Polish posters: Nosferatu

 It's been a minute since I posted a Polis poster and I have plenty more to go! This one is not as bizarre, pretty straightforward, really.

Lo and Behold 2016 directed by Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog is a truly great, f not unique film director and his documentary work stands out for its presentation and subject matter. Into the Abyss and From One Second to the Next are two more recent of his documentaries that show how powerful that medium can be. Lo and Behold, sadly is not in that league or even close to it. It rambles, but goes nowhere and it shows, to me at least that Herzog has little to know understanding of the subject matter.

That is not to say it doesn't have it's moments. It does. I particularly liked the interview with Lawrence Krauss who comes across as reasonable person while some of the other experts, like the guy giving the tour of the birthplace of the Internet come across as total crackpots. Elon Musk makes his points well and a couple others refute some of his ideas in ways that I think show there is more than one way to think about the subjects discussed.

My biggest problems are two parts I find offensive or irresponsible, respectively.  The first is the interview with the family who lost a daughter in an accident and then started getting emails of her decapitated body in emails with truly horrible statements about her. That situation is bad enough but Herzog lets the interview include a clip of the mother going all "the Internet is real the Antichrist" and it makes her look foolish and not like the grieving parent she is. I also don't see how they can blame the Internet for what happened... it didn't cause the crash and even the emails are not something new... people would sent horrifying photos and letters to people in the mail before it could be electronically. People have always been inhumane to each others in ways that are hard to understand. I find her being used in a way that is unfeeling and unnecessary.  The second is the group who live in an area where the placement of radio telescopes forbids electronic devices, and all wifi signals. Some are there for work but he concentrates on a few that talks about their sensitivity to wifi... it's not a real thing. Humans have no ways to sense that sort of low level radiation and they HAVE been tested to see if there is an affect they can somehow sense something somehow and they never have, not even once. I think it's pretty obvious these people are suffering but giving them a made up answer just prevents them from finding a real one. That is harmful to them and it continues one of the most basic misconceptions about how these things work and encourages being willfully ignorant of real world physics.

So with a heavy heart, I have to put this Herzog film as one of his few disappointments for me.

Aguirre the Wrath of God 1972 directed by Werner Herzog

Aguirre, der Zorn Gottes is one of my favourite films of all time. I refused to buy a DVD player until it was available in that format so it could be the first film I saw on the player. Like most Herzog films, it's hypnotic and slow paced, pulling you from one scene to the other. The actual story is secondary to the feeling you get watching it, it pulls you into its world.

Based on a true story is something Herzog excels in. Not that he remains true to the facts of whatever story it is. As a director he is more concerned with the emotions the story bring over the facts and, for him, it pretty much always works. Aquirre is his 3rd feature and it strays wildly from the source material. Frankly with Klaus Kinski as a Spanish conquistador, how could it not?

In a nutshell, a Spanish expedition to find the lost city of Eldorado is doomed to failure by the foolish audacity and ambitions of the explorers and the unrelenting jungle that surrounds and eventually envelopes them within itself. They are doomed from the start when we see hundreds of them walking along narrow mountain pathways to the very end where Aguirre is the last left alive, raving at monkeys and telling his dead daughter they are going to start a new world as his raft slowly disappears around a river corner. In real life, Aguirre was brought back home and executed, apparently mocking the marksmanship of the firing squad as he died.




I would say this film has really only two characters. Kinski and the Amazonian jungle. Klaus's interactions with everything around him are what makes this movie work. His intense face says more than his words ever could and as his madness grows, the jungle seems more determined to absorb it and make it it's own.

The film is both a straight forward narrative and a dreamlike voyage. You never get explanations for things the characters don't get explanations for - so we know no more than they do about what is going on at any given time and Kinski's performance is unsettling and crazy while being understated and calm. He not exactly a sympathetic persona, but it is impossible to take your eyes off him.

Herzog's direction and the cinematography as stellar. After seeing this film for years in revival houses with damaged, dusty copies, the DVD release was a revelation of how beautiful this movie looked. I would LOVE to get a Blu-ray but my finances forbid me from re-buying films I already have these days. Pretty much every frame, every shot is intriguing and painterly. The music is perfect and all the performances add to the overall feel of the production. It's easy to see why this film developed a cult following.

Instead of going into the plot details and relevant scenes of the film I would rather encourage everyone who loves film to see it, multiple times. I have quite honestly put it on repeat in the DVD player and watched it on and off for an entire day and it never got tired of it.

Werner Herzog - Superbeing

Take David Lynch in your hands - feel his clammy dampness, the heaviness of the wet Lynch across your palms. Now wring him - WRING out the BULLshit. Twist your wrists in opposite directions - HARD.

Now look in your hands....you're holding a fresh Werner Herzog!

I think Bad Lieutenant could be like Sweeney Todd, a legend that mutates in the hands of popular culture. Keep on making them different actors, different directors.

Any flaws the Herzog might've had were invisble to me. Invisible to me. It is wunderbar owing to its committment to retelling the story samepicture/differentframe.

I friggin' love the Ferrera version, too - don't get me wrong.





Why superbeing? Besides Aguirre?
Paraphrased from Wikipedia: "On January 26, 2006, insufferable tosser Joaquin Phoenix was in a car accident in Hollywood on a winding canyon road that flipped over his car. The crash reportedly was caused by brake failure. Shaken and confused, Phoenix heard a tapping on his window and a voice say, "Just relax." Unable to see the man, Phoenix replied, "I'm fine. I am relaxed." The man replied, "No, you're not." At this point, Phoenix managed to see that the man was famed, eccentric German auteur Werner Herzog. After helping Phoenix out of the wreckage, Herzog phoned in an ambulance and vanished."

HELL-idays are over! Enough of "merry" and "jolly"!

And now it's back to our regularly scheduled exploitative, disturbing, offensive and utterly fascinating fare! I sampled this one last night--and it fits the bill for all of the above! WARNING: DL, don't watch it. I know of your phobias! Here it is:"Even Dwarfs Started Small" from Werner Herzog:




IF I can sit through it again (no time soon), I want to listen to the commentary by Herzog and Crispin Glover!

"While filming the scene where a van drove in circles with no one at the wheel, one of the actors was run over, but immediately stood up uninjured. During the flower burning scene, the same actor caught fire and Werner Herzog raced over and beat the fire out. The actor only had minor injuries from the fire. After these two accidents, Werner Herzog promised the actors that if they made it through the rest of filming without any more injuries he would jump into a cactus patch and allow the actors to film him doing so. The film was finished without any further injuries and the director made good his promise and dove into the cacti. Herzog has said, "Getting out was a lot more difficult than jumping in."