In the preface to his 1991 “Memoirs,” Kingsley Amis stated, “I have already written an account of myself in twenty or more volumes, most of them called novels.” Amis published the memoirs anyway. It could be said of the protean filmmaker Werner Herzog that he’s presented a monumental and wide-ranging account of himself in the form of over 60 motion pictures. He’s also been the subject of two fantastic documentaries by Les Blank, “Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe” and “Burden of Dreams.” And on top of that, Herzog himself published a memoir this year.
One may wonder, then, about the possible utility value of Thomas von Steinaecker’s film “Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer,” a brisk documentary made with Herzog’s participation. It definitely exists, though, and might be more obvious had the picture been titled “The Young Person’s Guide to Werner Herzog.” It begins with Herzog’s unusual contemporary media celebrity and examines how he got it — honoring some of his most astonishing work, including the obsessive epics “Aguirre: The Wrath of God” and “Fitzcarraldo.”
The array of talking heads praising Herzog may seem random to the novice: Carl Weathers, Nicole Kidman and Chloé Zhao are among them, They’ve all worked with Herzog, or been his beneficiary somehow. Such is his cultural reach. The movie also provides a smart primer on the “New German Cinema” Herzog helped bring into being during the 1960s. An anecdote about how Herzog walked across Europe to heal the ailing German film critic Lotte Eisner — the connective tissue between Herzog and the 1920s German maestro F.W. Murnau — is emblematic of the man’s shoe-leather mysticism.
After praising Herzog’s mastery of cinema, his friend and peer Wim Wenders drolly reflects that the man, now based in Los Angeles, presents Americans with an oddly appealing persona: “A likable but somewhat fanatical German.”
Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer
Not rated. In English and German, with subtitles. Running time: 1 hour 42 minutes. Rent or buy on most major platforms.
