Herz aus Glas

Werner Herzog, the creator of the fascinating Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, the Wrath of God, is a maverick, an original who ignores the audience's response and makes his own films. This one was preceded by a rumour that the actors involved in it were hypnotised, which is of course gossip, but it really seemed that way, given how stiffly they deliver their lines and how unnatural they seem in their acting. The film does have a captivating "Herzog" atmosphere, with a brutally slow-moving plot and plenty of absurd situations that look truly bizarre. The villagers walk around like zombies cut out of a Romero film, two guys sit at a table opposite each other in a tavern and with a completely impassive expression, without a single word or meaning to the plot, pull each other's hair, pour beer on each other, and smash glasses over each other's heads and talk about it, as they lie on top of each other, then another guy with a stiff motion and a fan of cards in his hand goes to look at the fire and then comes back again without a word, some villager dances with his dead friend, and to top it all off, constant cuts to an emaciated old man in a chair, etc. etc. Some may call it paintings with philosophical overtones, others may be genuinely amused, some may even be disgusted. The plot revolves around a village glassworks and the search for the recipe of the glassworks' signature product – ruby glass – which a local took with him to the grave. Everything is watched from afar and the story is essentially guided by a character who lives in the mountains, can predict the future and spews out one philosophical idea after another. The story is refreshed by shots of magically beautiful natural scenery (the ones in the opening are deliberately as if from a faulty filmstrip) accompanied by impressive music. All together, they form a whole that can bore someone to death with its narrative style and make another stare at the screen in fascination. For me it's something in between, that's why I give it a neutral 3*. Really hard to judge. (18.03.2006)

Another one of Herzog's "historical" films, but just like the others, this film does not strive for faithful historical reconstruction (and it doesn't even attempt to construct a story here!). The German past of the late 18th and early 19th centuries allows him to capture the turning point, the change that European culture of that time brought into the lives of everyone - Herzog's films are populated with irrational characters from the pre-modern era, believers in prophecies, superstitions, rituals, people so different from us "modern" individuals. It is precisely this period of change, or rather, just before this change (the industrial revolution, modernity, etc.), that the director focuses on (and, for example, clearly refers to in the opening scene, evoking images of the romanticism period by Caspar Friedrich). It is precisely this time before the great historical change that provides him an image of what Europe and every individual irreversibly lost - whether it be forests, the mystical trembling from hearing the prophecies of a brilliant shepherd, or ruby glass, which serves as a metaphor for these losses within the film. (30.01.2015)