Night 4: Green Snakes, White Mountains, Red Face-Paint, Purple Pomp, and Yellow Oil Fires
Posted by Chris S.
Night 4's over. A few clinkers in this batch, though a few that took off lopsided righted themselves before journey's end. First and last features sealed the deal.
Cobra Verde, the final collaborative picture with Klaus Kinski, was another absolutely dramatic classic. I've heard talk about how this one is flawed or not up to the best Herzog/Kinski films, but that still leaves plenty of margin on the ol' Bell Curve. Oh, so you're only working at 93% intensity instead of 97%? Oh well, I think I'll live.
I guess maybe the objections to this film might be that it's "just" an action pic, more so than most. But it's a hell of an action pic! The shots of Cobra Verde training the amazon women for battle (a battle that never comes, I'd like to point out) is unforgettable (R. Lee Ermey seems like a creampuff in comparison!). Lemme see yer war face, indeed! The image of the long-distance flag telegram system was truly unique, as was the carpet of skulls in front of the insane king of Dahomey.
What I really took from it, though, were two scenes that lifted it above historical character drama (two among many, but these two especially!). First was Cobra Verde trying to drag an escape boat out to sea, a boat which is too heavy for him. Apart from the "do it yourself Fitzcarraldo" vibe, this was one of the most dreamlike imagines I've seen in any of Herzog's films. These are the kinds of dreams I relate to. A strangely deformed African man (who walks on all fours) is far down the beach, shambling his way toward Kinski. The two of them are the only ones in the shot. Kinski is desperately trying to drag, pull, or push the ship into the water and get away. Those are the dreams I remember most vividly through the years...trying to move forward, but being held back by an immovable object, pushing forward and getting nowhere, while nearby, something vaguely frightning but not menacing ambles toward you. THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!
Second is the scene where it's revealed that slavery is being abolished all over the world, and that the way of life of the slave traders is about to become obsolete. Cobra Verde and one of his men drink a toast. The other man says "To slavery....the greatest misunderstanding ever created by the human race." Kinski trumps him. "It was not a misunderstanding, it was a crime." Finally he toasts "to the ruin of us all." BALLS. I love the way his character (presumably) knew all along that his primary form of employment was wrong, but did what he had to do to survive. There's none of that contrived gnashing of teeth like you see in conventional dramas, where the people obviously painted as BAD GUYS have to stay bad guys and go "Noooooo! I can't lose my palace! I'm a king here!!! THIS MUST NEVER END!!" and then put a dueling pistol to their head or something. This nuance makes the character stickier, and more prone to come up in your backbrain while you're walking to the store.
Next, Wodaabe: Herdsmen of the Sun. A lot of people filled in all at once here, so the movie kind of got lost. The male fashion show bits were definitely a hit, but what struck me was listening to African men, presumably in their late teens/early twenties, living in poverty in lean-tos grafted to the grassy plains of the "half-desert" of the Sahara, who still managed to talk (assuming the translation is reliable) in the sort of language you'd expect to hear from teenagers in any suburb in America. "I don't consider myself attractive" and "What was it you saw in me? Was it my beauty, or my personality?" sound like quotes from Sixteen magazine, which makes it all the more interesting when spoken by nomadic African males. I mean, I KNOW intuitively that we're all kind of the same deep down, but these sorts of things always seem like the privilege of the affluent and safe. Not so. It seems that "hot or not?" is just as viable a concept among the poorest and most reviled tribe in Africa as it is in Arlington Heights!
Jag Mandir didn't do it for anyone, myself included. A straightforward filming of a day-long celebration for the maharajah of Udaipur, it's got a bunch of jugglers nad musicians and sword swallowers and dancers and stuff, but it's paced horribly, and reads pretty much like any other dull National Geographic special. It does not seem like Werner had his whole heart in this part of the world.
Weirdest of the night had to be Scream Of Stone. Although based on a story given him by Reinhold Messner, the subject of The Dark Glow of the Mountains, the script was not written by Herzog himself. As he notes in "Herzog on Herzog," the script was full of problems, not the least of them being dialogue, which is contrived beyond belief; we're talking USA Movie of the Week here, folks. On the other hand, the scenery is actually more breathtaking than the comparatively low-to-the-ground documentation of Dark Glow, and the end scene is appropriately GLOOOOOOMY to count as a true Herzog creation. Also worth noting: this features the first gratuitous nudity in any Herzog film so far! Not to mention gratuitous overexposure of an electronic chess set that seems antiquated for 1991.
Tying up all loose ends, and redeeming the sins of Jag Mandir, Lessons in Darkness is a total home-run! Taking the style of Fata Morgana (alien landscapes, scant plot) and focusing it deeply, it's riveting from start to finish. The basic sci-fi plot (some far off planet or something is destroying itself once and for all...earthlings have discovered it and are trying to put out the blazes) allows us to distance the subject from the Gulf War and the reconstruction efforts and just concentrate on what we're seeing. What we're seeing is astounding....curtains of orange flame thundering out of the ground, miles upon miles of "oil seas," scorched trees, torture chambers, victims of torture who have lost their ability to speak (one mother notes that after the oil fires, "my child's tears come out black. When his nose runs, it is black. Even his spittle is black."), the use of explosives to smother large fires, images of frightening desolation and surreality, backed to a really overblown soundtrack of Greig and Wagner and the like. Some moments are in perfect sync with the soundtrack, while others benefit very little from the bombastic overtures. The sight that sticks with me most is actually the cranes which are scooping out....what, oil? Flaming dirt? Shale? Something. Anyway, as they scoop, hoses must be constantly dousing the crane, so that it does not melt. Near the end, several technicians throw flames back into extinguished oil wells, reigniting the flaming geysers. The narrative claims that "these men are unaccustomed to life without fire...now that the fire has returned, they will have something to put out again, and are happy." This is obviously a stylization, but a good one - your heart really jumps when you see them tossing lit flares back into extinguished areas! The reason for doing this is in Herzog on Herzog...it's not worth mentioning, just that the story takes a jump for having added this rogue element.
Time for bed now! Congratulations to Wendy McClure for winning some Klaus Kinski buttons tonight, and to Mike McPadden, for taking home the novelization of Nosferatu. See you tomorrow!
Night 4's over. A few clinkers in this batch, though a few that took off lopsided righted themselves before journey's end. First and last features sealed the deal.
Cobra Verde, the final collaborative picture with Klaus Kinski, was another absolutely dramatic classic. I've heard talk about how this one is flawed or not up to the best Herzog/Kinski films, but that still leaves plenty of margin on the ol' Bell Curve. Oh, so you're only working at 93% intensity instead of 97%? Oh well, I think I'll live.
I guess maybe the objections to this film might be that it's "just" an action pic, more so than most. But it's a hell of an action pic! The shots of Cobra Verde training the amazon women for battle (a battle that never comes, I'd like to point out) is unforgettable (R. Lee Ermey seems like a creampuff in comparison!). Lemme see yer war face, indeed! The image of the long-distance flag telegram system was truly unique, as was the carpet of skulls in front of the insane king of Dahomey.
What I really took from it, though, were two scenes that lifted it above historical character drama (two among many, but these two especially!). First was Cobra Verde trying to drag an escape boat out to sea, a boat which is too heavy for him. Apart from the "do it yourself Fitzcarraldo" vibe, this was one of the most dreamlike imagines I've seen in any of Herzog's films. These are the kinds of dreams I relate to. A strangely deformed African man (who walks on all fours) is far down the beach, shambling his way toward Kinski. The two of them are the only ones in the shot. Kinski is desperately trying to drag, pull, or push the ship into the water and get away. Those are the dreams I remember most vividly through the years...trying to move forward, but being held back by an immovable object, pushing forward and getting nowhere, while nearby, something vaguely frightning but not menacing ambles toward you. THAT'S what I'm talkin' about!
Second is the scene where it's revealed that slavery is being abolished all over the world, and that the way of life of the slave traders is about to become obsolete. Cobra Verde and one of his men drink a toast. The other man says "To slavery....the greatest misunderstanding ever created by the human race." Kinski trumps him. "It was not a misunderstanding, it was a crime." Finally he toasts "to the ruin of us all." BALLS. I love the way his character (presumably) knew all along that his primary form of employment was wrong, but did what he had to do to survive. There's none of that contrived gnashing of teeth like you see in conventional dramas, where the people obviously painted as BAD GUYS have to stay bad guys and go "Noooooo! I can't lose my palace! I'm a king here!!! THIS MUST NEVER END!!" and then put a dueling pistol to their head or something. This nuance makes the character stickier, and more prone to come up in your backbrain while you're walking to the store.
Next, Wodaabe: Herdsmen of the Sun. A lot of people filled in all at once here, so the movie kind of got lost. The male fashion show bits were definitely a hit, but what struck me was listening to African men, presumably in their late teens/early twenties, living in poverty in lean-tos grafted to the grassy plains of the "half-desert" of the Sahara, who still managed to talk (assuming the translation is reliable) in the sort of language you'd expect to hear from teenagers in any suburb in America. "I don't consider myself attractive" and "What was it you saw in me? Was it my beauty, or my personality?" sound like quotes from Sixteen magazine, which makes it all the more interesting when spoken by nomadic African males. I mean, I KNOW intuitively that we're all kind of the same deep down, but these sorts of things always seem like the privilege of the affluent and safe. Not so. It seems that "hot or not?" is just as viable a concept among the poorest and most reviled tribe in Africa as it is in Arlington Heights!
Jag Mandir didn't do it for anyone, myself included. A straightforward filming of a day-long celebration for the maharajah of Udaipur, it's got a bunch of jugglers nad musicians and sword swallowers and dancers and stuff, but it's paced horribly, and reads pretty much like any other dull National Geographic special. It does not seem like Werner had his whole heart in this part of the world.
Weirdest of the night had to be Scream Of Stone. Although based on a story given him by Reinhold Messner, the subject of The Dark Glow of the Mountains, the script was not written by Herzog himself. As he notes in "Herzog on Herzog," the script was full of problems, not the least of them being dialogue, which is contrived beyond belief; we're talking USA Movie of the Week here, folks. On the other hand, the scenery is actually more breathtaking than the comparatively low-to-the-ground documentation of Dark Glow, and the end scene is appropriately GLOOOOOOMY to count as a true Herzog creation. Also worth noting: this features the first gratuitous nudity in any Herzog film so far! Not to mention gratuitous overexposure of an electronic chess set that seems antiquated for 1991.
Tying up all loose ends, and redeeming the sins of Jag Mandir, Lessons in Darkness is a total home-run! Taking the style of Fata Morgana (alien landscapes, scant plot) and focusing it deeply, it's riveting from start to finish. The basic sci-fi plot (some far off planet or something is destroying itself once and for all...earthlings have discovered it and are trying to put out the blazes) allows us to distance the subject from the Gulf War and the reconstruction efforts and just concentrate on what we're seeing. What we're seeing is astounding....curtains of orange flame thundering out of the ground, miles upon miles of "oil seas," scorched trees, torture chambers, victims of torture who have lost their ability to speak (one mother notes that after the oil fires, "my child's tears come out black. When his nose runs, it is black. Even his spittle is black."), the use of explosives to smother large fires, images of frightening desolation and surreality, backed to a really overblown soundtrack of Greig and Wagner and the like. Some moments are in perfect sync with the soundtrack, while others benefit very little from the bombastic overtures. The sight that sticks with me most is actually the cranes which are scooping out....what, oil? Flaming dirt? Shale? Something. Anyway, as they scoop, hoses must be constantly dousing the crane, so that it does not melt. Near the end, several technicians throw flames back into extinguished oil wells, reigniting the flaming geysers. The narrative claims that "these men are unaccustomed to life without fire...now that the fire has returned, they will have something to put out again, and are happy." This is obviously a stylization, but a good one - your heart really jumps when you see them tossing lit flares back into extinguished areas! The reason for doing this is in Herzog on Herzog...it's not worth mentioning, just that the story takes a jump for having added this rogue element.
Time for bed now! Congratulations to Wendy McClure for winning some Klaus Kinski buttons tonight, and to Mike McPadden, for taking home the novelization of Nosferatu. See you tomorrow!
posted at 3:52 AM
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