Werner Herzog is basically like if Indiana Jones were a real guy. He's been to the most extreme places on Earth, including Antarctica and the rainforests of Machu Picchu. He began his career by stealing movie equipment and recruiting a psychopath to star as his lead. He literally scaled a mountain with a steamboat one time just to capture it on film. And for Heart of Glass he directed an entire film during which the majority of the cast was under hypnosis. Seriously. The idea was to be able to pass this feeling on to the audience, to be able to hypnotise anyone who watches it. And boy does it work. Herzog translates perfectly the feeling of life in a small village wherein mundane labor is spread across the ancient and unmovable hills, mountains and streams. One where any human society seems almost impossibly small and feeble in the face of the grandness of nature, and where everything moves at a pace that threatens to overwhelm by its sheer glacial fortitude, but to be under the effect of some trance is simply to be. But this is also a dark dream, a tale of madness and fire and death. And its spell can be hard to break.
Eric Day co-hosts the Murderville Podcast at www.welcometomurderville.com
Give it a listen. Five minutes. Maybe you'll dig it. Maybe you'll hate it. But at least you'll have tried something new.
