Werner Herzog Writes Poetry with Film

Here’s the thing about Werner Herzog: He’s both old and new school. His technique is largely self-taught because he never went to film school. Werner grew up in the mountains of Bavaria, Germany, in an area so rural that his first telephone conversation happened when he was 17. He saw a couple of short films as a child, projected on a wall. They meant little to him. He began by writing poems, but in his late teens he had a spiritual epiphany and realized that film would be his medium. Werner wanted to write his poetry with film, but he had no money to do so.

That lack of funds for filmmaking early in his career seemed to have left an impact on his process. Queen of the Desert—the film I just worked on with him and Nicole Kidman—was shot on a digital camera. But even though we could shoot as much as we wanted with little expense, Werner would stop after we got one or two good takes and say, in his distinct German accent: “When I was young and working as a stone mason, saving money for every scrap of celluloid I could, I would be happy with this, with one good take, because film was like gold.” After a week, he seemed to loosen up a little. Sometimes we would do four or five takes, luxuriating in the freedoms of digital technology.

Werner always claps the slate himself. This job is usually relegated to the second assistant camera operator, but Werner wants to be in the middle of everything. He wants filmmaking to be a material process—something closer to a moving sculpture than a performance caught through a lens. He wants the movie to reveal the human struggle, the human condition, human passions, and he wants his hands all over it, deep in its essential tissue.

Werner’s set is a quiet and focused. It's something that he must tame, although he isn’t a tyrant. Before each take he stands in the middle, holding the slate and inspecting the surroundings. “Quiet on my set,” he says with authority. “Find a position and hold it. No moving on my set. No chatter.” When everything is still he looks each actor in the eye, assessing their readiness, and then rolls the sound and camera and hits the slate.

Werner is famous for his five films with Klaus Kinski—Fitzcarraldo is probably the most well know, although Aguirre: Wrath of God is my favorite. In Fitzcarraldo, the title character (played by Klaus) pulls a steamboat over a mountain. Werner, being the material-focused director that he is, actually pulled the steamboat over the mountain. The shoot was plagued by budgetary and casting issues, snakes, hostile natives, and accidents with the boat. Some of the crew were shot by arrows during a raid by the Amahuaca tribespeople. During shooting, Werner cut off a man’s foot with a chainsaw to keep the poison from a snakebite from spreading. And after a version of the film starring Mick Jagger and Jason Robards was aborted half way through shooting because Jason got sick, Werner hired his old friend/fiend Klaus Kinski, who was so crazy with his rants about nothing that a local chief offered to kill Klaus for Werner. This can all be seen in the documentary Burden of Dreams by Les Blank, a film almost as good as Fitzcarraldo itself, because Werner’s process is as rich as any movie.

Werner has a three-day film seminar he does at airport hotels around the country. He calls it the Rogue Film School and the students are his Rogues. His essential lessons come from his own experiences: a Rogue is self-willed and doesn’t wait around for people to finance his or her projects. They make them happen. A Rogue learns how to forge documents, pick locks, and be completely self-sufficient. And the other most important thing for a filmmaker to do—imagine Werner’s German accent—is to, "Read, read, read, read, read, read… A filmmaker will never make great movies if he doesn’t read."

Werner gives out a list of books recommendations to his students, but I’ll keep that secret for the Rogues… Alright, I’ll give you a few titles: The Warren Commission Report, Virgil’s Georgics, and "The Short and Happy Life of Francis Macomber."

Werner traveled great distances by foot when he was younger. He once walked from Munich to Paris to visit his mentor, Lotte H. Eisner. He hiked through snow and survived any way he could.

When he arrived, Werner told Lotte that he was ready to give up filmmaking because, for the first ten years of his career, no one saw his films. Aguirre: Wrath of God was in theaters for a week and a half. Lotte simply told him that he wasn’t allowed to give up cinema. That kept Werner going for the next ten years, after which he became a celebrated artist.

Werner embraces new technology because he is about getting things done by any means necessary. His documentaries are not non-fiction—they are the search for truth of a poetic order. Like his fictional films, Werner is looking for what is vital and illuminating.

Werner has the best voice around. Everyone who knows anything knows that. His voice speaks of extreme things but they are delivered in the cadence, accent, and inflection of a master storyteller. Werner is far from an egomaniac—he is not high on himself; he simply basks in the mysteries of the universe and then tells us about them in his own peculiar way. This is why he often seems superstitious. Werner is not interested in facts. He is interested in poetry. He is a warlock.