I went to see two films at the weekend.
The first, somewhat oddly, was the latest James Bond. I only went to see it because I was passing the cinema and had the urge to see something dubbed into Spanish, not having done so before. Bond was on, so I did it. It’s pretty obvious that it’s not my kind of thing, needless to say, the best thing about it was the typography, and that’s all I’m saying.
The other film was completely the other end of the spectrum – Encounters at the End of the World, Werner Herzog‘s latest. I make no apologies for the fact that I consider Herzog to be perhaps the best film-maker alive and working today, and I am particularly enamoured of his documentaries, of which this is one.
One of the many things I like about Herzog’s documentaries is that he is transparent in his manipulation of his subjects, and foregrounds what he’s doing. Therefore the films become as much about the medium of the documentary, and the inherent impossibility of objectivity that comes in pointing your lens at a subject, as they are about their subjects. They also become very inflected by Herzog’s sensibilities, which are a little odd and which accord very much with my own.
So, ostensibly, this film is about the Antarctic, its landscape and wildlife, the history of its exploration, and, particularly, the people who live and work there today – why do they end up at the bottom of the world? However, at the outset Herzog makes clear that this is not going to be a film about fluffy penguins. Instead he sets down the questions he, as a film-maker, is interested in.
What I like about Herzog’s questions is that very often they seem nonsensical, completely ridiculous, if not then he may make no attempt to answer them, or instead give an answer that we cannot agree with. Among his questions that he explicitly sets out at the start of this film are.. why do men disguise themselves with masks or feathers, and chase each other on horseback shooting guns? Why do some varieties of ants keep other creatures slaves? And why, therefore, do monkeys not ride goats into the sunset? None of these are really relevant to the subject of the film, rather they tell us a lot about Herzog. First, that he is interested in film itself (the first questions are illustrated with shots of the Lone Ranger and from Westerns) and, second, he is interested in behaviour – both of man and of beast, and what separates man from beast. What is intelligence, particularly when people can act so crazy and animals can utilise tools and manipulate their environment much as we do.
These points are explored in the film, but not to such an extent that it is bogged down by them. They are ruminations or starting points, but the answers are not the goal of the film.
Another of the things that I like about Herzog is that he is a film-maker truly in search of the spectacular image. And I use the world spectacular not just in the sense of spectacle, but meaning something profound as well. We have seen this in his fictional work, such as the ship going over the mountain in Fitzcarraldo, but also in his documentaries, most recently such as the bears fighting and the foxes playing in Grizzly Man, and the oceanscapes of The Wild Blue Yonder. To Herzog these images have profound meanings, but the meanings may be unattainable, like in Fitzcarraldo, of which he has repeatedly stated that the images are a great metaphor, but for what he does not know, or else contrary to what we might imagine. For example, in Lessons of Darkness, where the highly emotionally charged images of the burning Kuwaiti oil wells and the efforts of the fire-fighters to put them out become a strange absurd ballet of madness, in which the fire-fighters are creatures who depend on the fire, and must re-ignite the wells once they have successfully put them out.
The stunning underwater images previously seen in Wild Blue Yonder are the starting off point for this film, and easily constitute its most poetic chapters – the eeriness of an icy sky, strange unearthly creatures, and the divers floating like astronauts through an alien world.
Herzog captures the wildlife documentary images, of unusual species of underwater life, however, he largely leaves them unexplained, and is just as interested in the patterns the bubbles of gas expelled by the divers make as they collect under the solid ceiling of the ice. Furthermore, as the scientists discover new species of life under the water he dwells not on the discovery, or the significance, but rather the ‘madness’ (as he construes it) of the scientists who host an impromptu concert of terrible rock music on the roof of their hut for a barren and empty frozen seascape.
As ever the human subjects of the documentary are fascinating: There is the penguin scientist, driven to silence by being isolated too long; the heavy plant driver and philosopher who rattles on about Odysseus; the hippy who disguises herself as hand luggage for the stage and who spins endless insane tales; the welder descendent of Incan royalty with crazy theories about his fingers; the victim of the iron curtain who can’t talk about his past and who always keeps a rucksack packed with an inflatable raft and paddle so he can escape whenever he needs to.
However intriguing these people are, they are only so because Herzog constructs them like that, for, although Herzog does indeed have the knack of searching out the intriguing characters to put on film, much more exciting is the way that he then moulds them into something beyond reality. Partly this is done by editing, but much more so it is done by the sometimes ludicrous questions Herzog asks his subject, given the power of standing behind the lens. He also often, wonderfully, leaves the camera running, after the answers have finished, being silent, as the interviewee becomes more and more uncomfortable – and it is these moments that are given prominence in the film.
These techniques may seem manipulative, as indeed they are, and cruel to his subjects (as I understand it the scientists interviewed for Wild Blue Yonder were particularly annoyed with their portrayal), but, as mentioned earlier, in fact it makes transparent the techniques that all documentaries use to portray their subjects, and in that sense Herzog’s films are perhaps more honest than traditional documentaries. What’s more, and this to me is more important, what results is genuine art. And Encounters at the End of the World is, indeed, art, film-making at its most balletic.
