According to IMDb trivia most of the actors were hypnotized by Herzog and given instructions to carry out while acting. Aware of this many comments mention the hypnotizing quality of the movie. The movie is slow and very weird, indeed. Take one scene: Two men sit at a table, they drink beer and talk about a prophecy that one of them will sleep off his hangover lying on the dead body of the other. In the course of this conversation one tears the other at his hair, who hits back with his beer mug, and so on. Later we see that the prophecy has come true. And later on the living is taking the dead one into the tavern to dance with his corpse.
Heart of glass was written by Herbert Achternbusch, a prolific Bavarian film-maker and author who got some (mostly local) attention during the 1970s/80s because of his ruthless opposition against the Bavarian reactionary catholic government (personated by the late Franz Josef Strauss). The movie bears a lot of resemblance to Achternbusch's other works. Since Herzog is much better known world-wide I will focus on Achternbusch's contribution here.
Achternbusch always mixes his own strange private mythology with regional influences from Northern Bavaria (Niederbayern, Bayrischer Wald) and other (often ancient Greek, but also all kinds of 'native') mythology. The outcome is not very accessible, of course, but there are some threads which help to read his works.
There is the anarchist despise of power and the sympathy with the victims of power. But this sympathy never leads to illusions about the poor and the wretched. They are ugly, because they are made ugly, their emotions are coarse - like in the scene described above, where two friends are only able to express their affection through violence and death. In Achternbusch's works the only place outside a world where power and violence affect everyone and everything is ruled by absurdity. Where he fails to make sense, his journey to freedom begins. Not unlike his fellow countryman Karl Valentin, he explores the limits of his own language because language is reason is the tool of the powerful.
Achternbusch once said that the only genuine national culture which post-war Germany had left after Worldwar II was that it had no national culture, and that it is losing this as well after 1989. "Heart of Glass" follows a similar 'logic': The industrial revolution (represented here by the glass-works) once was carried by a dream, a secret knowledge (the red ruby). This vision of turning the world in a gleaming cold world of glass was terrible in itself yet bore some beauty. Now that this dream is lost, industrialization is running loose turning the world into a burning hell, aka Worldwars I and II.
But here I shall stop trying to make sense of the movie, it refuses to yield to reason and so shall I.
P.S.: Funny to talk about "Spoilers" when it comes to movies like this.
Heart of glass was written by Herbert Achternbusch, a prolific Bavarian film-maker and author who got some (mostly local) attention during the 1970s/80s because of his ruthless opposition against the Bavarian reactionary catholic government (personated by the late Franz Josef Strauss). The movie bears a lot of resemblance to Achternbusch's other works. Since Herzog is much better known world-wide I will focus on Achternbusch's contribution here.
Achternbusch always mixes his own strange private mythology with regional influences from Northern Bavaria (Niederbayern, Bayrischer Wald) and other (often ancient Greek, but also all kinds of 'native') mythology. The outcome is not very accessible, of course, but there are some threads which help to read his works.
There is the anarchist despise of power and the sympathy with the victims of power. But this sympathy never leads to illusions about the poor and the wretched. They are ugly, because they are made ugly, their emotions are coarse - like in the scene described above, where two friends are only able to express their affection through violence and death. In Achternbusch's works the only place outside a world where power and violence affect everyone and everything is ruled by absurdity. Where he fails to make sense, his journey to freedom begins. Not unlike his fellow countryman Karl Valentin, he explores the limits of his own language because language is reason is the tool of the powerful.
Achternbusch once said that the only genuine national culture which post-war Germany had left after Worldwar II was that it had no national culture, and that it is losing this as well after 1989. "Heart of Glass" follows a similar 'logic': The industrial revolution (represented here by the glass-works) once was carried by a dream, a secret knowledge (the red ruby). This vision of turning the world in a gleaming cold world of glass was terrible in itself yet bore some beauty. Now that this dream is lost, industrialization is running loose turning the world into a burning hell, aka Worldwars I and II.
But here I shall stop trying to make sense of the movie, it refuses to yield to reason and so shall I.
P.S.: Funny to talk about "Spoilers" when it comes to movies like this.