Herzog: Ecstatic Truths, a retrospective dedicated to Werner Herzog's documentary work, will be running on Mubi in the United States from March 31 - May 20, 2016. It will be followed by Herzog: Ecstatic Fictions, devoted to the director's fictional features.“The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor." In white letters sharply defined against a black screen, Blaise Pascal’s famous quote fittingly opens Lessons of Darkness (1992), Werner Herzog’s spectacular documentary about ecological disaster and the Gulf War. I say fittingly because the quote is fake (it was fabricated by Herzog to direct his audience to engage on a very “high level” before the movie even properly begins) and because Lessons of Darkness, for all its profundity, isn’t exactly a true documentary, either. It is, however, exemplary of Herzog's nonfiction style.Werner Herzog’s fame has been focused on his feature-length fiction films since...
- 3/31/2016
- by Ben Simington
- MUBI
In his first ever feature documentary, Werner Herzog has created something of a "60 Minutes" piece without the narration and asides. We've come to experience Herzog's documentaries with his interjections and narration guiding us down narrative paths we otherwise might not have considered, but here he leaves everything up to the observer as he documents a brief moment in the life of a handful of people afflicted with deafblindness, largely from the perspective of 56-year-old Fini Straubinger. The documentary begins with Straubinger and several others she's in consistent communication. She has maintained a certain level of speech having gone deaf and blind as a teenager, but many of the people around her communicate largely through the use of what is referred to as the Lorm alphabet, in which a variety of strokes on someone's hand eventually spells out words so as to essentially "talk" to one another. It's clear what they are doing,...
- 7/11/2014
- by Brad Brevet
- Rope of Silicon
A man said to the universe:
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
"A sense of obligation."
--Stephen Crane
 
That man can be found at the center of Werner Herzog's films. He is Aguirre. He is Fitzcarraldo. He is the Nosferatu. He is Timothy Treadwell, who lived among the grizzlies. He is Little Dieter Dengler, who needed to fly. She is Fini Straubinger, who lived in a land of silence and darkness since she was 12. He is Kaspar Hauser. He is Klaus Kinski. He is the man who will not leave the slopes of the Guadeloupe volcano when it is about to explode. He is those who live in the Antarctic. She is Juliana Koepcke, whose plane crashed in the rain forest and she walked out alive. He is Graham Dorrington, who flew one of the smallest airships ever built...
"Sir, I exist!"
"However," replied the universe,
"The fact has not created in me
"A sense of obligation."
--Stephen Crane
 
That man can be found at the center of Werner Herzog's films. He is Aguirre. He is Fitzcarraldo. He is the Nosferatu. He is Timothy Treadwell, who lived among the grizzlies. He is Little Dieter Dengler, who needed to fly. She is Fini Straubinger, who lived in a land of silence and darkness since she was 12. He is Kaspar Hauser. He is Klaus Kinski. He is the man who will not leave the slopes of the Guadeloupe volcano when it is about to explode. He is those who live in the Antarctic. She is Juliana Koepcke, whose plane crashed in the rain forest and she walked out alive. He is Graham Dorrington, who flew one of the smallest airships ever built...
- 2/2/2013
- by Roger Ebert
- blogs.suntimes.com/ebert
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