July 2011: Werrrrrnerrrrrr (Werner Herzog Film Festival)

In celebration of Herzog's (finally and much anticipated) Cave of Forgotten Dreams coming to the local cinema, thought a ramble through his other works was in order for the month, a trip through documentary, fictional realizations, and montage surrealist escapes in the nether, without ever seeming to detach completely from existence at large, culminating in the sense of drama that alludes to the idea of fantasy and reality, the interconnectedness of each, and the difference that surrounds them both, seeming opposites upon a connected stripe...all of them filtered through Herzog's unique and sublimating keen sense of his/our world, and his inner mind...

Herzog shares with me a sense of the infinite, and the finite, the things in the universe that inspire awe, sublimity and those things and events that reach farther downward, more vertical in perceiving, reaching towards the bottom, and the highest reaches: religion, science, myth, history, the dark, the light, the Popol Vuh...creation and destruction, atrophy and entropy, are all flush within his creating, his recognizing, also the absurd and the insane, elements of which seem to always be present in his work, for, tis within him for sure, as in us all...those great translators are those who have not fully gone, for the fully recognized ones are the ones who cannot share, for they are fully dead in mind, in body , in soul, and cannot reach out to us, nor should they care to, having been immersed in such victifying liquid...no they have gone indeed, never to return as it seems, as it should be, as it has always been and will be...yet those who have tasted, those who taste, those whose existence lies on the parallel, on the border of which, those are the greatest artists that have ever lived, those who can share with us the oblivion of living and dying, of life and death, of the dark and the light, and live to tell us in creative ways, in ways that we can relate to, understand and comprehend those things that seem alien, that seem too unrealistic to care for, puts us in the right frame of mind to care, changing our paradigm perhaps for the rest of our lives, worn through the essence of being...

1) Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2011) An excellent work, and saw it in 3D, which was probably one of the greatest uses of the technology besides pure entertainment, for purely entertainment purposes, for it brought to life those cave walls, and the paintings upon them, made by some long distant relative of us all (??) in spirit and in blood, that charismatic artist, or that sullen, melancholic one, who found himself in the cave, with an urge to create, was it random? was ti ritualized? was it everything he or she had hoped it would be? did he make error in his mind? in his fully formed, modern man, living prehistoric mind? did he ask for help? did he do it alone>? did the ones who came after finish his work when he was left stranded to die within the cave? or was he rushed off in a hurried scene, relishing his work, was it a sacred ritual, was it a place that was used for centuries? for days? for an hour? did trees and the ground outside not fit his ideal of the "perfect canvas"? how long did it take? did he feel like it was his masterpiece? was the best thing he had ever done? or were they sketches upon the rock in passing idleness? did the mean anything? did they mean anything at all? was it entertainment? was it obsessive? compulsive? must he had done it then or never?

30,000 years ago were they made, were they inscribed upon the wall of that there cave, what others lurk in the shadows upon our Earth? waiting to be found? or not waiting, but fulfilling their very purpose in the dark? what do the tell us? now? of ourselves and of them they who drew it upon the rockened stone? leaving it up to them to decide for us, would be too easy a task, thousands upon thousands of years had to pass for the journey to be complete, for the art to be pleasured and absorbed, studied by those and all of us who still care to look, how many were showed? did he feel pride? was it a woman instead? waiting for the hunt to come? watching the youngers in boredom and disbelief she inscribed upon the wall "i want this here, i want this...i covet that which i do not have" was there jealousy in the midst? was there cunning? Herzog was mostly transparent in this, as he should have been, only coming to the fore in bits with his Herzoggian insights, which up until the end (with the postscript numbers one and two) were completely Herzog and welcome, for his always broadens the mind in some way, he who hath made the journey to tell us from the parallel...

2) Grizzly Man (2005) Actually my second documentay by Herzog, Caves being the first, my first film having been Aguirre, Wrath of God from the "Insanity" series earlier in the year...also an excellent production by Herzog, still want to read the book that I suppose this documentary is based on, or better yet is supplemented with, however, the story is told with interview and with Timothy Treadwell's own video footage of his time spent with the bears, what gets me is the declination of his story, how it concludes and dovetails to the ending times, the hungry bear, isloated, not one that Timpothy was actuaslly famiolar with, the fact that he had come back to the area, at a time when he had never been there, his girlfriend with him, later in the year, after the summer was over, perhapos towrds hibernation time, food was scace and herees this hunman hanging around...it seemed cold, callous or was that a Herzoggian goggle? Timothy did indeed look anxious when he made his last taping, just minutes before he was attacked, anxious to leave tje front of the cmaera, anxious like he did indeed sense some dread, that death was lurkinr round the bush within a bear...or was that a Herzoggian goggle? were we lead to these conclusions by Herzog? isntr that what filmmakers do? all artists, all humans trying to make a point, indeed? bias manifest, yet for all that argu,memt, i do see it..."was this the bear?" Herzog asks, but metaphorically speakinf, Timothy did it to himslef, he did indeed walk the linme of the parallel, the obllisvion line, and Herzog took it from his death to compekete the jouirney, to relate to us, yet most people disreghard him as crazy, sadlym, they do not undrtans Timopthy nd what he was trying to do, its a shame really, a man who had no direction, was spiraling down anwya, takes it uiponm himself to chamion the bears of the alaskan wild, to educate those back "home" abotu what he has learned, wa slearnign at the time, he was beneficial, his work will endure and live on, yet what Herzog has done, is showcse the biographjy of a man set on destructon, yet one could not see it upon hsi outer libning, his enthusiasm, he was indeed becoming more and more detached from reality, one could argue this was how it all started anyways, but those who run the parallel are always said as such, as those who are crazy, insane, dense, on a path of self-destruction, Timothy was all these but so much more, he wanted a place, a significance, and whether it was insanity or bravery is up for debate, perhaps a mixture of the two?

Was it the bear, or Timothy himself who ate him up? Culpability seems to always dictate, yet the story's power lies not in this, nor his guilt for including his girlfriend on this dangerous expedition, again culpability aside, here is a man who did what most would not, would not even fathom, but because of this, he faced any fears he may have had, and overcame them, even to his own peril. and the peril of others, he loved it, til the end, he loved what he did, he relished every moment, how is that insane? perhaps those who bitter at their own lives, for seconds can empathize, yet what they tend to walk away with is, "Yeah, that Timothy guy is crazy..."