A fascinating portrait of a unique film-maker and genuine ‘Radical Dreamer’
He’s the iconoclastic director who has made some of the most memorable movies of the past half-century. The helmer of such passionate tales of obsession as Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, Rescue Dawn, Grizzly Man and Encounters at the End of the World. The distinctive voice that has not only enhanced his own documentaries, but also graced the pop-culture worlds of Star Wars and The Simpsons.
As his fellow film-maker and compatriot Wim Winders wryly notes in the new documentary Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer (arriving on DocPlay tomorrow, March 25), he has not only shaped the modern American perception of Germans like no-one else, but “who else has succeeded in inventing their own accent the world likes to imitate, finds funny and enjoys?”
Wenders is just one of many of Herzog’s friends, family and screen collaborators who contribute to Thomas von Steinaecker’s (whose previous subjects have included composers Leonard Bernstein and Richard Strauss) entertaining and enlightening trawl through the screen legend’s filmography and life.
Oscar-winning Nomadland director Chloe Zhao highlights his ability to collect “some of the most rapturous dreams from around the world”, acclaimed American documentarian Joshua Oppenheimer (The Act of Killing) reveals how Herzog inspired his work, while the late, great Carl Weathers (who starred alongside him in The Mandalorian) recounts just how awestruck has was when he saw 1982’s Fitzcarraldo for the first time: “Moving a ship over a mountain? That’s fresh, that’s new, that’s badass, that’s Werner Herzog.” Herzog’s adventuredrama, inspired by the exploits of real-life Peruvian rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald, is one of the many ambitious and sometimes traumatic shoots detailed in Radical Dreamer.
You’ll learn about the director’s ongoing battles with star Klaus Kinski across five films, the hell he put Christian Bale through on Rescue Dawn (the former Batman lamenting a particular incident involving an ants’ nest, being upside down and not having a safety word) that means the actor still can’t go on a rollercoaster today, and how he helped Nicolas Cage find “the bliss of evil” on Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans.
Then there are the off-screen incidents: being shot at while being interviewed by British film journalist Mark Kermode, enduring an extremely hostile reception to his 1992 postfirst Gulf War meditation Lessons of Darkness at the Berlin Film Festival, and boiling his own shoe after losing a bet with American film-maker Errol Morris.
Brother Tilbert and half-brother Lucki chime in with recollections from their “anarchic” farming village childhood, while second wife Lena remembers how he wooed her by claiming to be a stuntman.
However, as you’d expect, the secret sauce really comes from the anecdotes and utterances from the man himself. How can you not love someone who, out of nowhere, declares: “It’s an injustice in my life that I haven’t become an athlete.
“It’s an injustice in nature that we do not have wings.”
Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer will stream on DocPlay from March 25.