Werner Herzog - A Guide for the Perplexed: Conversations with Paul Cronin

by Paul Cronin

  This book is dedicated to the memory of a true mensch, Werner’s friend (“The Last Lion”) and mine too, a man who lived for great purpose, restless and always on guard, able to perceive the enemy and explain it to us, forever in search of fresh forms of visual expression, who urged us to keep our eyes on and minds alert to the complexities and banalities exploding around us, eternally willing to offer support to anyone seeking to heighten awareness and extend the borders of the possible, who inspired and galvanised generations of filmmakers and cineastes, who never made inferences from insufficient data, who – with creativity and rectitude – sought unfailingly to mould public taste and facilitate a shift in consciousness, who favoured knowledge over information: Amos Vogel, “one of the most profound connoisseurs of the cinema, endowed with an unerring instinct for new talents,” as Werner once wrote of his mentor. I miss his resilience, being able to peruse his bounteous library, hearing the clicks of those five-drawer filing cabinets and exploring the wonders within, and the strolls through Washington Square Park with my surrogate grandfather. Long may his ideas burn through society, dissolving what needs to be eradicated, devoured by those agitated rogues in search of adequate imagery who refuse to avert their eyes.

  Now be a man and quit that moody brooding.

  Paul Cronin

  New York

  February 2014

  * Herzog’s favourite British player of all time: Bobby Charlton, “a genius who brought football back to its basic simplicity.” Glenn Hoddle – “an earthquake in a stadium” – comes a close second.

  † Translated by Martina Lauster. From “Mit den Wölfen Heulen” (see Bibliography, p. 496).

  Facing the stark alternative to see a book on me compiled from dusty interviews with all the wild distortions and lies, or collaborating – I choose the much worse option: to collaborate.

  Werner Herzog

  Los Angeles

  February 2002

  1

  The Shower Curtain

  Before we start, can you offer any general insights for your readers so they might sleep easier at night?

  Let me say this, something for human beings everywhere, whether they be filmmakers or otherwise. I can answer your question only by quoting hotel mogul Conrad Hilton, who was once asked what he would like to pass on to posterity. “Whenever you take a shower,” he said, “always make sure the curtain is inside the tub.” I sit here and recommend the same. Never forget the shower curtain.

  When did you realise that filmmaking was something you were going to spend your life doing?

  From the moment I could think independently. Unlike most people, I didn’t have the privilege to choose my profession. I didn’t even ask myself whether I could do it, I just pushed on with things. This became clear to me within a few dramatic months at the age of fourteen, when I began to travel on foot and converted to the Catholic faith. It was my first real escape from home life. My father – a militant atheist – was furious, though my mother seemed to think I did it only because the local priest played football. I was fascinated by the historical tradition of Catholicism and its attention to ritual, and intrigued about how so much Bavarian folklore was rooted in religion. The Calvinistic rigour and austerity of Christianity never attracted me; I was always drawn to its more exuberant and baroque elements. If I had grown up in the north of Germany, where almost everyone was Protestant, perhaps I would have been more interested in that denomination instead.

  I wanted to go to Albania, which at the time was a mysterious country closed off to the rest of the world and controlled with an iron fist by hardcore Maoists who wouldn’t allow anyone in. I went instead, by foot, as far as the Adriatic, keeping close to the Albanian/Yugoslavian frontier, maybe a couple of hundred feet at most; I never dared try and enter Albania. On several occasions I travelled by foot to northern Germany and a couple of times got caught out, in the freezing cold, several miles from the nearest town. I was always able to open up one of the nearby holiday chalets using the few lock-picking tools I had with me, and eventually became quite adept at getting into these places without leaving a trace. They were often full of excellent wines, and I would sometimes finish a crossword puzzle. Before leaving I would make the bed and clean up like a good Boy Scout, even leaving a thank-you note. One time I was asleep when suddenly the house was full of light and I heard voices downstairs. I climbed out of the window and leapt onto the garage roof, where a family was unloading their car. Everything in the garage stopped when I thumped down, and I heard a woman’s voice say, “That must be the cat.” In such weather conditions, taking shelter in these homes was a natural right, and if the police had discovered me I’m sure all they would have done was give me a mug of hot tea. I would never pay for the wine, though, and from there it was a small step into filmmaking, which to this day I have problems seeing as a real profession.

  What do you mean, “a real profession”?

  I don’t take myself too seriously, and at my age should probably find more dignified work than filmmaking. At the same time, cinema has made a stronger impression upon us than any other form of imagery ever invented. Films contain the most intensive chronicle of the human condition, just as painting used to have such high standing. Most people wouldn’t be able to name the most important Dutch writers of the seventeenth century, but they know several Dutch artists of that period. Just as during the high Middle Ages architecture had some kind of privileged status, in years to come we will look to cinema as the most coherent representation of society, of our achievements and failures, in the twentieth century.

  Talk more about this period of organised religion.

  Many adolescents of that age have instances of momentous decision-making, when something explodes with energy inside of them, though perhaps not with the intensity I experienced. There was a dramatic condensation of everything in my life at the time and a need to connect to something sublime, but my interest in religion dissipated and dwindled away fairly quickly. I left it behind without even noticing, after which came a period of radical disinterest in God – a feeling that might still be with me. I remember feeling furious at the nonsensical nature of the universe and its flaws that seem to have been built into the fabric of things from the very start, at the fact that every one of the creatures who live in the jungles and oceans and mountains of the world don’t care about us one bit. Religion is clearly an important part of our inner being. It offers consolation to many people and has a certain value to the human race, so I would never dismiss it out of hand, and having been baptised – which according to the dogma of the Catholic Church is an indelible mark on my soul – I will always be a Catholic. But ever since my close encounter with organised religion I have known it isn’t for me, though to this day there is something of a religious echo in my work. The scientific basis of reality will always be more important. There should never be an ideology standing between us and our understanding of the planet. The facts are facts.

  I should note here my admiration for the early Christian Stylites, who would perch atop a pillar, stubbornly refusing to come down for years. It’s the ultimate form of exile and solitude. There were cases of two of them screaming from pillar to pillar, each accusing the other of being a heretic. Sometimes I envy people able to find consolation in religion.

  What do you mean by “sublime”?

  Start with its Latin origin: sublimus, meaning uplifted, lofty or elevated. A door has a threshold down below and a raised lintel, the horizontal support overhead. It is elevated above us as we walk through the door. It is beyond us and outside us and larger than us, yet not wholly abstract or foreign.

  Do you believe in God?

  “I cannot imagine that God created everything out of nothing,” says Kaspar Hauser. If he does exist, I’m content to think of God as being as foolish, confused, contradictory and disorientated as man. As for the Devil, I believe in stupidity, which is as bad as it gets.

  You travel constantly.

  It isn’t easy to expl
ain why I shoot films so far from home, but I do know that a healthy imagination needs space; the great works of cinema weren’t made while standing at the kitchen sink. For me, every film is a ticket into the world and the business of living. What I’m looking for is an unspoilt, humane spot for man to exist, an area worthy of human beings where a dignified life can be led, something alluded to in my films. In Fitzcarraldo, Huerequeque recounts that the forest natives have been wandering for three hundred years, one generation after another, in search of a place where there is neither sorrow nor pain. For Ingmar Bergman, the starting point of a film seems to be the human face, usually that of a woman. For me, it’s a physical landscape, whether a real or imaginary or hallucinatory one. I know that by staying in one place I’ll never find what I’m looking for. The search is unremitting. In Incident at Loch Ness you see my wife – who is from Siberia – and me sitting quietly. It’s a Russian custom. Before you go on a trip, after all the running around and packing, stop for a moment so you leave from a point of complete stillness. It makes for a safe and pleasant journey.

  Even before officially leaving school in Germany, I spent a few months in Manchester because my first real girlfriend had moved to the city, where she was studying English. I followed a few weeks later with a little money, and bought a run-down house in the slums of the city together with a handful of people from Bengal and Nigeria. I paid my share and had a room, where I lived with my girlfriend. It was one of those nineteenth-century terrace houses; the backyard was strewn with debris and garbage, and the house was full of mice. Manchester is where I picked up a lot of English, on the streets talking to the locals. I didn’t have a job, and one time, out of curiosity, joined my girlfriend in class. The chubby teacher made every student repeat – in unison, ten times – a single sentence, which to this day is engraved on my mind: “He mumbled and grumbled because he was troubled.” At that point I fled.

  In 1961, at the age of nineteen, after my final school exams, I met some people transporting used trucks from Munich down to Athens and the island of Crete. I invested what little money I had in a share of one of these vehicles, and made some cash by joining a small convoy. From Crete I took a boat to Alexandria in Egypt, with the intention of travelling to the former Belgian Congo. I never made it, which I’m eternally glad about. I later learnt that of those who had reached the eastern Congolese provinces at the time, almost all perished. Congo had just won its independence, and the deepest anarchy and darkest violence immediately set in. Every trace of civilisation disappeared, every form of organisation and security was gone, and there was a return to tribalism and cannibalism. I’m fascinated by the notion of civilisation as a thin layer of ice resting upon a deep ocean of darkness and chaos, and by observing Africa hoped to better understand the origins of Nazism in Germany, how it could have happened that the country lost every trace of civilisation in the course of only a few years. To all appearances Germany was a civilised, stable nation, with a great tradition in many fields – philosophy, mathematics, literature and music – when suddenly, during the era of the Third Reich, everything overwhelmingly dangerous in the country was brought out into the open. Strange that at the centre of Europe is a nation that, deep in its heart, is still barbarian.

  Where did you go after Alexandria?

  Along the Nile to Sudan, but on the way to Juba, not far from eastern Congo, I became very sick. I knew to survive I had to get back home as quickly as possible, and luckily made it up to Aswan, where the dam was still under construction. The Russians had built the concrete foundations, and there were German engineers working on the electrical intestines. I don’t know how long it was after I took refuge in a tool shed that I was discovered. I had a serious fever and have only blurred recollections, though I do recall endlessly sorting out my small number of possessions and placing them carefully into my duffel bag, as if I were putting my affairs in order. I was hallucinating about being eaten by a shark, and when I awoke discovered that rats had bitten me on my elbow and armpit. Apparently they wanted to use the wool from my sweater for a nest, because when I stretched out I discovered a huge hole. One rat bit me on the cheek before scurrying away into a corner. The wound didn’t heal for many weeks. I still have the scar.

  Eventually I made it back to Germany, where I made my first couple of films. Once in a while I showed up at Munich University, where I was supposed to be studying history and literature, but I can’t claim to have been very serious about it all; I maintained my student status mainly because it enabled me to buy inexpensive train tickets. I did, however, very much appreciate listening to one professor, Ingrid Strohschneider-Kohrs, who taught German literature and had an extraordinarily lively intelligence. I was immediately aware of the precision with which she applied certain ideas to these texts. Her classes – where she spoke about writers like Georg Büchner – were so demanding that I was rarely able to follow them for very long. She told me about the time she travelled to the Black Forest and met with Heidegger, to whom she wanted to pose a series of detailed and intricate philosophical questions, but all Heidegger wanted to do was walk with her through the forest and discuss mushrooms. Although I was only in my first year as an undergraduate, Professor Strohschneider-Kohrs invited me into a postgraduate seminar, and suggested I do a doctorate under her supervision, but she moved to Bochum University and I would have had to follow her there. The truth is, I hadn’t the faintest idea what I would have done with a doctorate. Anyway, I’ve always been more interested in teaching myself. If I want to explore something, I never think about attending a class; I do the reading on my own or seek out experts for conversations. Everything we’re forced to learn at school we quickly forget, but the things we set out to learn ourselves – to quench a thirst – are never forgotten, and inevitably become an important part of our existence.

  How did your parents react to your plans to become a filmmaker?

  We should speak primarily of my mother because my father was rarely around. I never knew him very well, and he played only a small role in my childhood.

  My mother, Elizabeth, was a biologist with a doctorate who had studied with Karl von Frisch. She and my father met when they were both students at university in Vienna. My paternal grandfather’s house was full of books, but we weren’t there very often; I never really explored his library and didn’t grow up in a particularly intellectual household. Raising three boys on her own in West Germany and having been somewhat left behind by the Wirtschaftswunder [“economic miracle”] because her Austrian qualifications weren’t recognised, my mother was obliged to become a very down-to-earth and practical woman. For a time she worked as a cleaning lady, and to this day, at any moment if needed, I would have no problem sweeping streets to earn a crust. My mother – who divorced my father in 1948 – remains the most courageous and adventurous person I have ever met. At the age of seventy she started to learn Turkish because she had friends in Munich who spoke very little German, and even took trips to eastern Anatolia.

  When it came to filmmaking, she took a sensible approach, trying to give me a realistic idea of what I was getting myself into and what might be a wise move. She explained what was going on economically in West Germany, and in her letters asked me to think carefully about my future. “It’s too bad we never talked about it in detail,” she wrote. But my mother was always supportive and never tried to guide or coach me into a career or profession. She wouldn’t know where I was when I ran away and disappeared for weeks at a time, but sensing I would be gone for a while, realising I was one of those who shouldn’t be kept in school indefinitely, she would immediately write a letter to my school saying I had pneumonia. I always felt a stranger there because, compared to my classmates, I had other goals and interests. I distrusted the textbooks given to us, and when it came to mathematics questioned the solutions offered to basic formulae. Wasn’t it possible that someone would eventually come up with a different way of doing things? Though teaching is undoubtedly a noble profession, I never felt com
fortable in school and have never trusted teachers. In fact, I hated school with such intensity that I hatched a plan to burn the place to the ground one night, though never followed through with it. When I think back, perhaps the one important thing I got from school was during history class, when we often read primary sources, not textbooks. To this day I wouldn’t trust a book on a particular subject written long after the events in question. I still have on a bookshelf my childhood copy of The Odyssey, in ancient Greek, full of scribbled pencil annotations.

  In August 1961, my mother sent me two letters – on consecutive days – that I received when I was on Crete. In them she wrote that my father was anxious to dissuade me from becoming a film director. Before leaving Munich I apparently made some pronouncements that upon my return I was going to do just that. At the age of about fourteen I started writing screenplays and submitting proposals to producers and television stations. In her letters, my mother tried to convince me to return to Germany from Crete so I could start an apprenticeship in a photographer’s lab, which she thought would be a good prospect for me. For her, the rush was on; I had to get back by September so as not to miss another year. She had spoken to an employment expert who told her filmmaking was a difficult profession to break into and that because I had only high-school exams I should start in a lab; he said this would be the basis of becoming an assistant director in a film company. I clearly had something else in mind and couldn’t be persuaded. A few years later my mother set about assembling every article, review and interview about my films she could find, and pasted everything into a series of huge scrapbooks that for years sat on a bottom shelf, collecting dust, in my Munich office. It was partly because she was proud, but also because she could see I was never going to collect such things myself. She told me I might need them one day.