Matt Shea
RubySoho
Morgan Bell
Cibbuano
David O'Connell
Mountain Fog
Heart of Glass
January 27th 2010 06:43
by Matt Shea
Almost 50 years into his career, the uninhibited creativity of Werner Herzog shows no signs of drying up. With close to 30 features to his name – many of them documentaries – Herzog has made a name for himself as being the most tireless of filmmakers, his inquisitive imagination constantly finding fresh subjects and turning new ideas.
It’s interesting, then, to discover a Herzog film that’s left of field even by the Bavarian filmmaker’s own outrageous standards. Heart of Glass is such a work, packed so full of both storytelling and subtextual ideas that it almost sinks under its own impressive weight.
Providing the basic narrative structure of the film is Hias (Josef Bierbichler), a cowherd profit who actually existed in 18th century Bavaria. Hias acts as the audience’s cypher when he predicts and then witnesses the slow self-destruction of a local village.
When we join the story, the village’s most gifted glass blower has died, taking with him to the grave the secret of ruby glass, a delicate and precious substance that is the staple of the local economy. The owner of the glass factory (Stefan Guttler) desperately tries to find the secret of the glass and thus save the town from ruin, but his single-minded pursuit slowly drives him and his people mad, while Hias watches on in despair at what he sees as a grim portent for the end of the world.
Writer-director Herzog uses this basic setup as a clotheshorse on which to hang a bagful of ideas, most of which are successful on their own, but not necessarily so good when combined together as a whole. There’s seemingly something for everyone in Heart of Glass, and that might be part of its problem, the film in danger of lobbing too many ideas about the place when just a few would suffice.
Probably the most infamous storytelling technique used by Herzog was his decision to hypnotise virtually the entire cast. It’s the most fascinating aspect of this film and also the most perplexing, illustrating how dedicated the filmmaker was to capturing a particular mood, even if it meant sacrificing his performers’ abilities to work with their own characters.
It also drives home how concerned Herzog was with the visual elements of his film. There’s a flowing poetry to his widescreen imagery, which frequently eschews the crisp, wintry nature of its setting to settle on expansive Irish archipelagos or bubbling geysers in Yellowstone National Park, as if in an effort to indicate the universal nature of the story he’s telling.
The symbolism runs rampant in the smaller aspects as well. For instance, Herzog’s constant riffing on the colour red seeps into every corner of the film, from the gleaming ruby glass to a young maid’s blood and even the strange, scarlet beak wattle of one character’s ever-present duck.
Yet, despite the filmmaker’s cavalcade of obtuse imagery and stark symbolism, his ultimate message seems clear: Art is what separates us from other animals, and without it we lose our humanity. It’s a point that’s driven home with some gusto as the villagers turn to madness, the hypnotised state of the players bringing them that much closer to the more base elements of human behaviour.
And as Hias watches the catatonic self-destruction of the village (incidentally, Josef Bierbichler was the only member of the cast not to be hypnotised), his prophecies rush forward in time to modern history and a fate for Germany that both the filmmaker and the audience knows only too well.
Heart of Glass can be maddening to watch. Despite the depth of imagination on display and cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein’s darkly beautiful imagery, the film sometimes moves with all the speed and grace of a tugboat, its narrative weighed down to almost sinking point with the ideas packed aboard. But despite its deficiencies and Herzog being openly mystified by some of his own creative decisions of 35 years ago, Heart of Glass remains a fascinating film. It encourages and yet consistently confounds critical dissection, instead taking on the qualities of a fascinating dreamscape, one that offers abundant exploration but never a final explanation.
I say: One of Herzog’s most challenging films and a work that seemed to sometimes defy even his intimidating levels of aptitude.
See it for: Some of the most rampant somnambulism you’re ever likely to witness; krautrockers Popol Vuh’s score is excellent also!
*This image is from Superdigit
Almost 50 years into his career, the uninhibited creativity of Werner Herzog shows no signs of drying up. With close to 30 features to his name – many of them documentaries – Herzog has made a name for himself as being the most tireless of filmmakers, his inquisitive imagination constantly finding fresh subjects and turning new ideas.
It’s interesting, then, to discover a Herzog film that’s left of field even by the Bavarian filmmaker’s own outrageous standards. Heart of Glass is such a work, packed so full of both storytelling and subtextual ideas that it almost sinks under its own impressive weight.
Providing the basic narrative structure of the film is Hias (Josef Bierbichler), a cowherd profit who actually existed in 18th century Bavaria. Hias acts as the audience’s cypher when he predicts and then witnesses the slow self-destruction of a local village.
When we join the story, the village’s most gifted glass blower has died, taking with him to the grave the secret of ruby glass, a delicate and precious substance that is the staple of the local economy. The owner of the glass factory (Stefan Guttler) desperately tries to find the secret of the glass and thus save the town from ruin, but his single-minded pursuit slowly drives him and his people mad, while Hias watches on in despair at what he sees as a grim portent for the end of the world.
Writer-director Herzog uses this basic setup as a clotheshorse on which to hang a bagful of ideas, most of which are successful on their own, but not necessarily so good when combined together as a whole. There’s seemingly something for everyone in Heart of Glass, and that might be part of its problem, the film in danger of lobbing too many ideas about the place when just a few would suffice.
Probably the most infamous storytelling technique used by Herzog was his decision to hypnotise virtually the entire cast. It’s the most fascinating aspect of this film and also the most perplexing, illustrating how dedicated the filmmaker was to capturing a particular mood, even if it meant sacrificing his performers’ abilities to work with their own characters.
It also drives home how concerned Herzog was with the visual elements of his film. There’s a flowing poetry to his widescreen imagery, which frequently eschews the crisp, wintry nature of its setting to settle on expansive Irish archipelagos or bubbling geysers in Yellowstone National Park, as if in an effort to indicate the universal nature of the story he’s telling.
The symbolism runs rampant in the smaller aspects as well. For instance, Herzog’s constant riffing on the colour red seeps into every corner of the film, from the gleaming ruby glass to a young maid’s blood and even the strange, scarlet beak wattle of one character’s ever-present duck.
Yet, despite the filmmaker’s cavalcade of obtuse imagery and stark symbolism, his ultimate message seems clear: Art is what separates us from other animals, and without it we lose our humanity. It’s a point that’s driven home with some gusto as the villagers turn to madness, the hypnotised state of the players bringing them that much closer to the more base elements of human behaviour.
And as Hias watches the catatonic self-destruction of the village (incidentally, Josef Bierbichler was the only member of the cast not to be hypnotised), his prophecies rush forward in time to modern history and a fate for Germany that both the filmmaker and the audience knows only too well.
Heart of Glass can be maddening to watch. Despite the depth of imagination on display and cinematographer Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein’s darkly beautiful imagery, the film sometimes moves with all the speed and grace of a tugboat, its narrative weighed down to almost sinking point with the ideas packed aboard. But despite its deficiencies and Herzog being openly mystified by some of his own creative decisions of 35 years ago, Heart of Glass remains a fascinating film. It encourages and yet consistently confounds critical dissection, instead taking on the qualities of a fascinating dreamscape, one that offers abundant exploration but never a final explanation.
I say: One of Herzog’s most challenging films and a work that seemed to sometimes defy even his intimidating levels of aptitude.
See it for: Some of the most rampant somnambulism you’re ever likely to witness; krautrockers Popol Vuh’s score is excellent also!
'Heart of Glass' is now available on DVD from Umbrella Entertainment
*This image is from Superdigit
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Comment by David O'Connell
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...I read an interview with Herzog that said that he screened the movie with an audience that underwent hypnosis and it went very, very well. He wanted to make a link between the actors that were hypnotized on film and the audience that would hypnotize themselves... I wonder if that would work?
Comment by Matt Shea
20/20 Filmsight
Cool, I need to find somebody to hypnotise me...