Werner Herzog impersonation + notes about Herzog's book (under more info)

A short amateur take-off of Werner Herzog narrating an imaginary film about the banal activity of driving a bus. Apologies for the poor sound quality.

There are good reasons to regard Herzog as the outstanding living film-maker. It is easy to take him off, but that is not incompatible with loving his work. I note that his book Conquest of the Useless is out now in English translation. The book is mildly marred by shoddy editing, but the content is on the highest artistic level and stands up to Herzogs best films.

The book is based on journal entries penned during the making of Fitzcarraldo (1979-81). In terms of production disasters, the film probably has no rivals in cinematic history. Critics reviewing the book in the English-speaking world have focused on these disasters. This is not entirely unreasonable, but it does miss the main point. More than anything else, Conquest of the Useless is a significant meditation on our relations to nature, our psychology when we are at the limits of what we can bear, and the power of imagination. It proceeds on a very high literary level. Throughout the book there are beautiful echoes of Hölderlin, Kleist, and Joseph Conrad. Writers who evidently mean a great deal to Herzog. Herzog has said recently, that in the darkest hours he takes refuge in language - not images; not music. (Why has none of this been noticed? Perhaps, because the book has been reviewed by film critics with a limited understanding of literature . . . perhaps, because the book is rather difficult to categorize stylistically . . .)

A few words about the Fitzcarraldo the movie. A large steamship, and more precisely the vision of heaving it over a mountain in the jungle, becomes the vehicle for two kinds of dreams. Fitzcarraldo, an opera-obsessed rubber trader, has his dreams (to access rubber trees; to bring grand opera to the jungle); the Indians have theirs (to sacrifice the ship to a God by sinking it in the rapids of a river on the other side of the mountain). One might add the audiences dreams too. But in the end, all possible dreams merge and dissolve into an all embracing whole. The act becomes an end in itself, a self-contained act of transcendence. A jungle fever- dream (as Herzog calls it) that touches on purposes which belong to all of us, but about which we are -or have become- inarticulate.

This seems to me to answer Herzog's question. He has explained that lifting the boat over the mountain represents a great metaphor, adding, however, that he does not know for what. But that is surely too modest, and possibly a misrepresentation of Herzog's intentions. The point is that it is a wonderfully open-ended metaphor; a mould, which, without being unduly open-ended, can nevertheless accommodate more than one kind of dream. And that open-ended quality is, possibly, what makes Fitzcarraldo the most accessible of all cinematic masterpieces.
(In retrospect I realise that two sentences in my impersonation come from the book. The first is: To fail to embrace my dreams now would be a disgrace so great that sin itself would not be able to find a name for it (a pronouncement Herzog makes when his project looks effectively dead). The second is: Language itself resists calling it rain. It may also be guessed that by vocation I am a philosopher; only catastrophic acting abilities are in evidence in my take-off!)

Category:

Comedy

Tags:

• Werner
• Herzog
• Fitzcarraldo
• impersonation
• impression

[janleenknegt]

Best Herzog impersonation out there! Works great layered onto the Forgotten Dreams soundtrack.

[forkfidelity]

awesome. nailed it

[leo7137]

:)

[BeauJames59]

made me smile...

[Dilapsor]

Wow, this is a really good impersonation. You absolutely nailed the way he emphasizes his speech.

[akroyd]

volume, dude.

[friday13th1]

Awesome impersonation and great speech! :D The 'more' at 0:38 is exactly like Werner himself would say it :)

[voltageclamp2001]

I dont know what this metaphor stands for, only that it is a great metaphor.