‘A good soldier of cinema’ is how German filmmaking legend Werner Herzog self-identifies and documentarian Thomas von Steinaecker’s portrait makes a highly enjoyable case for the description. Ultimately, Herzog’s life is far too big and untameable to be contained in a 90-minute profile, but Radical Dreamer is an excellent study of a true visionary. It nimbly doubles as delivering new food for thought for long-time Herzogheads and an accessible primer for anyone looking to get into his committed, uncompromising, occasionally bat-shit crazy worldview.
Compared to his subject, von Steinaecker is timid in his filmmaking approach, exploring Herzog’s career in a linear, formally traditional fashion. But he assembles an excellent cast of talking heads – Wim Wenders, Volker Schlöndorff, Nicole Kidman, Chloé Zhao, Christian Bale and Robert Pattinson – and the source material is so rich, the film doesn’t have to try too hard.
For the drama and hoopla surrounding Herzog’s life consistently throws up docu-gold; the time he walked in a straight line from Munich to Paris to visit his ailing mentor Lotte Eisner; the time he ate a boot; the time he is shot with an air rifle while talking to Mark Kermode and continues talking like nothing happened (‘It wasn’t that serious a gunshot wound,’ he says simply). If nothing else, Radical Dreamer is a never-ending stream of great anecdotes.
The sections that deal with his filmography, from his days as a pioneer of the New German Cinema movement of the ‘70s, to his crazy collaborations with Klaus Kinski, to his emergence as a great documentarian, are illustrated with clips so great, they will immediately fill up your Letterboxd watchlist.
It’s food for thought for Herzogheads and an accessible primer for newbies
Herzog classics Aguirre, the Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo (there’s great footage of the first version starring Jason Robards and Mick Jagger), and Grizzly Man get the lion’s share of the attention, but sections on early work such as The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Signs of Life and Even Dwarfs Started Small show a starling talent from the get-go. Chloé Zhao suggests that all Herzog’s films are ultimately about Herzog, itinerant, unstoppable risktakers – in his 2007 Antarctic doc Encounters at the End of the World, a penguin marches away from the sea and his colony to a freezing future. It’s hard not to see this as the ultimate Herzog surrogate.
In between the career retrospective, we get interesting interludes where Herzog visits his childhood home and a waterfall (his happy place), mentors students at his retreat at Lanzarote, searches for round stones on a beach, and visits The Museum of Jurassic Technology in Los Angeles, a collection of curios that may or not be authentic.
The film also does excellent work at celebrating Herzog as pop culture figure – we get clips from The Simpsons, Rick & Morty and Penguins of Madagascar, Carl Weathers talks up The Mandalorian – making the connection that it’s a canny way to keep himself relevant. Not that he needs to try. Such cinematic genius is timeless.
In UK cinemas Jan 19.
