Central to the ongoing thematic concerns of Werner Herzog’s cinema is the question of vocation, of what activities, often wildly ambitious, seemingly pathological or downright peculiar, call out to certain, often-eccentric individuals, giving their lives a sense of almost divinely inspired purpose. It’s one of the things that allows the not un-eccentric Herzog to connect to so many subjects he might otherwise feel unable to relate with, from the tyrannical conquistador in Aguirre: Wrath of God (1972) to the delusional would-be bear savior Timothy Treadwell in Grizzly Man (05).
Legendary mountain climber Reinhold Messner—whose ‘My Quest for the Yeti,’ much to my friends’ amusement, occupies a permanent spot on my bookshelf—is surely not a guy Herzog would find completely simpatico, given the filmmaker’s outspoken aversion to all things New Age. But Messner possesses at least one characteristic with which Herzog’s in complete alignment: a fierce impulse to test both the limits of human endurance and the benevolence of nature. And it surely scores points in Messner’s favour that he openly acknowledges the loopiness of his pursuit, calling the desire to climb mountains a “degeneration” of the human psyche.
Herzog’s ‘The Dark Glow of the Mountains’ (85) profiles Messner before and after he and Hans Kammerlander’s unprecedented excursion over a pair of 8000-metre high Himalayan peaks. The strength of Messner’s resolve is beyond doubt—he confesses that he has only four toes left, the remainder presumably lost to frostbite. He continues to climb even after the death of his brother on a previous ascent. Herzog clearly reveres Messner’s obsessiveness, something Messner refers to as a form of creativity. Yet one of the most fascinating moments in the film comes when Herzog questions Messner about what else he could imagine doing with his life besides climbing. Messner confesses that he’s love to walk, without itinerary, “until the world stops.” Herzog, off-camera, admits to maintaining precisely the same fantasy: “I like the idea of just disappearing, walking away, turning down the path and carrying on until there is no path to follow. I would like to have huskies with leather saddle bags and just walk and walk until there is no road left.”
This desire to slip away into the infinite is beautifully mirrored by the camerawork: the tracing of majestic peaks in the upward gaze of a pilgrim, circling a full 360º as if to announce full enclosure in this forbidding environment; the tracing of a narrow, equally jagged crevasse with its rushing waters frothing far below; the static image of Messner and Kammerlander slowly vanishing into a field of rock and snow. Not that every scene in ‘The Dark Glow’ is composed solely of reverie and awe. There’s a sublimely comic interlude where Messner gets this unusually expressive massage from one of his porters, a little guy wearing giant mirror aviator shades, who dances his hands all over Messner’s head while Messner goes on about something I couldn’t concentrate on for doubling-over in laughter.
‘The Dark Glow’ can be found on New Yorker’s Herzog Shorts Vol. 2, a nice collection of relatively obscure works, and a package for which I have only one, albeit sizable, complaint. ‘The Dark Glow’ has no subtitles! Instead it offers supremely lame English-language dubbing over of both the narration and Messner and Kammerlander’s comments. Anyone familiar with Herzog’s distinctive oratorical style will surely be distracted by this, though if for some reason the original German soundtrack was unavailable I guess I’m just grateful to be able to see the film at all, as well as the other two others featured here.
‘Ballad of the Little Soldier’ (84) begins with the image of a child in a jungle singing merrily along to ‘La Niña de la mochila azul,’ a Mexican ranchera playing on a portable cassette player. He’s also wielding what if I’m not mistaken is an AK-47. Co-directed with Denis Reichle, who was himself a soldier in the German national militia at the age of 14, this investigation into the proliferation of Miskito child resistance fighters in Nicaragua seems at first blush the most didactic work in Herzog’s oeuvre.
But while Herzog’s sober voice-over strives to educate viewers on the plight of the Miskitos, who allegedly suffered tremendous losses at the hands of Sandinistas, leaving countless children without parents and hungry for justice, ‘Ballad’ clearly divorces itself from any polemical arguments for or against the Sandinista cause. It’s a truly heart-rending, nerve-wracking film—with Herzog himself apparently filming under fire—that, like Tarkovsky’s Ivan’s Childhood (64), reveals just how disturbingly devoted children in warfare can be. Robbed of family, familiar with death yet regarding their future as something altogether abstract, they lack the sort of fear that can paralyze adults in certain decisive moments.
The final short on the disc is ‘Precautions Against Fanatics’ (69), a wonderfully bizarre, 11-minute film sculpted like an avant-garde poem. There is a man—perhaps a precursor to Treadwell—who’s appointed himself a guardian of racehorses. He demonstrates his capabilities by karate chopping pieces of wood. There is another man, older, moustahced, with one arm tucked inside his clothing, who says only he understands the horses and demands that the first man should go away. Which of these is the real guardian of the horses is a genuine mystery, though I must say I never sensed the horses were in any grave danger.
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