Tuesday, December 02, 2008

Der Märchenkönig and His Kingdoms by the Sea

Encounters at the End of the World (2007)
directed by Werner Herzog
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

I think Werner Herzog is too often mistaken for a contrarian, or worse, a misanthrope. But his narrative interjection over the story of a woman who clearly relishes recounting her tales of South American hitchhiking - "Her story goes on forever" - is really just impatience for people who overextend their wanderlust and inflate the things they've witnessed into some convoluted assessment of themselves. It is easy to see why the director is drawn to documentaries, but also why he is disappointed at the wind-blown emptiness that must follow each one of Encounter's self-described dreamers to bed.

Half the time, it seems, men and women go to places like McMurdo because they don't know what else to do. There is much to admire even in that, but fiction must sit at Herzog's shoulders, beckoning him back to the chance to make it better. After all, Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald achieves his dream; he gets Caruso. Kinski's smile in the Iquito swamps is nothing if not genuine. And Fitzcarraldo is a much better movie than Burden of Dreams.