With over 50 documentary and feature films under his belt, for the likes of Francois Truffaut, Werner Herzog is the most important director alive. His willingness to go to extremes has also seen him branded as a megalomaniac, risking his and other people’s lives and limbs in order to commit images to celluloid.
In his latest documentary, Encounters at the End of the World, Herzog found his way to the bottom of the globe, and Antarctica seems an appropriate location for a director who tells us he is “fascinated by the idea that our civilisation is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness.”
By Hannah Lack
You said once your films creep up on you. What did you mean by that? They’re like burglars in the night. It’s a home invasion. Or you invite a guest to your home, you open your door just a foot wide and all of a sudden, the door bursts open and 80 uninvited guests are crowding in.
I’ve just done a film with Nic Cage in New Orleans, then I staged an opera in Spain and shot a film in Ethiopia, and then another feature film My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done, and after that I know there are eight or nine other features pushing me already. I have to caution you, I’m not planning any career... When you have a burglar in your home at night, it’s not a career plan.
Was there a single image or story that drew you to Antarctica? Henry Kaiser’s underwater footage. As a filmmaker I want to bring images that are new and at the same time they’re somehow dormant inside you. You seem to recognise these images as if they were a secret brother and sister and you are introduced to them for the first time. The film was a two-man enterprise essentially. When you go to Antarctica, to keep one person there costs $10,000 a day.
Everything, every drop of gasoline has to be brought into Antarctica, salad has to be flow in from New Zealand. Knowing that, when I applied to film I said I would only use a minimum of resources. James Cameron applied to go down with a crew of something like 36 and he was denied, and rightfully so.
Did you arrive with a plan? Not at all. I had the feeling, my God, what am I going to do here? But I had no problem accepting this challenge. I took a straight, unromantic look at the American base in Antarctica, McMurdo, which looks like an ugly mining town full of noisy caterpillars. The spirit of bureaucracy was stifling there. And you even have abominations like aerobics studios and yoga. It’s not the times of Scott and Amundsen and Shackleton anymore.
But there were some wonderful people there. A retired judge of the high court who is washing dishes, a physicist studying the most ridiculous of subatomic particles, a woman who can zip herself into her own luggage...all of them are working at the cutting edge of science. They are fascinated by the solitude and the vastness, the untouched beauty of this continent. They are professional dreamers, full of a sense of wonder and of exploration.
Do you admire the early Antarctic explorers? It’s ambivalent for me. I have a deep respect for their courage and for opening up a continent to scientific research, on the other hand, it was a very sick idea to scramble to be the first one to the South Pole. That is a media event and a personal ego trip. And besides, it finished the dignity of a place like the South Pole. Same with mountains - leave Mount Everest in peace! I would prefer if all mountains were left in peace.
And yet you’re drawn to these inhospitable places: mountains, jungles, deserts, icecaps... Well to explain, I really like something that the caterpillar driver says in Encounters about his grandmother reading him stories of the Argonauts and Odysseus. He says “that was when I felt love for the world.” That hit me very deeply, I thought, well said, man! I’m exactly one of those. I’ve fallen in love with the world.
I think I’m the only filmmaker ever to have made professional films in all seven continents. But please be cautious because the moment I end up in the Guinness Book of World Records along with the guy on the pogo stick, I have to quit my profession. That would be the worst thing that could happen to me.
Why do you think documentaries are becoming increasingly popular? I think the answer might be more complicated than it seems at first. All the new technologies and digital effects, reality TV... all this is challenging our sense of reality, there’s a huge onslaught. And in a way, there’s an interest to define how we can trust our eyes again: what constitutes reality, what constitutes facts, what constitutes the deeper, inherent truth. So there is something big going on.
Do you watch TV? I watch only Wrestlemania. It is a very interesting form of television, because everything is staged and ritualised. Of course it is not real fights, it is invented fights: a fake reality.
Are you bothered by the myths that have grown up around you? No, it’s okay. Besides, they are doppelgangers, which for me are almost like paid stooges. I can hide behind them. There are at least five or six different Herzogs out there. Let them live, it’s not my problem.
Is it true you and Errol Morris once dug up a grave? When Errol Morris was working on a book of mass murderers, for months he investigated Ed Gein in Wisconsin, who was the role model for Hitchcock’s Psycho. He had not only murdered people, he had also excavated freshly buried bodies in the cemetery and made a throne seat out of human flesh – also lampshades and other crazy things.
Errol found out that these excavated graves formed an almost perfect circle, and at the very centre was the grave of Ed Gein’s mother. So the question was, did he excavate his mother as well? I said we could only find out by going there at night with a spade. I showed up at the graveyard but Errol chickened out so the question is still unresolved. I have the feeling that having a good question and no answer is sometimes much better than having the answer to everything.
More about Encounters at the End of the World
Werner Herzog's other films
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