Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer

I do not dream.

Very, very rarely.

I always feel it as a void,

something that was missing.

But I do have an equivalent of dreams when I'm...

...when I'm walking, for example.

Or sometimes when I'm driving very long distances,

when I'm over twenty hours in the car,

all of a sudden, the car fills with insects and butterflies

that are crowding around.

My existence has a meaning

when I'm trying to do a story

where now it is deep inside all of us.

And there are certain things that I recognize as being in us,

but they have not been articulated yet.

And that's, for me, an equivalent to dream.

I just try to remain a good soldier.

I mean a good soldier of cinema.

He has searched every corner of the world

and collected some of the most rapturous dreams

that transcended the mundane,

that contributed to our collective cosmic dream.

I feel that, for great filmmakers, for true artists,

Werner's work opens up whole approaches,

makes things possible that would not otherwise be possible.

An impossible story, an impossible task, and an impossible dream,

shot by someone who also is an impossible dreamer,

magnified and also validated all of us also having impossible dreams.

And no one else can do the style as well.

You can't really imitate this - it's impossible.

I mean, you can kind of parody it,

but it's impossible to actually see the world how he sees it.

I mean, the fact that you would come up with...

...moving a ship across a mountain...

Uh, what?

That's fresh. That's new.

That's badass.

That's Werner Herzog.

Excuse me, my name is Walter Hottenhoffer,

and I'm in the pharmaceutical business.

I was imprisoned in Siberia.

I spent my first winter wearing a dead man's coat.

A hole in one pocket.

I chewed these fingers off before the frostbite could turn to gangrene.

I mean, look at Werner's face, right?

He's got a good face, right?

He's got a really fascinating face,

so he can just sit there and do nothing and you're, "Oh yeah, fantastic, yeah."

I think many people do not know how to deal with me.

They are puzzled.

So, I'm, uh... something that disquiets them.

All my films come out from pain.

That's the source.

That's where they come from. Not from pleasure.

I think there's something about him that is so hypnotic.

I've dwelled among the humans.

Their entire culture is built around their penises.

It's funny to say they are small,

it's funny to say they are big.

'We wanted to get a quick exterior shot

'of Herzog in his native habitat

'when things took an unexpected turn.'

In Germany, I've somehow left the paved road.

- Mm-hmm. - Nobody cares about my films.

For example, let's...

What was that?

Werner called and he said, "I don't know quite how to tell you,

"but strange things have happened the last couple of days."

'We quickly realised

'that some whacko had taken a pot shot at us with an air rifle

'and Herzog had been hit.'

With an air rifle, right?

Some nutty fan.

He has to be very careful. Wow!

You what?

You were shot?

Why didn't you call the police?

And so Werner said the classic Werner line,

"It wasn't that serious of a gunshot wound."

- You're bleeding! - I think here somewhere, yeah.

Look! I mean, that's...

Somebody shot at you and created a wound in your abdomen.

It's not significant.

Werner ate the shoe?

Oh, that's right.

I mean, that sounds like it probably is true.

Is it true?

Well, he cooked it. He didn't actually eat it.

Well, I believe that he could eat his shoe.

Did he eat the whole shoe?

A few questions while he's preparing it.

He makes himself a target for unlikely events

because he wants that, right?

He wants a fascinating life.

And that will come your way if you declare you want that.

'What does memory do to human beings?

'How does it shift?

'How do we form our existence through memory?

'There's no truth in memory.'

We lived in this building here, these lower windows,

and on top there was another family of refugees.

We were displaced by the war.

That was a kitchen.

It's all empty now, yeah.

This was the kitchen, but it was smaller.

- You see there, it was until the table here... - Yeah.

...and then there was a room.

There was here a room which was only that wide. Not much.

And there were two beds, Til and I,

and there was only that much space to the next wall,

and there was a third room for my mother.

So, it was...

And no heating in there.

- You see, they took the wall out. - Right.

Doesn't exist like it...

- But I don't want to go inside. - Why not?

No, it doesn't feel right.

- Then we don't. - Yeah.

My father did not live with us.

He left the family fairly soon after my birth,

and I'm glad that I didn't grow up with a father,

with a commander-in-chief, somehow.

It was anarchy in the best sense.

No rules, we set our own rules.

We would have assigned one loaf of bread for the week,

and my mother would make, with a knife, marks or grooves for Monday, Tuesday...

And we would always be hungry,

and sometimes by Friday the bread was eaten,

and we would hang on her skirt and would cry

and ask for something to eat.

And my mother... it's terrible!

For children, it's OK, but for mothers it's terrible.

She, uh...

One day, I remember, she abruptly turned around to us

and very calm and very controlled said to us,

"if I could cut it out of my ribs, I would cut it out of my ribs, but I cannot.

"So, you will stay hungry until Monday."

Shall we go to the waterfall?

We could have a look at the waterfall, yeah, yeah.

That's my favourite place.

- Let's go, then. - All right.

I'm not crying because of emotion.

It's my place.

It's where I belong.

You see, sometimes I believe...

...that people carry in them a landscape of their soul.

I've spoken often about it in films, also. It has become very important.

But that's where I belong.

That's my landscape.

That's me.

Yeah?

That was good.

That kid is good.

When you come over a ramp and go into an abyss,

you will shrink back from it.

You would lean in and that would somersault you backwards.

But you have to lean into it.

You have to do the unnatural.

When you are really flying far, you are not a human anymore,

you would transform yourself.

You transmute yourself into a bird.

I really, really wanted to fly.

And I would give a lot if I could fly.

It's an injustice.

It's an injustice in my life that I haven't become an athlete.

And it's an injustice of nature that we do not have wings.

Nobody took me seriously because I was way too young,

but I boldly went to production companies,

and one of them, I remember, slapped his thighs and he shouted,

"Ah, the kindergarten is trying to make movies today."

It was not a school of film making - not like, let's say, neo-realism.

Thank God we didn't have a common style.

It was individual styles and individual characters.

They all lived in Munich.

He's taken something that's real, that's a quotidian landscape,

and made is something utterly ecstatic.

And the plot cracks open there

and gives way to this moment of oceanic consciousness

where the world just expands and we're in this... dream.

For years, I wanted to meet her.

I didn't dare to meet her.

Only through Lotte Eisner I started to see films by Murnau,

and I saw "Nosferatu".

She saw signs of life.

She immediately said, "This is finally film again

"after the time of Nazis."

And so it brought us together and we were kind of instant...

not deep friendship, but she became my mentor.

She was very important for me.

Do we know from which planet you are?

- Not really, no. - You don't know?

- But this is the planet, yes? - This is the planet, yes.

Your sandals are spectacular.

And you're doing what here now?

So, he was just making an offering to the water god over there.

- Yeah. - Now he's going to come up here...

Now he hears a voice come, he doesn't know where it's from.

And it's the mountain speaking to him.

So, he's about to find out who's talking to him.

- And who is the voice of the mountain? - I don't have one yet.