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Hey man! If you happen upon reading this comment, then please consider doing a video on The Banshees of Inisherin. That movie was so beautifully written and has so many layers to it. It truly is both tragic and beautiful
I can, that then your documentary gets more award attention than Herzog's due to being backed by National Geographic, but then, years later people talk about Herzog's and not yours.
This slow type of documentary is very common, the standard I would say in German documentaries. Growing up seeing that type of filmmaking on TV, then later on watching the fast paced American style, made me appreciate the sense of calm and admiration created with each shot. It makes it feel more alive, organic and raw.
Although, you get some of that feeling from comparing just about amything to American TV!!! Especially the commercials, of which there are ridiculous amounts to get through in normal american TV broadcasts.
I feel the same way, growing up in Sweden. The documentaries from around here are paced (in my opinion) much better than the American _"3-seconds-then-switch"-style._ Okay, I may have exaggerated the American pacing, but you get what I mean. It's not the same. And I'm sad to say that the younger generation of filmmakers (and I'm not old, I'm born -90), are leaning more towards the American style - because they don't think that our _"native"_ style of editing will capture an audience. There are exceptions, of course, and I hope that the public will speak loud enough to show those in the business that the _"Swedish way"_ is the Swedish way for a reason.
Those images are mind blowing. The shots of them in the protective suits with a river of lava coursing behind them seem unreal. It looks like something from a 50's sci-fi movie.
The camera is actually very very far away using a zoom, it flattens out the perspective so while the person in the suit may actually be miles from the fountain that you see in the background, the flattened perspective makes it look like they're almost touching it. Because perspective may be the only clue you have as to distance. It's an illusion. The heat is still incredible even at that distance. I was at an outdoor Disney show and I could still feel the heat radiating from the pyrotechnics a soccer field's distance away because I did not reserve a seat for the show.
The way Herzog delivers his narration can stir your emotions bc he picks the best and most unexpected points in time to talk about. It gives a different point of view and thought process than most capture and its wonderful to witness. His doc was way better bc his voice and cadence, to me, is so captivating.
Herzog's theory for art analysis has deeply changed how I look and engage with media in general. He taught me to never ignore this abstract gut feeling that tells me when something is true beyond the factual. It's a beautiful and elusive feeling, it has even happened with many of LSOO videos. Thank you for your videos.
In the words quoted in this video, there is something truly sublime about knowing a truth because you have felt it through your soul. Not a surface-level knowledge arrived at by a surface-level experience, but a life-altering knowledge gained through a life-altering feeling.
I am instantly reminded of the man who taped a banana to a wall. It gives me nothing. It provokes no feelings. I understand the intention, he wants to provoke an abstract discussion about art, but he does it with something that does not give a gut feeling. Which makes me believe that he doesnt understand this beautiful and elusive feeling art can provoke. It becomes a discussion instead of an experience.
@@NullStaticVoid Burden of Dreams changed me from wanting to write fiction to simply describe and philosophize on the nature of reality. Easily the best thing I've ever seen in my life.
Every time I need some existential perspective, I rewatch Cave of Forgotten Dreams and let Herzog hypnotize me with the enormity of deep time and fleeting sparks of human meaning.
One of my favorite films of all time is Herzog's Lessons of Darkness. The way he doesn't focus on the war itself nor about heavy moralizations of war one way or the other. Instead, he just shows the aftermath and the cleanup in stark beauty, leaving a deep sense of melancholy that speaks for itself. He is truly a brilliant aesthetician.
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a priceless treasure of a movie, the quietness you feel while watching, there’s just nothing else like it. I’m forever grateful to Werner Herzog for sharing that cave and it’s history with us.
He brings those humans from so long ago alive in a way I've never seen. Some other filmmaker could spend millions on locations, costumes, makeup, research on paleolithic people, etc, and still not show them as deeply as he did.
I'm a young filmmaker studying philosophy with a special interest for Werner Herzog. Thanks for analyzing Werner's Philosophy so deeply, and to spread the word. It gives us the chance to re-enter an era of well-thought art.
Check out Demian, by Herman Hesse. It's a quick read, but it's great. I only bring it up because over the years, I keep hoping some young filmmaker will finally try to adapt it to film. I read it when I was 15, and it changed my life.
The Fire Within was my introduction to Herzog and boy howdy did it convince me that he's a brilliant documentarian right from the start; the way he opens it, it's as if to say "you're here to see volcanoes, so here: let's just look at some volcanoes, because they are awesome!" and the rest is just letting the subject speak for itself.
Yes! Unlike most filmmakers he lets the subjects speak and truly listens, his images and even his use of other peoples' images are unparalleled. Watch everything he's made! His fictions and documentaries are so great. I don't like steering people but one fun thing to do is watch his 5 collaborations with Kinski, then watch Burden of Dreams and My Best Fiend. So great.
Listening to Herzog talk about ecstatic truth and the poetic really reminds me of how i felt watching some films by Tarkovsky. Watching his films has been one of the most personal experiences i've ever had with cinema.
@@squirlmy Yeah me too, and to be honest i can't blame them. As much as it breaks my heart that i can't share these feelings with them. I remember when i tried to watch Solaris with my family (which is maybe the "easiest" Tarkovsky film to watch) and my dad was really bored of the long shots and complained how the movie didn't even try to keep his attention. Which is fine of course, it's not that i was sad that he has a different taste in movies but i was sad that, as Herzog said about poetry, he didn't feel illuminated. Fortunately i have a few friends who do, immediately when i show them specific shots from Mirror or Stalker, they get it. They too realize that they have a brother and sharing that realization with someone is a beautiful thing.
I don’t think he means adequate in terms of film criticism. I think he means adequate in terms of conveying the enormity of nature and man’s place in it. In that case, “adequate” is a very high bar.
You should learn more about pyroclastic flows/surges if you haven't already. They're terrifying and ultimately what took the lives of the Kraffts. The destructive power of them is hard to imagine. One minute you're standing there and the next a river of 1,000 °C gas and debris is coming down on you at 100-700 km/h. There's images of what used to be concrete buildings with just the support pillars left and the steel rebar at the top bent over like grass in the wind.
There is a beautiful shot from The Grizzly Man (4:55 in this video), where he disappears up the path into the bushes. The shot is framed so well you could be there for hours and not get it. You can hear the wind rustling, everything in the frame is moving, and yet the sequence instills a feeling of stillness and peacefulness with a slight hint of nostalgia
I never really understood why people liked Herzog so much. Until 2020. In Italy we went full lock-down (one of the strictest in the world) and came out in May, cinemas were allowed to operate with weird rules in July and there was this place where they projected old films among one new titles each couple weeks, and I went for the first time since the pandemic hit in February to watch a movie. The movie was "Nomad" about Bruce Chatwin. And, apart from the motion of being in the theater, with the mask, one or two seats apart from my then girlfriend, with the door in the back open, etc. Apart from all the cinema-in-a-pandemic commotion, I finally got it. The way he traffics through Chatwin's bag finally gave me the right feeling. There was a sort of materiality and even a bit of awkwardness, and the attempt was to communicate a sort of truth through images, as if to prevent the images to transform Chatwin's life into spectacle. It did have a strong impression on me and from that I could understand (in the sense of tuning myself to the right feeling) also others of his movies.
I watched both documentaries a couple months back and I highly preferred Werner Herzog's one. I'm surprized the other one won an award, it just seemed like an average documentary to me, nothing special. It just taught me the facts of those people's lives, but Herzog's expanded my understanding of human nature. Or, to be more precise, it gave me a few more tools that I can use to expand my understanding. A wider perspective of human experience.
I couldn't get through Fire of Love. It spent too much time mythologizing how much this couple loved each other and how we should be in awe of volcanos. Like, both of those things can be true, but it felt really shallow and repetitive to me.
If anyone wants to see the greatest extent of the slow shot style of Herzog, do give Lessons of Darkness a try. Some truly otherworldly images that will never be captured again.
Love that one! Something funnier is that festival audiences hated it, because he used the gulf war images for something deeper, they just wanted a "bad guys good guys" documentary
I think of those opening shots from Aguirre with the whole column marching over the mountains and jungle and you're just consumed by the imagery and music; the sheer scale of not just the movie but the actual subjugation of two continents.
You might like vampire film "Only Lovers Left Alive" from Jim Jarmusch It symbolically turns art appreciation around. The vampires are art lovers, especially of things like underappreciated old rock songs. But their love of art gives them a rationalizion for feeding on humans! 😮😢😅
My strongest memory of experiencing the sublime was ironically in my home province, Saskatchewan. Most of were I’ve lived is a massive prairie and I often travel to and from Saskatoon sand Regina. When near Saskatoon you’ll drive up a hill. It’s not crazy big, but it is high enough you can see a bit more of the land in front of you. You can see how big the land is. Unlike mountains, and deep valleys though, this was different. Yes these mountain, and the ocean are huge, certainly, but when I looked out across the prairie, it felt infinite. It’s like I could see the how large the earths crust was. I can see how small I am.
Herzog is one of the greatest artists in the history of humanity. Im not a film student or cinephile or something but that just seems an obvious point on reflection.
Herzog is really great and his work has illuminated and widened my limited human experience and soul. His philosophic approach and theory have put into words theses experiences and little flashes of "Sublime" I've felt when I have engaged with media like "My Dinner with Andre" or even "Disco Elysium".
A Limerick for Werner Herzog: A soldier of cinema extreme. Driven by strange fever dreams. He looks like a sleuth, For ecstatic truth, And in wildest landscapes it teems.
One of my favorite moments is from the documentary 'My Best Fiend', where Herzog is giving his estimation of the Amazonian jungle and claiming, 'the birds here do not sing, they cry out in pain.'
I happened to accidentally stumble across the herzog documentary on tv the other day, and oh wow, I was in a trance for the whole run time, it was incredible. How the music, images, and voice over all brings it together was just beautiful. Fantastic video, I’ll certainly be watching more from herzog!
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is another great one! Wheel of Time is also a good, underrated documentary by him! His fictional films from the 70s are also incredible.
I’m not even gonna holdu this shit got me mad emotional. Mr. Like stories of old, I’m sure you have some idea, but I’d say the way you communicate the ideas you’ve explored, through your videos, is so eloquent and coherently effective that I’m overwhelmed by emotion because of it. I think you oughta be congratulated and deeply thanked for continuing the cycle, and so effectively passing on the message to us that we truly “aren’t alone” as Herzog says. This video was sublime
Another wonderful piece of art that has the ability of reaching out of the screen and touching a part me in a novel and still nostalgic way. I love Herzog's work, his images and voice are a large contributor to the narration of my own life story. I think that this video is an adequate distillation of the spirit of his work. Very nicely done.
I am so grateful that Werner Hertzog exists and used his talents to brand our zeitgeist with his ecstatic truths. As a culture, we are so much richer for his shared visions.
I want to express my deep gratitude to your work and you personally as a human being. For me, out of the countless channels I watched on RUclips for over a decade now, you are in a league of your own (with only jonna jinton in it too, for everything I saw yet). What you both are achieving is something that transcends the mind itself. Your videos, that are pure art for me, overcome the limited truth of my thoughts and connect me with a deeper part of my being. Everything you do, from your voice, to the visuals, to the narrative radiates beauty and love. Thank you for everything you created so far and I am looking forward for everything yet to come. (And if someone knows other channels in this league I would gladly hear your recommendations)
Herzog is fantastic. From his fictional works like Nosferatu or Aguirre: Wrath Of God to his documentaries like My Best Fiend and Into the Abyss. They always have a certain feel to it. It has this kind of hypnotic quality to it.
and here I am, fanboying over the wonderful tale of the Kraffts, true explorers who lived and died the way they wanted, leaving behind important work for the benefit of all of us ❤ I'm really curious about Herzog's version, tho I absolutely loved Fire of Love. to me it only goes to show how fascinating their story was; it's great that there are these different approaches existing of how to tell it.
Fantastic thank you. I will say one thing about the shot of the bushes and branches waving in the wind, and herzog's statement about it's own stardom. To me, it was about how we naturally fixate on the human as one deserving of our full attention as a character, whom we expect to express some message or action, and for whom we give a higher weight as the subject of a scene, but that the unexpected leaving of the person can leave our still active expectations to be turned to the other characters remaining, and that the message we can receive from them when we don't immediately switch to our assumptions of viewing an environment, can be elevated to a level where we realize that in our absence they have their own lives and their own character, maybe more than we give them credit for in our endless chasing of more human interaction and engagement.
What's just as extraordinary is that Treadwell managed to interact with grizzlies for 13 years and escaped harm. It was when he made a few critical errors (probably because he stayed too late in the season, until the bears were looking for food before they hibernated) that he got killed.
In my recollection, something was happening with Treadwell. It was late in the year, the winds were blowing, the weather stormy, and he was in the Grizzly Maze. Something was driving him to stay, and he talked about this "bad bear" that even tried to sneak up on him at one point. He was a kind of mad man. A great man, in some ways, but mad. Amazing documentary
Treadwell got lucky for 13 years and that was it. The only thing extraordinary was that it hadn't happened sooner. Late in the season here in Alaska, there are TONS of berries, spawning fish, young animals from spring still not fully grown, ect. It wasn't hunger that got him killed, at least not alone. Generally, spring is more dangerous because they haven't eaten in months, which is why we find so many in Anchorage all summer because of the trash, 40 resident Grizzlies and over 100 resident Black Bear. I get to chase one away at work. As the previous reply comment stated, even Treadwell admitted there was an overly aggressive bear and he should have known FULL well to leave the area, especially with his experience with bears. He's another person who anthropomorphized animals and began thinking of them as Human and he paid the full price for believing animals work like we do.
@@matanuskabutler7566 To be fair. An agressive individual being his downfall doesn't really make a case against anthropomorphizing. He might as well have talked about a man with a knife stalking him before dieing.
@@ErikB605 Indeed. But it's important as naturalists to understand that though we see ourselves in animals, as we are too, they are not us. We can never really know how or what they think. I feel the more people are around animals, the more they perhaps personify them. It should be noted I see myself doing this as well, even unintentionally.
@@silvesby But you can predict to a certain degree what animals are thinking if you are very familiar with them, this of course is different for all animal species. If you spent a ton of time with Grizzlies you will learn roughly how they think, that doesn't mean you really believe they think like humans, but you can see the areas that overlap and predict their behaviour. That also doesn't mean, just as with people, that you don't misread things from time to time. As the other commenter said even with humans they can kill you without you seeing it coming. If a dog trainer is killed by a dog that doesn't mean they thought their dog was thinking like a human, it just means they read something incorrectly or there was nothing in their knowledge or the overlap of behaviours that would have helped them (again, same is true in human to human interactions).
As always, a great one, Tom. Loved that Herzog embraced this amazing couple and brought them to the mainstream for so many who did not know them. He certainly does film like no other.
I watched this movie in a cinema in Munich, Germany last year in a pre-screening, and Mr. Herzog was present. The lava images literally blew my mind. Krafft shot this on 16mm film (at one point you can see his Arri 16SR camera here), the footage therefore has great quality, it's shot professionally from a almost suicidal distance (or rather non-distance). A must-watch for everyone who is fascinated by volcanoes. After watching this video, I must admit what an incredible job Herzog did when putting the footage together. He said after the screening there were hundreds of hours of material to deal with. His cutter preselected first, then Herzog made the decisions, he also decided what to talk about in the voiceover, quite quickly, as he described. The music is superbly chosen, it elevates the absurd, mind-twisting images into something metapgisical, yet as real as nothing else. At one point he points out that the pictures and sounds of the Kraffts show us nothing less than the origin of life, the abyss where we all came from (the original sounds recorded by Mrs. Krafft are also very impressive and play an important part that cannnot be missed). The locations around the globe are chosen wisely. This movie is also really entertaining! A true masterpiece. I still remember every single magma shot shown here as if I saw them yesterday! Thank you for this great review!
The momentary illumination I got to follow my deepest passions after watching this video and having had the change to meet some extraordinary individuals through your video, is inexplicable. Thank you.
Ive watched both films and found both of them to be equally moving. It never occurred that i must compare the two films. The narratives are from different stand points. One is deeply personal and another is typical of herzog's brilliance. I think this is the beauty of storytelling..and thay expression is what must be celebrated here, not compared.
one was made by a conventional filmmaker, the other was made by a GREAT uncompromised artist not bound to an agenda or company like National Geographic
Great study! I’m a filmmaker from Hawaii chasing all our eruptions here. My first volcano film in 2014 is called The Fire Within and the experience changed my life. Herzog and the Kraffts are heroes of mine!
Thank you for this, you've made a great essay on Herzog, and nicely stated what makes him special. To me there's no one who has reached his level, calling him a filmmaker is almost reductive. He's a storyteller, a poet, a philosopher, and more. He reveals so much about humanity. I loved seeing clips from Fata Morgana and Signs of Life, two favorites. Anyone interested in him should get the book Herzog on Herzog, great set of interviews. (Small point, a truth of accountants, but if you're talking about Happy People when you say he went to the Taiga, he didn't actually go, that one was made from existing footage he edited.)
Werner Herzog is one of the most intellegence filmmakers of all time. Such surreal insights not many others (or any others) ever express so profoundly as Herzog. The accent helps too lmao.
I recommend reading every novel by Herzog, watching all his film’s & documentaries, watching all of his interviews and videos pertinent to him ~~ Also this is an excellent video that does his wonderful work great justice.
Absolutely brilliant - you have excelled even your high standard of insightfulness, fluency, dramatic structuring of your argument, and dare we acknowledge, beauty! thank you again.
Wow…..The RUclips algorithm got it right this time! So glad it brought me your deep, engaging, hopeful perspective on a singular voice and visionary. OK, I’m about to go binge watch your channel!
I liked the video Maurice and Katia made themselves. It opened with "Ole ole ole ole ole!" Feeling hot or however that song went. It was very lighthearted, and was 100% their entire love for volcanoes while treating them with respect.
THANKS! You have performed a miracle. I have encountered Werner Herzog again and again for decades when dealing with German film, and I have never liked him, never understood him. I lacked the lightness in him, the playfulness, even the philanthropy. In fact, this essay has now managed to bring him closer to me, to make him more understandable and also more sympathetic.
I appreciate Herzog letting us peer into what exactly fascinated the Krafts. Drew us in to the subject of their passions, and not just a biography - in a way by seeing these adequate images, we understand on a deeper level, about the Krafts than Fire of Love could do.
Your last essay introduced me to Werner Herzog for the first time and I'm grateful for that. Before that, I was exploring the beautiful work done by Terrence Malick. I found some relatedness in both of capturing nature but in Herzog, the beauty and absurdity go together and that evoke emotions of a deeper kind. Like he says, You don't have to analyze them, It is just an experience you feel it by seeing for the first time because you'll know this is it. Seeing his characters struggle against the universe in a very poetic and weird way. Seems like all of his work is one gigantic bubble working towards creating a new language of communication for the betterment of humankind. For me, his work is an experience that challenges how we think and something beautiful that conveys a deeper philosophical and cultural meaning. Thankyou Sir.
Malick and Herzog are friends, they have compatible filmmaking approaches though I'm not sure if they influenced one another or developed independently.
Thank you for this. I am presently writing my master's thesis on Herzog and these concepts along with how these spaces (Deleuzian "any-space-whatever") as perhaps threatened by the hegemony of ontic/factual metaphysics that obscures the distinction. I feel like there is a real need for a phenomenological distinction in the plurality of truth and I am discussing its possible integration within a philosophical framework of politics. I am a fan of your videos and it felt like it was a lovely chance occurence when I saw that you posted this video. Keep up the good work. Best, Oliver
For those interested, the "classical requiem" (0:53) is Gabriel Fauré's Requiem. You will hear this specific passage in the Introït (1st movement) and then later reprised in the closing of the Agnus Dei (5th movement).
I still remember that part of Tokyo-Ga where Herzog complains about no virgin images being there anymore. I never really understood what he meant, but the fascination for human passions as you describe in this video essay sheds some new light on that particular scene. It is a city without poetry, there's no muse in the wind, as are so many places these days.
Filmakers..wow, i never quite understood what they are before this. Beautiful sir, beautiful i say. Already looking up Mr. Herzog's work to be in awe of his creations.
In 1977, Herzog released "La Soufrière - Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster," a 30-minute documentary about a volcanic eruption on the island of Guadeloupe... that didn't happen. Herzog's contemplative cinema is about the process of observing, which involves waiting for something to transpire, even when all that transpires is the waiting. That process IS the movie. His search for "adequate images" sometimes involves recognizing the ones that did not materialize as expected. What else took place instead? (See also 1971's "Fata Morgana" and 1992's "Lessons of Darkness" for more landscapes with buried narratives.) "Land of Silence and Darkness" (1971) is about the experience of deaf and blind people -- which, of course, can't be captured on film for those who have sight and hearing. So, what images are "adequate" in that context? That's one of the questions the film wants the viewer to imagine... I first met Herzog in the late 1970s and he said something that has stuck with me all these years, and which resonates for me on multiple levels: "A room illuminated to its farthest corner is uninhabitable." For Herzog, literalism is death because the ineffable can't be identified and pinned down. Which reminds me of Eliot's "The Hollow Men": "Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act falls the Shadow." The shadow can't be caught on film. But Herzog wants to glimpse, or at least suggest, what's ineffable within the shadow.
I think the very grandest example for letting images speak is Koyanisquatsi. There isn´t a single spoken line, yet it is unbelievably impacting and moving.
Another great Herzog volcano documentary is into the inferno, a personal favorite of mine. You even get to see a little of how Herzog became fascinated with Krafft and their story.
I do like this sensation of the image captured while the people are turned away. It's not just the falling tree still making a noise in the forest without someone to notice it, even without humans, nature is still stunningly beautiful. We're always trying to see, hear or learn. That pause, that breather away from the constant noise of our brain, it's cool that we can capture it.
The best way I could explain Herzog's films is like racing/riding a bike. you will learn so much more just casually riding and spending time with them than trying to immediately emulate their greatest hits.
What Herzog does with his film is of a different league, he manages to connect with an instant that does not even use a narrative, he only lets us observe the truth and the intrinsic beauty in it.
I'm reminded of another quote from Herzog: “Like two beautiful creatures trapped in a prison of another's design, like a madman lost in a supermarket. One freed, the other dies in a glass tomb which used to contain farts. Perhaps it is fitting, for what was the butterfly other than a symbol of the boys innocence that perished days before. Killed by the very soul he tried to save.”
This is my first time watching one of your videos @LikeStoriesofOld and I want to express my admiration and gratitude for a well-written, well-told and well-edited film on a beautiful subject.
Hertzog has always been a brilliant inspiration. I think something else not noticed is the breath. As the viewer notice: a deep inhale? A forced exhale? Are you holding your breath? A pause…
It's always such a special day, when I get to watch your video. There's nothing like that on a platform, your insight, perspective is quite unique and truly beautiful.
Thank you, this was, for me, as a filmmaker who works alone and knows nothing but the seeking, an illuminating program which made me understand some things I was doing whilst knowing not what I was trying to do.
Werner Herzog is one of those people I probably couldn’t get along with in real life but I also can’t help but respect him for his achievements and talent.
Wonderful video as always, and really encapsulates what is truly brilliant and beautiful about Herzog. I loved Fire Within, and Grizzly Man is my favorite documentary of all time - a landmark in empathic cinema, to me. He sees Treadwell as a tragic example of how we so desperately wish to experience meaning that we block ourselves from that experience by creating stories about it and our relationship to it instead of opening ourselves up to it directly. Fire Within is the perfect bookend to this film; filmmakers as example instead of cautionary tale.
@@dilanrajapaksha EEAAO fell at around #40 on my list of 2022 movies. I think it was the most overrated film of the year by some distance. My #1 film of the year was After Yang.
@@OldBluesChapterandVerse I do remember hearing about Aftar Yang but didn't even have it on my radar till now. Honestly if you have a 40+ movie list and this is #1 then I'll make sure to check it out. Btw my favourite of 2022 was Tar, and EEAAO I'd say around 5th.
@@OldBluesChapterandVerse Complicated is probably the best way to describe it. But for me it worked in the films favour since it stuck in my mind ages after watching/rewatching it.
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where is the Herzog documentary streaming please?
Those clips of Katia standing close to a lavafall is both scary and beautiful.
Great documentary/video essay!
Hey man! If you happen upon reading this comment, then please consider doing a video on The Banshees of Inisherin. That movie was so beautifully written and has so many layers to it. It truly is both tragic and beautiful
@@calebchan314 😮yes I’m😮th one who has tr🎉😢😢like 😢a 😢😢😢 10:45 m😅u
I can't think of anything worse than having my documentary premiere the same year as a documentary with the same subject matter by Herzog
I know right!?
I can, that then your documentary gets more award attention than Herzog's due to being backed by National Geographic, but then, years later people talk about Herzog's and not yours.
@@LordSesshaku double whammy
@@LordSesshaku psh
Nat Geo is a brand and a buncha flim flam
I can't believe I used to look up to it and it's readers as a kid
@@EggBastionBack in the day it was a cool magazine, and they made good documenteries. Now it's just a cash grab...
This slow type of documentary is very common, the standard I would say in German documentaries. Growing up seeing that type of filmmaking on TV, then later on watching the fast paced American style, made me appreciate the sense of calm and admiration created with each shot. It makes it feel more alive, organic and raw.
Yeah, you hit on something important, his pace is thoughtful in every sense of the word
Although, you get some of that feeling from comparing just about amything to American TV!!! Especially the commercials, of which there are ridiculous amounts to get through in normal american TV broadcasts.
@@squirlmy Even classical music. US orchestras are inclined to play a piece at a faster tempo, slow and thoughtful suits me better.
I feel the same way, growing up in Sweden. The documentaries from around here are paced (in my opinion) much better than the American _"3-seconds-then-switch"-style._ Okay, I may have exaggerated the American pacing, but you get what I mean. It's not the same. And I'm sad to say that the younger generation of filmmakers (and I'm not old, I'm born -90), are leaning more towards the American style - because they don't think that our _"native"_ style of editing will capture an audience. There are exceptions, of course, and I hope that the public will speak loud enough to show those in the business that the _"Swedish way"_ is the Swedish way for a reason.
danke. jetzt fühle ich mich nicht mehr so allein.
Those images are mind blowing. The shots of them in the protective suits with a river of lava coursing behind them seem unreal. It looks like something from a 50's sci-fi movie.
The camera is actually very very far away using a zoom, it flattens out the perspective so while the person in the suit may actually be miles from the fountain that you see in the background, the flattened perspective makes it look like they're almost touching it. Because perspective may be the only clue you have as to distance. It's an illusion. The heat is still incredible even at that distance. I was at an outdoor Disney show and I could still feel the heat radiating from the pyrotechnics a soccer field's distance away because I did not reserve a seat for the show.
Adequate images.
'50s
the footmarks on the black sand...the blackness of the sand feels so ethereal.
Its the one really stand out scene used in this video that really captured my imagination. It's excellent.
The way Herzog delivers his narration can stir your emotions bc he picks the best and most unexpected points in time to talk about. It gives a different point of view and thought process than most capture and its wonderful to witness. His doc was way better bc his voice and cadence, to me, is so captivating.
Herzog's theory for art analysis has deeply changed how I look and engage with media in general. He taught me to never ignore this abstract gut feeling that tells me when something is true beyond the factual. It's a beautiful and elusive feeling, it has even happened with many of LSOO videos. Thank you for your videos.
In the words quoted in this video, there is something truly sublime about knowing a truth because you have felt it through your soul. Not a surface-level knowledge arrived at by a surface-level experience, but a life-altering knowledge gained through a life-altering feeling.
gut feeling isnt that abstract. it can become very physical.
I am instantly reminded of the man who taped a banana to a wall. It gives me nothing. It provokes no feelings. I understand the intention, he wants to provoke an abstract discussion about art, but he does it with something that does not give a gut feeling. Which makes me believe that he doesnt understand this beautiful and elusive feeling art can provoke. It becomes a discussion instead of an experience.
I had a momentary existential crisis hearing that voice, THAT VOICE, come out of a younger man than I'm used to seeing. What a treasure this guy is.
you really have to watch Burden of Dreams and Aguirre Wrath of God as a double feature.
@@NullStaticVoid Fitzcarraldo*
@@NullStaticVoid Burden of Dreams changed me from wanting to write fiction to simply describe and philosophize on the nature of reality. Easily the best thing I've ever seen in my life.
Everytime I hear Herzog now there is a tiny part of my mind that only hears _"I vant to see ze chaild"_
Every time I need some existential perspective, I rewatch Cave of Forgotten Dreams and let Herzog hypnotize me with the enormity of deep time and fleeting sparks of human meaning.
Im a long time Herzog fan and that was the only one i was lucky enough to catch in the theater for the full experience.
@@fdllicks I think watching on a big screen would have caused sensory overload, but I envy you.
@@fdllicks was it also in 3D?
Hands down, my favorite documentary ever..
I just watched the trailer for this, and I have a question. Does that music occur all throughout the movie? I ask because I found it irritating.
I met the Kraffts when they showed their documentary in my hometown. Both were very pleasant, humble and accessible. RIP Katia and Maurice.
One of my favorite films of all time is Herzog's Lessons of Darkness. The way he doesn't focus on the war itself nor about heavy moralizations of war one way or the other. Instead, he just shows the aftermath and the cleanup in stark beauty, leaving a deep sense of melancholy that speaks for itself. He is truly a brilliant aesthetician.
Werner Herzog is probably THE most important film director from to come out of Germany for the past 60 years. The guy is a living legend!
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is a priceless treasure of a movie, the quietness you feel while watching, there’s just nothing else like it. I’m forever grateful to Werner Herzog for sharing that cave and it’s history with us.
He brings those humans from so long ago alive in a way I've never seen. Some other filmmaker could spend millions on locations, costumes, makeup, research on paleolithic people, etc, and still not show them as deeply as he did.
Just wish it wasn't done with that damn 3D camera. My eyesight cannot work with those types of 3D. So I get a nice headache for trying.
I'm a young filmmaker studying philosophy with a special interest for Werner Herzog. Thanks for analyzing Werner's Philosophy so deeply, and to spread the word. It gives us the chance to re-enter an era of well-thought art.
Check out Demian, by Herman Hesse. It's a quick read, but it's great. I only bring it up because over the years, I keep hoping some young filmmaker will finally try to adapt it to film. I read it when I was 15, and it changed my life.
Theres a Herzog retrospective at the Deutsches Kinematek rn , but deepness is not for everyone, it never was
@Mister Mystery it's a reenactment... but to a certain extend I agree on Werners approach to gain access to "ecstatic truth"
@Mister Mystery life goes on, no matter how deeply we feel grief, or just getting over a death scene. Its wonderful and horrible at the same time.
Herzog is something you should avoid, unless you are interested in blatant ripoffs
The Fire Within was my introduction to Herzog and boy howdy did it convince me that he's a brilliant documentarian right from the start; the way he opens it, it's as if to say "you're here to see volcanoes, so here: let's just look at some volcanoes, because they are awesome!" and the rest is just letting the subject speak for itself.
Hey, Randall! When you can, watch Werner's first docs -- I feel they hit different, more interestingly
Welcome to the Herzog fan club. Enjoy the rest of his work!
Yes! Unlike most filmmakers he lets the subjects speak and truly listens, his images and even his use of other peoples' images are unparalleled. Watch everything he's made! His fictions and documentaries are so great.
I don't like steering people but one fun thing to do is watch his 5 collaborations with Kinski, then watch Burden of Dreams and My Best Fiend. So great.
Little Dieter has a special place in my heart
And filmmaker.
Listening to Herzog talk about ecstatic truth and the poetic really reminds me of how i felt watching some films by Tarkovsky. Watching his films has been one of the most personal experiences i've ever had with cinema.
I agree but i have a hard time convincing others to sit through the hours and hours his films last.
@@squirlmy Yeah me too, and to be honest i can't blame them. As much as it breaks my heart that i can't share these feelings with them. I remember when i tried to watch Solaris with my family (which is maybe the "easiest" Tarkovsky film to watch) and my dad was really bored of the long shots and complained how the movie didn't even try to keep his attention.
Which is fine of course, it's not that i was sad that he has a different taste in movies but i was sad that, as Herzog said about poetry, he didn't feel illuminated.
Fortunately i have a few friends who do, immediately when i show them specific shots from Mirror or Stalker, they get it. They too realize that they have a brother and sharing that realization with someone is a beautiful thing.
@@AjsandborgI prefer Kurosawa’s filmmaking or Bergman’s
"All these dreams are yours as well" is such a beautiful distillation of why we make art
Wow, loving this.
‘Adequate’ by the standards of a film legend naturally helps everyone raise their standards.
I don’t think he means adequate in terms of film criticism. I think he means adequate in terms of conveying the enormity of nature and man’s place in it. In that case, “adequate” is a very high bar.
I never realised how massive those lava flows were until seeing a human figure suited up against the heat striding towards them
You should learn more about pyroclastic flows/surges if you haven't already. They're terrifying and ultimately what took the lives of the Kraffts. The destructive power of them is hard to imagine. One minute you're standing there and the next a river of 1,000 °C gas and debris is coming down on you at 100-700 km/h.
There's images of what used to be concrete buildings with just the support pillars left and the steel rebar at the top bent over like grass in the wind.
That's what the Krafft wanted to convey :)
There is a beautiful shot from The Grizzly Man (4:55 in this video), where he disappears up the path into the bushes. The shot is framed so well you could be there for hours and not get it. You can hear the wind rustling, everything in the frame is moving, and yet the sequence instills a feeling of stillness and peacefulness with a slight hint of nostalgia
So in other words, you did not watch this video prior to commenting.
Werner is such a beautiful storyteller- combining words and images with poetic justice. Gratitude
I never really understood why people liked Herzog so much. Until 2020. In Italy we went full lock-down (one of the strictest in the world) and came out in May, cinemas were allowed to operate with weird rules in July and there was this place where they projected old films among one new titles each couple weeks, and I went for the first time since the pandemic hit in February to watch a movie. The movie was "Nomad" about Bruce Chatwin. And, apart from the motion of being in the theater, with the mask, one or two seats apart from my then girlfriend, with the door in the back open, etc. Apart from all the cinema-in-a-pandemic commotion, I finally got it. The way he traffics through Chatwin's bag finally gave me the right feeling. There was a sort of materiality and even a bit of awkwardness, and the attempt was to communicate a sort of truth through images, as if to prevent the images to transform Chatwin's life into spectacle. It did have a strong impression on me and from that I could understand (in the sense of tuning myself to the right feeling) also others of his movies.
Werner is so good at what he does, it's unbelievable.
National treasure.
International treasure!
@@MeettheMaker Intergalactic treasure!!
@@TomGraham-mk2wl Pan-dimensional treasure
I watched both documentaries a couple months back and I highly preferred Werner Herzog's one. I'm surprized the other one won an award, it just seemed like an average documentary to me, nothing special. It just taught me the facts of those people's lives, but Herzog's expanded my understanding of human nature. Or, to be more precise, it gave me a few more tools that I can use to expand my understanding. A wider perspective of human experience.
Average documentaries are always the ones that win awards
Precisely
@@ProfessorBoswell Hoop Dreams wasn’t even nominated, so I think you’re onto something.
I couldn't get through Fire of Love. It spent too much time mythologizing how much this couple loved each other and how we should be in awe of volcanos. Like, both of those things can be true, but it felt really shallow and repetitive to me.
The Krafft footage is just so good that I really liked Fire of Love, but still the narration added basically nothing.
If anyone wants to see the greatest extent of the slow shot style of Herzog, do give Lessons of Darkness a try. Some truly otherworldly images that will never be captured again.
Love that one! Something funnier is that festival audiences hated it, because he used the gulf war images for something deeper, they just wanted a "bad guys good guys" documentary
I think of those opening shots from Aguirre with the whole column marching over the mountains and jungle and you're just consumed by the imagery and music; the sheer scale of not just the movie but the actual subjugation of two continents.
9:39 ecstatic truth is what sets apart works of art. Anyone can repeat a series of facts, but even those facts are part of a grander narrative
😮❤
You might like vampire film "Only Lovers Left Alive" from Jim Jarmusch
It symbolically turns art appreciation around. The vampires are art lovers, especially of things like underappreciated old rock songs. But their love of art gives them a rationalizion for feeding on humans! 😮😢😅
My strongest memory of experiencing the sublime was ironically in my home province, Saskatchewan. Most of were I’ve lived is a massive prairie and I often travel to and from Saskatoon sand Regina. When near Saskatoon you’ll drive up a hill. It’s not crazy big, but it is high enough you can see a bit more of the land in front of you. You can see how big the land is. Unlike mountains, and deep valleys though, this was different. Yes these mountain, and the ocean are huge, certainly, but when I looked out across the prairie, it felt infinite. It’s like I could see the how large the earths crust was. I can see how small I am.
Herzog is magic.
Encounters at the end of the world. The sole penguin wandering away from the ocean.
existential angst. so much power.
I love the tone of Hertzog's voice. Whatever he says over images. He could read from Mc Donald's menu list & sound profound.
Herzog is one of the greatest artists in the history of humanity. Im not a film student or cinephile or something but that just seems an obvious point on reflection.
Do you often lead with hyperbole
I was happy to see him in the Mandalorian too.
Werner Herzog is one of the greatest filmmakers alive today.
Herzog is really great and his work has illuminated and widened my limited human experience and soul. His philosophic approach and theory have put into words theses experiences and little flashes of "Sublime" I've felt when I have engaged with media like "My Dinner with Andre" or even "Disco Elysium".
One of the greatest humans
Bad Lieutenant is my favorite movie
FREEDOMFOREVER
@@jablanbukvovski "his soul is still dancing" - a truly great scene
A Limerick for Werner Herzog:
A soldier of cinema extreme.
Driven by strange fever dreams.
He looks like a sleuth,
For ecstatic truth,
And in wildest landscapes it teems.
One of my favorite moments is from the documentary 'My Best Fiend', where Herzog is giving his estimation of the Amazonian jungle and claiming, 'the birds here do not sing, they cry out in pain.'
I happened to accidentally stumble across the herzog documentary on tv the other day, and oh wow, I was in a trance for the whole run time, it was incredible. How the music, images, and voice over all brings it together was just beautiful. Fantastic video, I’ll certainly be watching more from herzog!
Cave of Forgotten Dreams is another great one! Wheel of Time is also a good, underrated documentary by him! His fictional films from the 70s are also incredible.
@@violinsinthevoid4579 Awesome, thanks! Ill certainly be checking out some more stuff by him
I like the one where he’s in McMurdo. Because I love hearing him say “McMurdo.”
I’m not even gonna holdu this shit got me mad emotional. Mr. Like stories of old, I’m sure you have some idea, but I’d say the way you communicate the ideas you’ve explored, through your videos, is so eloquent and coherently effective that I’m overwhelmed by emotion because of it. I think you oughta be congratulated and deeply thanked for continuing the cycle, and so effectively passing on the message to us that we truly “aren’t alone” as Herzog says. This video was sublime
Another wonderful piece of art that has the ability of reaching out of the screen and touching a part me in a novel and still nostalgic way. I love Herzog's work, his images and voice are a large contributor to the narration of my own life story.
I think that this video is an adequate distillation of the spirit of his work.
Very nicely done.
I am so grateful that Werner Hertzog exists and used his talents to brand our zeitgeist with his ecstatic truths. As a culture, we are so much richer for his shared visions.
I want to express my deep gratitude to your work and you personally as a human being.
For me, out of the countless channels I watched on RUclips for over a decade now, you are in a league of your own (with only jonna jinton in it too, for everything I saw yet).
What you both are achieving is something that transcends the mind itself. Your videos, that are pure art for me, overcome the limited truth of my thoughts and connect me with a deeper part of my being.
Everything you do, from your voice, to the visuals, to the narrative radiates beauty and love.
Thank you for everything you created so far and I am looking forward for everything yet to come.
(And if someone knows other channels in this league I would gladly hear your recommendations)
Herzog is fantastic. From his fictional works like Nosferatu or Aguirre: Wrath Of God to his documentaries like My Best Fiend and Into the Abyss. They always have a certain feel to it. It has this kind of hypnotic quality to it.
and here I am, fanboying over the wonderful tale of the Kraffts, true explorers who lived and died the way they wanted, leaving behind important work for the benefit of all of us ❤ I'm really curious about Herzog's version, tho I absolutely loved Fire of Love. to me it only goes to show how fascinating their story was; it's great that there are these different approaches existing of how to tell it.
Fantastic thank you.
I will say one thing about the shot of the bushes and branches waving in the wind, and herzog's statement about it's own stardom.
To me, it was about how we naturally fixate on the human as one deserving of our full attention as a character, whom we expect to express some message or action, and for whom we give a higher weight as the subject of a scene, but that the unexpected leaving of the person can leave our still active expectations to be turned to the other characters remaining, and that the message we can receive from them when we don't immediately switch to our assumptions of viewing an environment, can be elevated to a level where we realize that in our absence they have their own lives and their own character, maybe more than we give them credit for in our endless chasing of more human interaction and engagement.
What's just as extraordinary is that Treadwell managed to interact with grizzlies for 13 years and escaped harm. It was when he made a few critical errors (probably because he stayed too late in the season, until the bears were looking for food before they hibernated) that he got killed.
In my recollection, something was happening with Treadwell. It was late in the year, the winds were blowing, the weather stormy, and he was in the Grizzly Maze. Something was driving him to stay, and he talked about this "bad bear" that even tried to sneak up on him at one point. He was a kind of mad man. A great man, in some ways, but mad. Amazing documentary
Treadwell got lucky for 13 years and that was it. The only thing extraordinary was that it hadn't happened sooner. Late in the season here in Alaska, there are TONS of berries, spawning fish, young animals from spring still not fully grown, ect. It wasn't hunger that got him killed, at least not alone. Generally, spring is more dangerous because they haven't eaten in months, which is why we find so many in Anchorage all summer because of the trash, 40 resident Grizzlies and over 100 resident Black Bear. I get to chase one away at work. As the previous reply comment stated, even Treadwell admitted there was an overly aggressive bear and he should have known FULL well to leave the area, especially with his experience with bears. He's another person who anthropomorphized animals and began thinking of them as Human and he paid the full price for believing animals work like we do.
@@matanuskabutler7566 To be fair. An agressive individual being his downfall doesn't really make a case against anthropomorphizing. He might as well have talked about a man with a knife stalking him before dieing.
@@ErikB605 Indeed. But it's important as naturalists to understand that though we see ourselves in animals, as we are too, they are not us. We can never really know how or what they think. I feel the more people are around animals, the more they perhaps personify them. It should be noted I see myself doing this as well, even unintentionally.
@@silvesby But you can predict to a certain degree what animals are thinking if you are very familiar with them, this of course is different for all animal species. If you spent a ton of time with Grizzlies you will learn roughly how they think, that doesn't mean you really believe they think like humans, but you can see the areas that overlap and predict their behaviour. That also doesn't mean, just as with people, that you don't misread things from time to time. As the other commenter said even with humans they can kill you without you seeing it coming. If a dog trainer is killed by a dog that doesn't mean they thought their dog was thinking like a human, it just means they read something incorrectly or there was nothing in their knowledge or the overlap of behaviours that would have helped them (again, same is true in human to human interactions).
As always, a great one, Tom. Loved that Herzog embraced this amazing couple and brought them to the mainstream for so many who did not know them. He certainly does film like no other.
I watched this movie in a cinema in Munich, Germany last year in a pre-screening, and Mr. Herzog was present. The lava images literally blew my mind. Krafft shot this on 16mm film (at one point you can see his Arri 16SR camera here), the footage therefore has great quality, it's shot professionally from a almost suicidal distance (or rather non-distance). A must-watch for everyone who is fascinated by volcanoes.
After watching this video, I must admit what an incredible job Herzog did when putting the footage together. He said after the screening there were hundreds of hours of material to deal with. His cutter preselected first, then Herzog made the decisions, he also decided what to talk about in the voiceover, quite quickly, as he described. The music is superbly chosen, it elevates the absurd, mind-twisting images into something metapgisical, yet as real as nothing else. At one point he points out that the pictures and sounds of the Kraffts show us nothing less than the origin of life, the abyss where we all came from (the original sounds recorded by Mrs. Krafft are also very impressive and play an important part that cannnot be missed). The locations around the globe are chosen wisely. This movie is also really entertaining! A true masterpiece. I still remember every single magma shot shown here as if I saw them yesterday!
Thank you for this great review!
The momentary illumination I got to follow my deepest passions after watching this video and having had the change to meet some extraordinary individuals through your video, is inexplicable.
Thank you.
Ive watched both films and found both of them to be equally moving. It never occurred that i must compare the two films. The narratives are from different stand points. One is deeply personal and another is typical of herzog's brilliance. I think this is the beauty of storytelling..and thay expression is what must be celebrated here, not compared.
one was made by a conventional filmmaker, the other was made by a GREAT uncompromised artist not bound to an agenda or company like National Geographic
i think they both serve very different functions. fire of love is about the lives of the kraffts, while fire within is an ode to their work
Great study! I’m a filmmaker from Hawaii chasing all our eruptions here. My first volcano film in 2014 is called The Fire Within and the experience changed my life. Herzog and the Kraffts are heroes of mine!
Contemplation is such a rare treat in the sea of narrative.
*Huge* Herzog fan. Own nearly his entire filmography.
Awesome work!
Thank you for this, you've made a great essay on Herzog, and nicely stated what makes him special. To me there's no one who has reached his level, calling him a filmmaker is almost reductive. He's a storyteller, a poet, a philosopher, and more. He reveals so much about humanity.
I loved seeing clips from Fata Morgana and Signs of Life, two favorites. Anyone interested in him should get the book Herzog on Herzog, great set of interviews.
(Small point, a truth of accountants, but if you're talking about Happy People when you say he went to the Taiga, he didn't actually go, that one was made from existing footage he edited.)
Werner Herzog
is one of the most intellegence filmmakers of all time. Such surreal insights not many others (or any others) ever express so profoundly as Herzog. The accent helps too lmao.
To be frank, that scale of that lava with the person in front of gives me cosmic horror. Once again, a very deep and sounded video, thank you!
I recommend reading every novel by Herzog, watching all his film’s & documentaries, watching all of his interviews and videos pertinent to him ~~
Also this is an excellent video that does his wonderful work great justice.
I wasn’t aware he wrote novels.
@@nhmooytis7058for years, yeah - he just put out a new one weeks ago - a guide for the perplexed is my favourite but it’s rly just a 600 pg interview.
"i MAKE FILMS BECAUSE I DON´T KNOW HOW TO DO ANYTHING ELSE" heartreaking and liberating at the same time
Absolutely brilliant - you have excelled even your high standard of insightfulness, fluency, dramatic structuring of your argument, and dare we acknowledge, beauty! thank you again.
Wow…..The RUclips algorithm got it right this time! So glad it brought me your deep, engaging, hopeful perspective on a singular voice and visionary. OK, I’m about to go binge watch your channel!
Herzog is a legend, check out the footage where he's arguing with Klaus Kinski in the jungle.
Every word becomes more profound when spoken by Werner Herzog
Some of those shots are absolutely breathtaking. Quite literally made me hold my breath momentarily.
I liked the video Maurice and Katia made themselves. It opened with "Ole ole ole ole ole!" Feeling hot or however that song went. It was very lighthearted, and was 100% their entire love for volcanoes while treating them with respect.
THANKS! You have performed a miracle. I have encountered Werner Herzog again and again for decades when dealing with German film, and I have never liked him, never understood him. I lacked the lightness in him, the playfulness, even the philanthropy. In fact, this essay has now managed to bring him closer to me, to make him more understandable and also more sympathetic.
Ironically, there is something sublime in the way Werner Herzog describes and expresses himself in his movies.
His beautiful german accent and persona add a grandeur and heaviness to his documentaries.
@@brandonmorel2658 add his old voice from nowadays and you have the winner combo
Is that ironic?
@@cameleopard42 In a way yes, because he is searching for the sublime in nature, while his own voice is sublime.
@@stevesmith4901 it would be ironic if he didnt search for it
I appreciate Herzog letting us peer into what exactly fascinated the Krafts. Drew us in to the subject of their passions, and not just a biography - in a way by seeing these adequate images, we understand on a deeper level, about the Krafts than Fire of Love could do.
Your last essay introduced me to Werner Herzog for the first time and I'm grateful for that.
Before that, I was exploring the beautiful work done by Terrence Malick. I found some relatedness in both of capturing nature but in Herzog, the beauty and absurdity go together and that evoke emotions of a deeper kind. Like he says, You don't have to analyze them, It is just an experience you feel it by seeing for the first time because you'll know this is it. Seeing his characters struggle against the universe in a very poetic and weird way.
Seems like all of his work is one gigantic bubble working towards creating a new language of communication for the betterment of humankind. For me, his work is an experience that challenges how we think and something beautiful that conveys a deeper philosophical and cultural meaning.
Thankyou Sir.
Malick and Herzog are friends, they have compatible filmmaking approaches though I'm not sure if they influenced one another or developed independently.
I happened upon this and thought it was fantastic. It really awakened my emotions in a way that I'm not used to but appreciate.
Thank you for this. I am presently writing my master's thesis on Herzog and these concepts along with how these spaces (Deleuzian "any-space-whatever") as perhaps threatened by the hegemony of ontic/factual metaphysics that obscures the distinction. I feel like there is a real need for a phenomenological distinction in the plurality of truth and I am discussing its possible integration within a philosophical framework of politics. I am a fan of your videos and it felt like it was a lovely chance occurence when I saw that you posted this video. Keep up the good work.
Best,
Oliver
For those interested, the "classical requiem" (0:53) is Gabriel Fauré's Requiem. You will hear this specific passage in the Introït (1st movement) and then later reprised in the closing of the Agnus Dei (5th movement).
Thank you very much.. me a musically left vehind person only thought about mozarts requiem and it certainly wasn't that
I still remember that part of Tokyo-Ga where Herzog complains about no virgin images being there anymore. I never really understood what he meant, but the fascination for human passions as you describe in this video essay sheds some new light on that particular scene. It is a city without poetry, there's no muse in the wind, as are so many places these days.
It still blows my mind when I see him in the mandalorian. I almost fell out my chair the first time
I find it so funny that this guy guest starred as himsef in the boondocks.. his voice is so recognizable.. 4:20
I needed this reminder of the power of filmmaking, thank you.
I plan to watch and rewatch his adequate imagery,
Filmakers..wow, i never quite understood what they are before this. Beautiful sir, beautiful i say. Already looking up Mr. Herzog's work to be in awe of his creations.
In 1977, Herzog released "La Soufrière - Waiting for an Inevitable Disaster," a 30-minute documentary about a volcanic eruption on the island of Guadeloupe... that didn't happen. Herzog's contemplative cinema is about the process of observing, which involves waiting for something to transpire, even when all that transpires is the waiting. That process IS the movie. His search for "adequate images" sometimes involves recognizing the ones that did not materialize as expected. What else took place instead? (See also 1971's "Fata Morgana" and 1992's "Lessons of Darkness" for more landscapes with buried narratives.) "Land of Silence and Darkness" (1971) is about the experience of deaf and blind people -- which, of course, can't be captured on film for those who have sight and hearing. So, what images are "adequate" in that context? That's one of the questions the film wants the viewer to imagine...
I first met Herzog in the late 1970s and he said something that has stuck with me all these years, and which resonates for me on multiple levels: "A room illuminated to its farthest corner is uninhabitable." For Herzog, literalism is death because the ineffable can't be identified and pinned down. Which reminds me of Eliot's "The Hollow Men": "Between the idea and the reality, between the motion and the act falls the Shadow." The shadow can't be caught on film. But Herzog wants to glimpse, or at least suggest, what's ineffable within the shadow.
I think the very grandest example for letting images speak is Koyanisquatsi. There isn´t a single spoken line, yet it is unbelievably impacting and moving.
This is a work of beautiful truth itself.
Really, really well done.
The script you made for this video was incredibly well done! Thank you for the opportunity to learn about these amazing works!
Another great Herzog volcano documentary is into the inferno, a personal favorite of mine. You even get to see a little of how Herzog became fascinated with Krafft and their story.
I do like this sensation of the image captured while the people are turned away. It's not just the falling tree still making a noise in the forest without someone to notice it, even without humans, nature is still stunningly beautiful. We're always trying to see, hear or learn. That pause, that breather away from the constant noise of our brain, it's cool that we can capture it.
The best way I could explain Herzog's films is like racing/riding a bike. you will learn so much more just casually riding and spending time with them than trying to immediately emulate their greatest hits.
What Herzog does with his film is of a different league, he manages to connect with an instant that does not even use a narrative, he only lets us observe the truth and the intrinsic beauty in it.
Herzog describes Treadwell like an unintentional savant of cinematography. Even ready to unknowingly die for it.
I'm reminded of another quote from Herzog: “Like two beautiful creatures trapped in a prison of another's design, like a madman lost in a supermarket. One freed, the other dies in a glass tomb which used to contain farts. Perhaps it is fitting, for what was the butterfly other than a symbol of the boys innocence that perished days before. Killed by the very soul he tried to save.”
Might you know if that's a recorded clip,or just in print? Thankyou.
This is my first time watching one of your videos @LikeStoriesofOld and I want to express my admiration and gratitude for a well-written, well-told and well-edited film on a beautiful subject.
Hertzog has always been a brilliant inspiration. I think something else not noticed is the breath. As the viewer notice: a deep inhale? A forced exhale? Are you holding your breath? A pause…
This film about films about filmmakers was very enjoyable. Thank you!
Wonderful story. One thing is certain, the Kraft's were remarkable filmmakers. Their images are breathtaking.
I am so glad you created another video about Werner Herzog. This is one of the best RUclips channels ever!
It's always such a special day, when I get to watch your video. There's nothing like that on a platform, your insight, perspective is quite unique and truly beautiful.
Thank you so much! I liked fire of love and am a Herzog fan, but I wasn't even aware that he made his own!!!
Thank you, this was, for me, as a filmmaker who works alone and knows nothing but the seeking, an illuminating program which made me understand some things I was doing whilst knowing not what I was trying to do.
Werner Herzog is one of those people I probably couldn’t get along with in real life but I also can’t help but respect him for his achievements and talent.
Wonderful video as always, and really encapsulates what is truly brilliant and beautiful about Herzog. I loved Fire Within, and Grizzly Man is my favorite documentary of all time - a landmark in empathic cinema, to me. He sees Treadwell as a tragic example of how we so desperately wish to experience meaning that we block ourselves from that experience by creating stories about it and our relationship to it instead of opening ourselves up to it directly. Fire Within is the perfect bookend to this film; filmmakers as example instead of cautionary tale.
I love Herzog more often than not, but I can’t imagine his film will surpass Fire of Love, my second favorite film of 2022.
Let me guess your favourite was Everything Everywhere all at once
@@dilanrajapaksha EEAAO fell at around #40 on my list of 2022 movies. I think it was the most overrated film of the year by some distance. My #1 film of the year was After Yang.
@@OldBluesChapterandVerse I do remember hearing about Aftar Yang but didn't even have it on my radar till now. Honestly if you have a 40+ movie list and this is #1 then I'll make sure to check it out. Btw my favourite of 2022 was Tar, and EEAAO I'd say around 5th.
@@dilanrajapaksha I’ve seen 75 films from 2022. I loved Tar up until its ending, which, for me, complicated the film in the worst possible way.
@@OldBluesChapterandVerse Complicated is probably the best way to describe it. But for me it worked in the films favour since it stuck in my mind ages after watching/rewatching it.
Your videos…are the best! Best RUclips you’ll ever find! Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Grew up with Werner Herzog, will watch anything by and about him. Great stuff, thanks!
Their vision aligned. Their understanding almost equal. A perfect match.
What a great video. A really beautiful analysis and very thoughtful. Thank you.
What a beautiful meditation on a body of work that doesn't need embellishments!, Sir!..... thank you!
Werner has always been my favorite narrator
Your insights perfectly complement Herzog's genius, such a delightful watch
What a great video. Thanks for always posting awesome content, very inspiring. Thank you