger as a person not just as a character, which makes the whole thing so much more thrilling, or actually thrilling in a completely different way, than even the most exceptionally choreographed action/chase/stunt scene in most films. We never really worry about Matt Damon in The Bourne Ultimatum; we only worry about Jason Bourne. Is it ethically okay for Herzog to do this? I certainly would not want to appear in one of his movies.
There are so many incredible scenes in this movie. The horse scene. Aguirre chasing the monkeys around the dying raft. The tiny jungle creature baby (a sloth?) The boat in the tree. (Did Herzog plan the boat in the tree, or did he find it? Either way, it's a supremely poetic shot.)
Also one of the few Herzog films where I think the dialogue lives up the movie Herzog has shot around it.
I really had not been expecting this movie to be as good as it was before I watched it the second time. Right now, I'm practically vibrating with how great this movie is. Absolutely worthy of that word. I think I had a hint of that after watching it the first time, but it was a little bit outside at the time of my realm of understanding of movies.
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