Beyond the memes: Werner Herzog and The Ecstatic Truth exhibition

Werner Herzog has many great films to his name, but these days he has become perhaps even more famous as a cultural figure or meme than as a director. In The Ecstatic Truth, the extensive exhibition about Herzog and his work that ran from June to October this year at the Eye Filmmuseum in Amsterdam, that dispiriting fact was turned to its own advantage. 

In the first room were three screens featuring extracts from Herzog’s own films and from documentaries about him. They showed Herzog talking about himself, delivering some of the hilarious lines he is known for, and laying out his view of humanity, nature, the world at large, as well as his own life and childhood. With refreshing frankness and humour, the exhibition therefore acknowledged the extent to which Herzog has always played a part in his own mythmaking.

But if it began with the man, it was only to then better focus on the work. In the main room were several larger screens showing extracts – not entirely chronological – from a small selection of the more than 50 features he’s directed. Although in varying formats and on a wide range of scales, his films are all recognisably ‘Herzogian’, and it’s rewarding to see and think about the echoes between films that weren’t necessarily made in the same era. His film about ski jumping (The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, 1974) was juxtaposed with his absurdist second feature Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) – both are contemplative in different ways. Nearby was another screen showing exclusively Fata Morgana (1971), perhaps his most abstract work. Further on were Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) and Grizzly Man (2005), two films made eight years apart that look at their somewhat naive subjects with a mix of curiosity, horror and admiration. 

It can be tempting to consider Herzog’s work purely within the realm of ideas, but the selection of artefacts on display gave a vivid sense of the practical implications of his radical approach to filmmaking. Many of the documents shown were about admin, such as the letters exchanged with the film assessment body of Wiesbaden that initially refused to award Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) a distinction due to its historical inaccuracy. Herzog argued that if the film “deviates from the facts on many points,” it is because “it should not be a reproduction of a colonial-historical succession of events, but rather about the ‘myth’ of colonialism itself.” His objection was accepted, but other documents speak of more fraught relationships with official bodies, like the forged film permit for Fitzcarraldo (1982).

Seeing the crushed mosquitoes between the pages of the latter film’s shooting script makes the notoriously difficult shoot suddenly return from the realm of the myth and re-enter reality. Like the documents about projects that ultimately weren’t made, or the letters from TV viewers about Herzog’s films as they were broadcast for the first time, these artefacts give a palpable sense of all the effort – some of it glamorously dangerous, but most of it terribly boring – that has gone into this search for “ecstatic truth”, at a time when Herzog’s meme status risks making us take it for granted. 

The aptly named exhibition kept this contrast between the hard, cold facts and the truth Herzog is chasing at the front of our minds. The texts outlined what in the films is fictional, but there was also an entire section dedicated to the debates and controversies around Herzog’s work and methods. Next to the small screen showing scenes from Little Dieter Needs to Fly and Grizzly Man, the text drew attention to the 1997 controversy where German public television broadcaster ZDF demanded that professional actors be used to act out the scenes that Dieter Dengler is re-enacting in the film from his own life. Another screen revolved around Herzog’s representation of people with disabilities, noting that while his documentaries on the subject from the early 1970s are well-regarded, Even Dwarfs Started Small, which features a cast of dwarf actors playing inmates at an island institution, remains controversial.

Rather than keep these debates firmly in the past or sealed off as simply part of Herzog’s history, the exhibition made a point to open them up and to show that they might be more relevant than ever. One installation of six screens showed newly commissioned interviews with various thinkers and experts talking about these controversies – a small part of the exhibition, but a nice touch, striking a good balance between celebrating and debating the man and his films.

Fans of the myth and the legend could, however, still indulge in (nearly) unbridled celebration in the room dedicated to Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), with a large screen showing scenes from the film and, most importantly, a series of spectacular props. Attached to the (fake?) dagger and (false?) nails worn by Klaus Kinski were the ink-penned labels created by the film’s production designer, once again blurring the distinction between facts and fiction. Even then, a small screen brought up the issues surrounding the film’s star Klaus Kinski, from his reportedly conflictual rapport with Herzog to his harassing behaviour with others.

It would be foolish for anyone to claim they had the last word on Werner Herzog, and this exhibition chose instead to remain open-ended, stimulating visitors’ curiosity and challenging their preconceptions. Conceived and organised in cooperation with Deutsche Kinemathek, Berlin, which manages the filmmaker’s ever expanding archive, this extensive assemblage of Herzog facts, artefacts and legends allowed for a complete immersion into his world. 

Werner Herzog: The Ecstatic Truth ran at Eye Filmmuseum, Amsterdam.