Werner Herzog

  • Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht (1979)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (In French, On Cable TV, March 2022) Sometimes, critically reviewing some films is useless—being blandly descriptive is more than enough and viewers will fill out the rest. So it is that the most honest commentary about Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht is simply “Late-1970s Werner Herzog remakes Nosferatu with Klaus Kinski.”  That’s it. Nothing more needed. Well, unless you’re not aware of who Herzog is, what his approach looks like, what you can expect from Klaus Kinski, or what the heck is Nosferatu. Facts without context aren’t that useful, then. Which brings us to: Warner Herzog has always been a special director, often more obsessed with expressionism than anything else, with a pacing that takes forever and leaves ample time for visual tangents that don’t necessarily advance the story. Klaus Kinski, meanwhile, is a frequent collaborator who can be counted upon for wild performances. The 1970s were a dirty-grimy decade for cinema, and Nosferatu is a classic vampire film that filed off the serial numbers from Bram Stoker’s Dracula (but so insufficiently that it was sued and nearly destroyed) and created a more grotesque vampire archetype that is still well-known today. This remake brings up the classic story to late-1970s technical standards, but don’t go watching the film expecting a narratively conventional experience—Herzog has delivered a very stylish vampire film here. Whether that’s good or not is going to be up to the viewer. I’m in a generous mood today, so I’ll argue that we have plenty of narratively conventional vampire films to go around, which explains why Herzog’s work is still worth a look even forty years later. But ask me again tomorrow if I’d rather sit through this film again, and you may have a different answer.

  • Burden of Dreams (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, February 2022) Ask any knowledgeable cinephile which films had the most difficult, tortured, accursed production and I guarantee that Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo is going to be on the list. After all, simply watching the film is cause for amazement, as its characters drag a boat over an Amazonian mountain and the film clearly shows how it was done for real. How do you get to that point where it’s a good idea? How do you execute such a thing? Fortunately, there’s Burden of Dreams to tell us all about the making of Fitzcarraldo, and it turns out that the boat-over-a-mountain thing is a rather minor and straightforward episode in a hellish production. If it was just about the logistics of dragging a boat over a steep hill, Herzog could laugh about it—but the production simply looked cursed at times. The original stars, Jason Robarts and Mick Jagger, were replaced early in production when Robarts suffered severe medical problems and Jagger had to go on tour. Undaunted, Herzog went to Klaus Kinsi (further adding to his problems) and ended up in the middle of a small-scale war between two tribes. Weather problems exacerbated a shot that went on and on, eventually stopping for several months until conditions on the ground became better. Throughout the ordeal, Herzog sounds like a mad philosopher king, increasingly expounding on philosophical tangents inspired by his experience. The analog period feel of early-1980s filmmaking creates a distinct atmosphere, and director Les Blank does his best to assemble the location footage, historical material and interviews create a narrative, even if it’s not smooth all the way through. It’s good that Burden of Dreams exists, though, because this is the kind of troubled production that would seem too unbelievable if there wasn’t at least some shred of evidence to suggest that it all really happened.

  • Fitzcarraldo (1982)

    Fitzcarraldo (1982)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On Cable TV, June 2021) There are a few films about which the story of the film’s production rivals and perhaps exceeds the narrative of the film itself. Most of the time, we’ll never suspect those stories (and it’s not as if the publicists will ever tell the whole thing). For Fitzcarraldo, though, the incredible is right there on the screen in the film’s showpiece sequence: A 300-ton steamboat being dragged up a mountain to the other side, from one river to another. In a pre-CGI era, you can feel the weight and effort of every shot in that sequence, especially as the hundreds of extras labour to clean-cut the side of the mountain, prepare the boat with timber supports and drag it all the way up. It’s a ten-minute sequence that almost raises as many questions as it answers, most notably what kind of director would ever think this was a viable way to shoot a movie. The answer could only be Werner Herzog, in telling the story (inspired by real events, although the real story is not nearly as insane as its recreation) of an opera-obsessed entrepreneur who hits upon a rubber-extraction scheme that hinges on a boat making an extreme portage between two rivers separated by a mountain. Deep up the Amazon, the entrepreneur (Klaus Kinski, suitably weird) finds the spot he’s been looking for and gets the natives working for him. As the frontier between fact and fiction blur, as Kinski and Herzog blend together, the real production set out to do what the characters do, stripping away trees from the mountainside, preparing the steamboat, pulling it up. Calling Fitzcarraldo a support mechanism for that extraordinary sequence is not much of a stretch — even if it feels a bit bloated as such. Utterly unforgettable if only for those ten minutes, Fitzcarraldo still ranks as a reference for cinephiles for a good reason — one of the most difficult move shoots in history. Just let me close with a delicious quote from Wikipedia’s article on the film: “Herzog says that one of the native chiefs offered, in all seriousness, to kill Kinski for him, but that he declined because he needed the actor to complete filming.”

  • Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, the Wrath of God] (1972)

    Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes [Aguirre, the Wrath of God] (1972)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (Kanopy streaming, October 2018) You never quite know what you’re going to get when Werner Herzog is behind the camera, and Aguirre, the Wrath of God is as good an illustration of that as any. Something that, at first glance, looks like a historical jungle adventure eventually becomes an ill-fated tragedy, with death striking at any moment and the lead character diving deeper and deeper in madness. The film may have pacing issues, but the final sequence is unforgettable. Klaus Kinski authentically looks insane and dangerous in the lead role, while Herzog lets the landscape do about half the cinematographer’s job. It’s not a jolly film, and watching it often feels like being on an express train to hell with no stops. But it does have a few things running for it, especially once past the tedious exposition and on to the final act. I’m not sure I’m going to put Aguirre anywhere near my list of favourite movies, but it is an experience.

  • The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (2009)

    The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans (2009)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2017) At its most basic level, The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call—New Orleans shouldn’t be much more than a crooked-cop thriller. You know the drill: bad cop uses gun, authority, aggression to get drugs, sex and money. We’ve seen this film before. But there’s a few things that make this Bad Lieutenant stand apart. First up would be using post-Katrina New Orleans as a backdrop, with signs of catastrophe still corrupting the scenery. Second would be giving the film to veteran filmmaker Werner Herzog, and allowing him to run wild with shots of wildlife, oneiric sequences and just whatever passes his fancy. Capable actors in supporting roles also help; Eva Mendes hits strong dramatic notes as the protagonist’s girlfriend, while Jennifer Coolidge gets a striking dramatic turn. Val Kilmer, Brad Dourif, Fairuza Balk and Michael Shannon also all show up in minor roles. But Bad Lieutenant’s main asset remains Nicolas Cage, turning in a scenery-crunching performance as the unhinged titular cop, combining his dramatic chops with the grandiose operatic acting style he’s come famous for. Under Herzog’s direction and working from a decent script, Cage’s madness is harnessed to the needs of the film and seems even more remarkable as a result. (Witness the “His soul’s still dancing” sequence.) This is the kind of Cage performance that fans talk about when they celebrate his standing as an actor. I held off on seeing this film partially given my unfamiliarity about the original Bad Lieutenant, but it turns out that this is more a remake than a sequel, and it certainly stands alone. The Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call—New Orleans is a good example of how an actor with an oversize screen persona and a fearless director can elevate average material.

  • Rescue Dawn (2006)

    Rescue Dawn (2006)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On TV, September 2015) As far as difficult adventures go, Rescue Dawn tackles the plight of a Vietnam-era American pilot brought down in unfriendly country.  Quickly captured, he plot evasion and escapes through the jungle before being rescued.  Director Werner Herzog adapts his own documentary film inspired by a true story about the real-life odyssey of Dieter Dengler, and while the result never rises above the ordinary, Rescue Dawn is a well-made adventure film that gives a credible look into the plight of American POWs during the Vietnam War.  Christian Bale headlines as Dengler, once again showing off a feat of physical transformation during the course of the film.  Plot-wise, the film has an accumulation of man-versus-man-versus-nature events keeping things interesting from one moment to the next.  It may be a bit too long, with some dodgy aerial special effects and a few plot shortcuts along the way.  Still, Rescue Dawn remains interesting as a survival story, remarkable for Bale’s performance and impressive for the jungle scenery that wraps up the film. 

  • Grizzly Man (2005)

    Grizzly Man (2005)

    ByChristian Sauvé Movie Review

    (On DVD, February 2006) Timothy Treadwell died in 2003, mauled and then eaten by a bear. A self-professed environmentalist with a flair for the dramatic, he left behind almost 100 hours of video footage, showing him in close proximity to the bears he was studying. An easy documentary approach would have been to mourn Treadwell and dismiss the death as a freak accident. But there’s a lot more under the surface, as director Werner Herzog discovers once he starts tracking down Treadwell’s life. A failed actor with problems relating to the human world, Treadwell becomes a study in manic complexity, with perhaps a streak for self-destruction. Herzog doesn’t buy into Treadwell’s own video mythology, and the film becomes a fascinating psychological study shot in beautiful nature footage. Grizzly Man is unique in how it presents a narrative that would be impossible in a fictional format: well worth a look, though some moments are not for the squeamish.