Not so easy to get an idea of Werner Herzog’s unique work. Capitulating to this insane syncretism of science, pop culture phenomenology, cargo cult and the sheer thirst for adventure to take on the elements of nature, in the end, out of laziness in thinking, one agrees on just a word like “mythology”. Anything that cannot be dealt with by reason alone can somehow be subsumed under this general platitude.
The actress Nicole Kidman makes the most appropriate and perhaps even the most affectionate suggestion to get to the heart of this unique mixture of worldview and world-making in Thomas von Steinaecker’s portrait film “Werner Herzog – Radical Dreamer”, which will be released in October. She speaks of “Wernerwelt”. That sounds like an amusement park, like a cinema in your head, like a country full of unlimited possibilities – and thus captures the temperament of this imaginary and concrete place, where human imagination seems to have no limits.
Kidman’s testimonial can currently also be seen in the “Werner Herzog” exhibition, which the Kinemathek presented to the – and this certainly does not do the Fassbinders, Schlöndorffs and Wenders wrong – the greatest German filmmaker of the past fifty years for his upcoming 80th birthday. The actress is not alone with her memories, Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson also share their experiences with Herzog as talking heads on video screens. In a way, you are at the other end of the spectrum of “Wernerwelt”, whose gates will remain open until the end of March.
On this side of Hollywood’s glamor factor there is an Alpine veteran to whom Herzog, as he himself says today, dedicated his first major film in 1974: the Swiss ski jumper Walter Steiner, the flying hero from “The Great Ecstasy of the Carver Steiner”. The title actually contains the entire duke, who was in search of an “ecstatic truth” in both documentary and fictional form. (The now famous persona “Werner Herzog” also makes its first appearance in the film.) This concept of truth has been misunderstood again and again, most recently in the controversy surrounding the fictitious staging of the documentary “Lovemobile”, the director of which referred to Herzog.
Werner Herzog’s insatiable curiosity has not died down, even in his eightieth year. The exhibition makes a rudimentary attempt to bring order to this enormous work. At least she manages to set some striking accents. Viewed spatially, at the other end of the exhibition, namely on the second floor – thematically decorated with a jungle wallpaper that (also a duke effect) seems less exotic than rustic – you can discover the archaic, the murmuring duke, his heavier German tongue stroke became his trademark in America.
In the middle of the room there is a video triptych on which a loop of nature shots from his documentaries and feature films is running. Even this imposing installation, a single waft of fog, spitting fire, the clinking of ice, deep-sea bubbling and the rushing of the jungle, underscores how pointless it is in Herzog’s work to distinguish between the cinematic genres. The form, which is free of all narrative, also clearly shows that the occasionally comical archaism of his voiceover comments makes it easy to forget what a grandiose nature filmmaker Herzog actually is.
Only that “National Geographic” would never hire him with its cryptic-apocalyptic interpretation of the world, as he jokingly said a few years ago. For this, the Discovery Channel produced one of its biggest hits “Grizzly Man” about the bear understander Timothy Treadwell, who was eaten by one of his teddies. Man and implacable nature: one understands why the fate of Treadwell’s duke was so close.
A world of its own in the “Wernerwelt” is created by the “Wunderkammer” designed by Herzog’s production designer Henning von Gierke. Here are showcases with objects whose use is only insufficiently described with props. Sorted thematically by film – in Berlin the boxes from “Fitzcarraldo” and “Nosferatu” can be seen – these curated miniature collections were intended to give the actors an atmospheric impression of the worlds Herzog had in mind.
But in this museum-like location, concentrated in a room that could just as well be in an ethnological collection, feather headdresses, ceramics, bone finds, remains of shells and dead rats also immediately conjure up the image of the conqueror Herzog, with a headband in the jungle gives instructions. Fascinated by foreign cultures, but also an intruder who bullied the indigenous extras with steamboats.
In 1987, the “Spiegel” titled a report on the shooting of “Cobra Verde” with “The creeping lane of the master man”, also documented in the exhibition. The further Werner Herzog mentally distanced himself from his compatriots and set out into the world, the more difficult it became to translate this work into the idea of an orderly cinema.
The exhibition also reflects this uneasiness about Herzog’s gaze, including his robust vitalism in the early phase of his work, without evaluating it critically. But Henning von Gierke’s “Wunderkammern” turn out to be the perfect image for Herzog’s working method: a hodgepodge. And the same applies here: Not all objects are real, some were lovingly designed by the ingenious set designer. As if Herzog had already played his game with the authenticity of the supposedly authentic with a wink.
Perhaps the most telling object in the exhibition, however, is a readymade: a collectible figure from the Star Wars series “The Mandalorian”, in which Herzog has a cameo as “the client”. The toy is a reminder that he is currently in the USA is more than a great director. Herzog is now a pop star – with guest appearances on the “Simpsons”, on talk shows and countless parodies on the Internet. It should not go unmentioned that the best Werner Herzog parody comes from himself: in the Horror mockumentary “Incident at Loch Ness” from 2004.
The American Oscar winner Chloé Zhao, like Herzog a nature fan (but without his pessimism), describes this phenomenon very nicely in the exhibition. Like no other director, he understood how to combine his purism with an understanding of popular culture. Because Werner Herzog finds himself in the people he films, he himself has become the character we know him as today: ultimately even more famous than his films. The cinema is basically much too small for the “Wernerwelt”.
