Werner Herzog Documentaries

Message

The Fanciful Norwegian · Wed Feb 15, 2006 8:57 pm

The Wild Blue Yonder aired on BBC 4 last year. Someone way back on page one saw it that way. It's floating around on the Internets if you absolutely have to see it now.

solaris72 · #52 Post by **solaris72** » Wed Feb 15, 2006 9:01 pm

I saw it here in Boston last month. I really liked it. Be warned, though, of the 19 Herzog films I've seen it's the slowest paced (I warn because I dragged along two friends who don't usually watch this kind of thing and had never seen a Herzog film before.) Incredibly beautiful imagery. It's more of a narrative film (and more of a science fiction film) than Lessons of Darkness. Ultimately between the two I think I liked Lessons more, but The Wild Blue Yonder is definitely worth seeing (particularly if, like me, you like Herzog's more metaphysical work, like Heart of Glass or Fata Morgana), and especially worth seeing on the big screen.

jesus the mexican boi · Thu Feb 16, 2006 7:05 am

GRIZZLY BEAR MAN

Not absolutely hilarious, but I laffed out loud with the "you should never listen to this tape" bit. Certainly worth a look-see. Besides, how many Herzog parodies are there?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 4967348088

tryavna · #54 Post by **tryavna** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 2:53 pm

jesus the mexican boi wrote:GRIZZLY BEAR MAN

Not absolutely hilarious, but I laffed out loud with the "you should never listen to this tape" bit. Certainly worth a look-see. Besides, how many Herzog parodies are there?

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid ... 4967348088

Some great lines! My favorite are:

"You will engrave the Oscar H-E-R-Z-O-G. It's about time. Seriously. I drug a boat over a mountain for Christ sake!"

"You must never eat this twinkie...."

Andre Jurieu · #55 Post by **Andre Jurieu** » Thu Feb 16, 2006 3:13 pm

tryavna wrote:Some great lines! My favorite are:

"You will engrave the Oscar H-E-R-Z-O-G. It's about time. Seriously. I drug a boat over a mountain for Christ sake!"

"You must never eat this twinkie...."

I enjoyed the part about The Da Vinci Code. It's funny because it's true.

putney · #56 Post by **putney** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 5:54 am

i believe WBY is planned to have theatrical dist., but it hasn't been set-up yet, but that's only to my knowledge. there's a lot of interesting back story to the film. The "planet" footage was shot by Henry kaiser, who some of you may know as the monolithic free-improv+ guitarist. in the 70's and 80's, henry was also an in-demand underwater cinematographer, and during the Grizzly Man soundtrack preparations, WBY took a sharp turn when Werner met up again with Henry. ( I believe Henry helped with some music selection for "Little Dieter" behind the scenes.) Henry spends a lot of time in the Antarctic these days (!), and his footage is truly amazing. It's a terrific, and funny, film.

putney

brunosh · #57 Post by **brunosh** » Mon Mar 13, 2006 11:28 am

I couldn't agree more with what solaris72 and putney say about WBY. For me, this is back to quintessential Herzog in his mission to find and communicate in images, words and music what he seems now to describe as the ecstatic and, to me, is a dream- or trance-like inhibition of rational, directed thought and of conscious self-reflexion, a heightened calm and disorientation - I think of the long opening shot and closing of Aguirre Wrath of God, the final sequence of Heart of Glass, Ganz and Adjani on the beach in Nosferatu the Vampyre, sections of Fata Morgana. Yes, WBY is slow-moving, but it has none of the narrative clumsiness of Invincible or Scream of Stone.

My reaction to Grizzly Man was that Herzog was hoping to find something ecstatic in Treadwell's relationship with the bears, but decided that there was too much misconception or self-deception in Treadwell's passion for this to be genuinely ecstatic, not to mention too much reckless danger for Treadwell's to be a path to ecstasy to be emulated.

jesus the mexican boi · Tue Jun 20, 2006 3:08 am

Our pal Martha Fischer notes at Cinematical that our favorite German director with the mellifluous pipes is set to star in Zak Penn's THE GRAND, a semi-improvised movie centered around a poker game.

From the notice:

"Penn's plan is to direct from a screenplay outline, but to allow the actors to improvise most of their dialogue as they play real poker on their way to the championship round of a pretend international tournament; he starts shooting next month."

http://www.cinematical.com/2006/06/08/w ... ays-poker/
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0427998/

putney · #60 Post by **putney** » Sun Jul 02, 2006 8:56 pm

I just read that "WBY" has been picked up for distribution in the states by a company called "518 Media", which I don't know, but seems they've done a fair amount of stuff before, so good on them. I believe they're going to distribute some older films of his as well, so maybe so revival house action coming.
I also heard that Joe Bini, mr. Herzog's editor since "Little Dieter" did edit "Rescue dawn" so that's a really good sign, cause they work really well together. (you can see them together in that "Music in the Edges" doc.) So that's very encouraging...

keep on rockin' Werner!

putney

tavernier · #61 Post by **tavernier** » Thu Oct 05, 2006 8:53 pm

IFC press release:

Wild Blue Yonder opens Friday, October 27 for a one-week exclusive engagement at the IFC Center in Manhattan.

Barmy · #62 Post by **Barmy** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 5:12 pm

I've rarely seen so many walkouts in a movie theater (on a percentage basis) as I saw this Sunday for WBY. The audience of 25 or so was down to about 15 by the end.

tavernier · #63 Post by **tavernier** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 5:22 pm

Barmy wrote:I've rarely seen so many walkouts in a movie theater (on a percentage basis) as I saw this Sunday for WBY. The audience of 25 or so was down to about 15 by the end.

They probably wanted to watch some football.

Emak-Bakia · #64 Post by **Emak-Bakia** » Sat Oct 13, 2012 5:26 pm

Sorry to bump this ancient thread, but yesterday I watched Wild Blue Yonder for the second time and was really blown away. The first time I saw it was when it was released on DVD and I definitely then felt that it had a certain pleasing something that I couldn't pin down. It was a film that I never forgot in the past 6 years, sometimes recalling vague snippets but always intending to watch it again. Today, I marvel at the creativity (and I'm almost tempted to describe it as childlike simplicity) with which Herzog constructs a narrative from mostly stock footage in addition to some original footage consisting of nothing more than largely stationary location shots of Brad Dourif. (On an unrelated note, is there a reason Brad Dourif reminds me of Neil Young?)

The sheer beauty Herzog achieves with the combination of the music (mostly lachrymose pieces that could certainly stand on their own) and the space and ocean footage is breathtaking. The film effortlessly exudes an incredible warmth and awe for humanity and its place in the cosmos and everything beyond. And in typical Herzog fashion, there are many funny, subtle touches. There were several moments at which I audibly laughed (high-falutin' way of saying "loled") - mostly at the parts in which Herzog ironically reveals some of the most important people in the epic story to be nerdy scientist types. I never felt that he poked fun at these people, though, instead only affectionately employing this technique of juxtaposing the inconceivable vastness of the universe with demure individuals.

Dourif's alien (I use this words hesitantly, since he looks like a human) character tells the story of his people's journey through space to Earth and humanities journey to Dourif's home planet Blue Yonder, and he occasionally intersperses the story with tangential offbeat philosophy (I particularly enjoyed the theory about mankind's first "sin" being its decision to breed pigs.) The whole thing almost seems made up as it goes along, but somehow I think I believe Dourif's alien more than any other movie extraterrestrial I can think of off the top of my head.

I'm surprised to see such a small amount of discussion about it here. It's curious, though, that one of the few posters in this thread openly expressing interest in Wild Blue Yonder has an image from Sans Soleil as an avatar. I definitely find them to be similar in regards to their meditative qualities and in the way narration is used to alter the meaning of images. This is definitely my kind of cinema. Does anyone have further recommendations for films that pair well with this sort of mood? (Other than the obvious: more Herzog or Marker)

And since we're on a home media forum, I must also note what a treat it would be to see the film released on blu-ray. I would guess that the original footage might have been shot on video, but the NASA footage would be glorious on the big screen.

Site Menu