Herzog on the obscenity of the jungle.
I was entranced, and then lost it when he intoned: "Taking a close look around us . . . there is some sort of harmony . . . it is the harmony of . . .
overwhelming and collective murder."
I think if I was in a cafe at 2 am with this guy, he could hypnotize me into joining whatever cult he wanted.
…and now is the time on Sprockets when we dance to the birds screeeching in pain!
Exactly, I feel like I finally understand what Sprockets was parodying!
I found his whole spiel rather droll and orthodoxically Christian. The Fallen nature of “nature” is quite tedious and shpent in the eyes of Original Sin.
I think that is a clip from Burden of Dreams - a documentary about the making of his film Fitzcarraldo. They lived in the jungle for several years (!) a fact that probably coloured his view upon the surroundings. IIRC he says something similar about the bears in Grizzly Man.
Burden of Dreams is an absolutely amazing film, by the way (so is Fitzcarraldo). Highly entertaining - and freaking wild. There is a scene where he is wondering how many indians will get killed trying to drag the steamer across the mountain. He is actually contemplating how many lives his film is worth. Crazy guy.
Quoted for truth. Here are some snippets from his biography section on imdb:
He also seems to be the only director who was somehow able to work with the raging lunatic Klaus Kinski for more than one movie (although they mutually threatened to kill the other one from time to time).
It’s worth mentioning that the film student who made Herzog eat his footwear was director Errol Morris, who went on to have, shall we say, a pretty decent career.
Here’s the clip of Herzog getting shot (it’s not very graphic, but maybe NSFW due to his alarming purple boxer shorts):
Interestingly, Kermode just talked about this sometime in the last few months on his Radio 5 film review show (available via iTunes as “Mark Kermode and Simon Mayo’s Film Reviews”), and pretty much confirmed that Herzog was seemingly little concerned with the whole event.
Herzog is fantastic as a personality. You must see “My Best Fiend,” about his relationship with Klaus Kinski.
Joe
Aye, the whole Fitzcarraldo 3 (that’s how I think of them) (Fitzcarraldo, Burden of Dreams, & My Best Fiend) are a powerful bunch of films, especially when watched back-to-back-to-back.
Oh, Aguirre, The Wrath of God is a great film too.
One of my favorite things about Herzog was what happened in Grizzly Man [spoiler]when he was listening to the audio of the fatal attack, he reaches a point where he simply can’t listen anymore and advises Jewel Palovak that he thinks she should go ahead and destroy the tape. She herself had never listened to it, but she knew what was on it.
What I love is that here’s a guy who’s lived with a violent schizophrenic (Kinski), worked with him numerous times, including filming a movie in a jungle during a real-life war; he’s been shot, he’s been there when they put out the fires in Iraq in the early 1990s… he’s seen some truly horrifying and bizarre and fucked up shit… and that audio recording was just too much for him.[/spoiler]
Werner Herzog is one of my favorite directors and is without a doubt a fantastic and unique personality.
Even though Fitzcarraldo is one of my favorite films, I hadn’t managed to see Burden of Dreams until a few weeks ago, when I got it through Netflix. And this is exactly the bit from the film that most blew me away. As someone who loves the tropical rainforest and working, I found Herzog’s comments both demented and hilarious. Who but a German who condemn the jungle for being “disorderly,” or decide that even the stars were different there. (Of course they are, for the most part, the same stars that shine over Germany.)
I’ve actually worked in that exact area, though I didn’t realize it at the time. In the late '90s I participated in some large-scale biodiversity surveys sponsored by Shell in connection with exploratory wells they were drilling for natural gas in the area. We worked out of four well sites in the area of the Camisa and lower Urubamba Rivers. We were way out there - a half hour by helicopter over nearly unbroken forest from Shell’s main base. Our field assistants came from the Machigengua and Yaminahua tribes - some might have been related to the people who worked for Herzog 15 years earlier. (By the way, although Fitzcarraldo was filmed over a period of several years, I don’t think Herzog and the film crew were on site for more than a few months at a time. Still, plenty long enough to go crazy if you didn’t start out that way.)
After seeing Burden of Dreams, I decided to rewatch Fitzcarraldo. I got it from Netflix and watched it a few days ago; I’ll probably watch the director’s commentary tonight.
Incidentally, the bird “screaming in pain” in the background of the clip is actually named the Screaming Piha.
Now I’ve got to get My Best Fiend, which I’ve also never seen.