Interview with Werner Herzog: To the obscure realm of imagination


The Chinese version is published on NUMERO CHINA 79, May 2018. / Interview: Derek Lam & Lin Yiping; Text & translation: Lin Yiping


Werner Herzog

Already in his seventies and still making films vigorously, Werner Herzog is perhaps the most productive among his New German Cinema peers. In the eyes of many he is a radically madman like Timothy Treadwell devoured by the grizzly bear, yet the interview reveals to us a wise, steadfast modernist in defense of substance and meaning.

We interviewed the legendary Werner Herzog at the 42th Hong Kong International Film Festival after the screening of his Netflix documentary INTO THE INFERNO, in which he follows the British volcano scientist Clive Oppenheimer to investigate volcanoes in Indonesia, Iceland, Ethiopia and North Korea. While the film demonstrates to us the powers of science, religion, politics and history encompassing the destructively dangerous mountains beyond human control, beneath the grand narratives it is really the committed passion of the volcanologist and the archeologist resembling many of the characters in Herzog’s other films, as well as the sublime images of the volcanoes, in particular that shot by the French couple Maurice and Katia Krafft who lost their lives chasing the erupting volcanoes, that captures the heart and mind of the audience. In the eyes of many he is a radically madman like Timothy Treadwell devoured by the grizzly bear, yet the interview leaves us the impression of a wise, steadfast modernist in defense of substance and meaning. It is perhaps the unity of a compassionate, romantic vision and a highly rational mindset that stands at the core of the magnitude of the poetic imagery and heart-rending stories offered by Herzog, who has over the years achieved so many larger-than-life endeavors with immense passion, creativity and an inquiry into the existential position of humans on our homeland earth.  
 

The Dark Glow of the Mountains


Numéro: Volcanoes are deadly volatile, and as you said in INTO THE INFERNO, they "could not care less about what we are doing up here."  In THE DARK GLOW OF THE MOUNTAINS, the mountaineer Reinhold Messner also comments on the uncontrollable or unpredictable nature of mountain climbing.  What fascinates you about these humans scaling dangerous peaks or volcanoes where nature is indifferent?  Do you see Messner & Clive Oppenheimer as kindred spirits, or are adventurers quite different from scientists?

Werner Herzog: I think there’s a certain world view in these films, that nature is basically indifferent, and that it really can’t care less. My voice also immediately strikes people, but it’s not only the voice, it’s the text I wrote myself, something very beautiful at the end of INTO THE INFERNO: “It is a fire that wants to burst forth and it could not care less about what we are doing up here. This boiling mass is just monumentally indifferent to scurrying roaches, retarded reptiles and vapid humans alike.” It immediately strikes audience. You do not hear that in NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC. It’s not only a voice but a certain world view, and there’s certain poetry in it. And of course, the very big mountains, volcanoes, the explosive forces and the storms in the Himalayas… they are not calculable, and of course there’re certain risks. And I would say that Clive Oppenheimer and the mountain climber Messner are very different in their goals. Oppenheimer is a scientist and he tries to make the volcanoes more predictable. He actually has improved the early warning system, which is now much better functioning. In Indonesia where you have a huge amount of volcano activities, when the last alarms went out in evacuations, half a million people who lived in the vicinities had rapid evacuations, and only two hundred people died. If the early warning system had not functioned, you would have had twenty thousand dead. So he’s trying to make it more predictable and more manageable, whereas mountain climbers can never (do so). They go into certain dangers and they have to be prudent. And Messner is one of those who have been prudent. He was only 200 meters away from the summit when the storm came in, and he turned back. He is prudent enough.


Do you think he enjoys that kind of risk?

I don’t think anyone enjoys this kind of risk. But people out of ambition, out of their view in the media would want to show that they are debuts. Many of those Himalaya climbers have perished. But Messner has survived, because he has the nerve to turn back. Although he has only 15 minutes more to climb.


Having lived through the second half of the 20th-century and its momentous events -- you were born during WWII and experienced the 1960s as a young man -- how do you view the 21st-century and its new generation of millennials?  What do you find most different about young people and the world today compared to when you first started making films?

The kids today are not much different; they only have different tools: the internet and the cellphone and so on. But ultimately they have to make their own mistakes, and they’re human, and they are lovesick as we were. There’s nothing so special about it. But you can make certain predictions. You can look along the lines over the perspectives… when we had the first cellphones – not the smart phones – telephones you could have in your cars… and of course, you had TV and all sorts of tools of communication, and I said that it may sound like a paradox, but with increasing amount of tools of communication, the solitude would increase. It sounds like a paradox, and I said, because of that, the next century will be a century of solitudes. You see with your cellphone, you’re not isolated, you’re always connected to the internet, but your existential, fundamental, philosophical solitude probably increases when you’re only using the internet all the time.


Is it because we see each other less when we just have the computer or the phone?

You should not avoid that you (need to) touch each other. You have a woman that you love, and you (would want to) sense the skin of the woman you love, and you sense her scent… that’s essential. Without that we are solitary.


Related to that question, we want to ask you about how you think about the role of the cinema in the 21th century, because in LO AND BEHOLD you talked a bit about the circulation of the online images, but you discussed less about filmmaking and film viewing in a connected world. So we were wondering what role do you think cinema would play in the age of internet, and do you mind if people see your films on smartphone instead of in a cinema?

I prefer the cinemas, but of course with a smartphone you can connect to a fairly large screen. Of course the mother of all battles is still the theatre where you come and meet other people. But it’s interesting what I heard from the daughter of one of my actresses. She’s a teenager just turned 14. I asked her, which of the films of your mother have you seen recently in a theatre? She said, no, I don’t go to movie theatres. I asked, why? Now the answer is interesting: “It’s dark, and I don’t know anyone there. That’s why I don’t go to theatres.” I asked, do your girlfriends all think the same? And she said yes, we all think in the same way. And you can see from the festival here, it’s kind of worried that the numbers of festival goers are in decline. Numbers do not have to say anything, but there is a worry that, it’s not just in this festival but in other festivals as well, numbers of movie goers are in decline. Television is in decline. Distribution systems are in decline. But the internet is phenomenally evolving. Where exactly it leads us to we do not know yet, but we understand there’s more streaming now, on internet you have YouTube, and you just name it, Facebook, Instagram…distribution of images and texts in a new form. I find it most fascinating, and I’m curious about what it is emerging. And this is why INTO THE INFERNO now is on Netflix. And probably the biggest success I’ve ever had is on YouTube, with a film that was only made for YouTube.


Do you still do a lot of work in the live theatre, with the operas?

I never have done too much, but I have always liked to work, breathe and live with music for, let’s say three or four weeks, with really great music and great musicians. I have worked with some of the greatest singers and conductors of our time, and this is really great joy.


You talked about a bit of that in INTO THE INFERNO, not just the science, but the magic in this kind of religion, or aura. It reminded me – because often you use Wagner’s music, and with his operas when he had his Bayreuth built, it’s so much like a temple almost... I wonder whether cinema is losing a bit of that nowadays, like you said, people are going to the cinema less?

But it has been fundamentally different, with all sorts of reasons… it is not just music, or like what you called, the temple, there are many (other) cultural elements… and among these elements it is also startling to see that people read less and less. I mean they do read, but they read tweets, they read Facebook entries, but the real, deep reading is rapidly in decline. There’re many cultural shifts, and we have to see them, and we have to cope with it.


Our next question is related to that somehow. Some people have made the observations that nature and the human mind are the last lines of resistance that remains to be colonized by the global capitalist system. Your films often take us to nature at its most extreme, also some dark parts of our imagination. Why is it important for us to hold on to some sense of the sublime, or some sense of terror or beauty in a world that, like you said, has become very trivial, with these kinds of tweets and…

We are human beings and that’s an essence of human culture, and an essence of human communication. To have communication, and imagery and story-telling reaching beyond the merely factual (is essential). You see, otherwise, that facts don’t really illuminate you. Manhattan phone directory with four million factually correct entries does not inspire you. It’s not the book of books, although every one of the four million entries is all viably and factually correct. We are made for something that transcends the facts and transcends human nature, by having fever dreams in the jungle, or the fantasy of poetry, things like that. That’s why we’re hanging on to it. Including the generation that is on Twitter. They will instantly understand that there’s something big (in things) like poetry…

Into the Inferno

I have a very strong sense of that watching INTO THE INFERNO last night. The sequence with the couple Kraffts, the way you shoot some of the images, and with the operatic music…

It’s not opera. It’s part of Vivaldi’s Requiem.


Oh. It really gave me some sense of being taken to somewhere very far from life. Something ecstatic.

And a deep sense of tragedy.  


Actually where did you get that footage?

That’s shot by the Kraffts. Their archive is in a regional museum in France. I explored and discovered these materials.


It also reminded me of your earlier films, like LESSONS OF DARKNESS, or FATA MORGANA. Some of the earlier films are quite abstract, and when I watched INTO THE INFERNO and LO AND BEHOLD, it seems that they have more information than the earlier films…

When you see the Kraffts and the river of lava, it doesn’t have information beyond the first two seconds. It’s the river of lava flowing, which is the only information, and it goes for a long, long time, with a specific music, and it suddenly transforms to poetry. And that’s what you see in FATA MORGANA as well, or in LESSONS OF DARKNESS.


While you have made both documentaries and fiction films, the forms often mix together, as you said, in pursuit of “the ecstatic truth”, rather than the accountant facts…

Rather than the phone directory.


Rather than the phone directory. This mix is also noticeable in some films that you like, Kiarostami’s films, or Joshua Oppenheimer’s THE ACT OF KILLING. Do you approach the making of a fiction film and the making of a documentary with a different mindset?

It’s all just movies. The procedures in feature films, like castings, inventing, and stylization, it’s all elements of feature films but you have them in my documentaries as well. Rehearsing, casting, you have them all in my documentaries. Sometimes I say, and I think there’s something correct in it, that all my documentaries are feature films in disguise, pretending to be documentaries.


We all know about the very legendary collaboration you had with Klaus Kinski, and also in your early years you directed people like Bruno S. in some of your early films.  In recent years, you have worked with some Hollywood stars instead like Nicolas Cage or Nicole Kidman, and in a number of films with Michael Shannon. I am wondering how is your relationship with these Hollywood actors different from someone like Kinski or Bruno S.?

Every single actor needs his or her own language in which I speak to them, every in the same scene…let’s say, for example, you as my male protagonist, and you as my female protagonist, I will address you in different ways to bring out the best in you and I will speak differently to you. I have the privilege to work with the best of the best, and the greatest of all was Bruno S.. Now in our time, Michael Shannon is arguably the best of his generation. He only had some smaller roles, but I was the first one to give him a central character in MY SON, MY SON, WHAT HAVE YE DONE.


You’re known to the world as a persistent dreamer for what you have been doing, and you have realized many projects that look impossible for many people. Have you at any point of your life ever felt frustrated or futile in your endeavor? If there’s any, how did you overcome it?

Not really, because I think that what I do gives a certain meaning to my life. I’m not much interested in, for example, having a happy life. It’s a foreign concept for me. Putting some meaning into what I do is more important. And of course, because of that, having gone through defeats quite often doesn’t really matter. It depends on how you get up after the defeat, and keep on going, keep on dreaming and keep on articulating your visions.

So there’s no moment of crisis for you?

There are, but they do not scare me. It doesn’t unhinge me, and it doesn’t take my balance away.  You see, I have to deal with it. Whatever that is thrown at me, I will deal with it.
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