Werner Herzog wants to go into space. His eyes laugh like a child as he recounts that he has formally applied with a Japanese company. “Unfortunately, they rejected my application,” says the German filmmaker.
The director of Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, Wrath of God and ground-breaking documentaries including Grizzly Man, Little Dieter Wants to Fly and My Best Fiend, about his productive but turbulent relationship with actor Klaus Kinski, has revolutionized the art of looking at the world, questioning the boundary between what we see and what we imagine.
In his films, Herzog is searching for what he calls the “ecstatic truth,” something beyond the strictly factual but still very much linked to the real world. That search is also at the center of his first novel, The Twilight World, about Hiroo Onoda, a Japanese soldier in World War II who spent 29 years on the Philippine island of Lubang refusing to believe the war was over. Herzog met Onado in Tokyo more than two decades ago. Herzog, in a typically Herzogian manner, noted that most details of Onado’s life as recorded “are factually correct |though] some are not.”
“My books will be remembered more than my films,” he proclaims, apparently dismissing the professional assessment of Francois Truffaut, who called Herzog our “greatest living filmmaker.”
THR Roma met up with Herzog at Babel Literary Festival in Bellinzona, Switzerland, where he was a guest of honor, presenting his new memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All.
In a long-ranging interview, Herzog spoke of his “archaic” childhood, why he still views the universe as a place of “overwhelming chaos” and why he will do “everything possible” to make sure no one makes a film out of his life.
Every Man for Himself and God Against All, the title of your memoir, was also the original title of your 1974 film known as The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser in English. You’ve said the title sums up your worldview.
More than anything else it conveys the idea of me as a lonely fighter. It is true that in my work there have always been technical teams, my family, actors and collaborators. I have never really been alone, yet I have experienced moments of deep loneliness.
I have to think of Fitzcarraldo, where the main character, played by Klaus Kinski, transports a ship over a mountain in the middle of the Amazon jungle. How much of Fitzcarraldo is in you?
It’s no accident that I made that film, but I’m certainly not the only one who is moved by a certain quest, a challenge, an urgency … It’s like Moby Dick, it’s the hunt for the white whale. It is clearly a great metaphor. Though to this day I don’t know if trying to move a ship over a mountain into the jungle is such a great metaphor. (Laughs.)
Some of the situations you describe in your book, starting with your youth and childhood — you say you had an “archaic childhood” marked by poverty, cold and extreme conditions — would make a great film. Have you ever thought of shooting something explicitly autobiographical?
Life is life, and what manifests itself in film form is something very different. I will try to do everything possible so that after my death no one will be allowed to make a film about my youth. Of course, this I cannot prevent completely, because there is such a thing as freedom of expression, which I have to respect. But I am sure that some fool will come along and want to make a film about my life. This I will not be able to prevent completely. But what will be in my power to prevent, I will prevent.
Speaking of life and youth: do you miss Klaus Kinski?
No.
What about from a cinematic perspective?
No.
You’ve been an actor yourself, in films such as Jack Reacher and the Disney+ series The Mandalorian, playing some impressively evil villains.
You see, everything to do with film makes me happy. Directing, writing the script, editing, working as an actor… It fills me with joy. And I play the bad guy because I’m good at it. You can’t stick me in a romantic comedy, it just wouldn’t work. I was well placed in that film and in that series, the casting was good, the subject matter was good, so I gladly accepted. I know I was good. The audience still remembers those performances.
You have lived in Los Angeles for some time. You must have followed the strike of the actors’ union, SAG-AFTRA. What are your thoughts?
I don’t follow strikes, I participate, because I am a member of SAG-AFTRA. Let’s say it was inevitable. That’s because there have been fundamental changes in recent years, in production and distribution that now necessarily have to be addressed in the collaboration between production, actors and scriptwriters. I am in favor of the strike. As an actor, I don’t want a studio to be able to scan my face and voice and digitally reproduce me in the next 10 Jack Reacher sequels. The other big issue is participation in secondary earnings in areas outside the U.S. The studios or Netflix pay so-called residuals for the U.S. market, but they have a much bigger audience in South Korea, Japan, Brazil, Italy and everywhere else. It is fair for an actor to say that if there is a bigger slice of audience outside the U.S., residuals are paid from those areas as well. This quarrel must be fought to the end. It needs to be clarified now, not 10 years from now.
As far as artificial intelligence goes, do you see potential there or an apocalypse?
No, it has nothing apocalyptic, nor does it have anything to do with actors except from the point of view of protecting one’s individuality, protecting one’s existence, one’s face and voice.
How would you describe your attitude towards nature?
Ah, we could talk 48 hours straight on this! You can certainly say that I don’t have a romantic concept of nature. Occasionally it happens that some critic, who doesn’t quite know how to classify me, calls me a romantic, but that is completely wrong.
In 1992, after the first Gulf War, you made Apocalypse in the Desert. Have you thought about making a film about Ukraine today?
No. You see, the first Gulf War ended in a matter of days, it wasn’t the war itself that interested me as a filmmaker. What fascinated me was that every single oil well in Kuwait was set on fire. There were 815. Suddenly we were facing a landscape that was no longer recognizable as our planet. That is why, in the film, I didn’t mention Kuwait or Saddam Hussein. Rather it was a kind of science fiction film but shot on our planet. A film about Ukraine, on the other hand, should be made by war correspondents.
I was actually asking about Ukraine because I was reminded of your documentary about Mikhail Gorbachev (2018’s Meeting Gorbachev). Gorbachev seems to come out of your gallery of tragic figures. Could you make a similar film about Angela Merkel?
No, and I wouldn’t want to. Others have to do it. In Gorbachev’s case, the tragedy is that the West did not understand him and did not pick up the signals. There were too many missed opportunities, as when Gorbachev unilaterally withdrew 400,000 soldiers from Poland and 5,000 tanks, a decision the West, in open contrast to the promises made, failed to match, instead immediately filling the [power] vacuum with NATO. Putin also wasn’t taken seriously when, in 2003, he called for Russia to be accepted into NATO, and when he later gave a speech in the German Bundestag talking of a single common European home, from the Urals to Portugal. He was ignored. Many were, unfortunately. There were many missed opportunities.
In the book you write that “only poets can hold Germany together.” And you also talk about the day on which the Berlin Wall fell. Wouldn’t that also be an interesting film?
No, it is political and must remain political. Interestingly, reunification was not so much a political event, organized by politicians, but the result of the overwhelming will of the people. The fall of the Berlin Wall took the political elite of East Germany entirely by surprise. Even in the West, politicians had resigned themselves to the idea that reunification would never happen. The only thing that can hold Germany together now is our culture, our language. It’s the poets.
Several times you have called yourself more of a soldier than an artist. How much do you connect with Hiroo Onoda, the subject of your first novel, The Twilight of the World?
Mind you, when I use the word soldier when talking about myself, I don’t mean anything militaristic. I am talking about certain qualities, such as loyalty, a sense of responsibility, a sense of duty and the ability to hold an outpost that almost everyone else has abandoned. For a soldier like Hiroo Onoda, the situation was quite different. He had orders to defend a small Philippine island until the Japanese army returned. And he continued to follow this task 29 years after the end of World War II. It was a tragic misunderstanding. In the early 1950s, he saw American bombers flying overhead, but they were involved in the Americans’ next war in Korea. A few years later he saw B-52s. That was Vietnam. Each time, he believed his war was still going on. He didn’t know the larger picture.
What’s your larger picture of the world we live in?
Some talk about harmony, but there is no harmony in the universe, that’s a myth. There is overwhelming chaos in the universe, and our part in it is hostile. That’s the problem when we want to take astronauts to Mars, or when we want to colonize Mars with a million people. It’s too aggressive a vision. It’s not going to happen. It is an impossible dream. It is a technical utopia.
Wouldn’t you want to go into space? (In addition to his science fiction “documentary” The Wild Blue Yonder, Herzog narrated a documentary series on space, Last Exit: Space, directed by his son Rudolph).
Yes, of course I would! But only briefly, and I would send a poem to Earth every day and every day a small film. I formally applied to a Japanese space company, which wanted to circumnavigate the Moon and then return to Earth. Unfortunately, they rejected my application.
While waiting to go into space, what are you working on?
I have two film projects, the first one will be fiction, and I will probably shoot it in England. I have already finished writing another book, after my memoir, titled The Future of Truth, which will come out in Germany in the spring. It will take at least a year for the translations. You know, big publishing houses move slowly — like icebergs.
Interview edited for length and clarity.
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