Werner Herzog turned 80 on September 5, and he did so at a place that loves him dearly (and where he serves as an executive director): the Telluride Film Festival in Colorado. There, you can be immersed in the festival’s fare thanks to a booming, massive theater named for the enigmatic director, smack-dab next to a mountain where you can tempt your own “Grizzly Man” experience. With such birthday timing, the festival world premieres an affectionate but broad documentary about his career, “Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer,” which distinctly takes a more literal route to understanding such an enigmatic figure.
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An oeuvre and mind like Herzog’s can inspire many entertaining third-person observations, which this movie shares right off the bat, like toasts at a party. Robert Pattinson (Herzog’s “Queen of the Desert”) remarks that “It’s impossible to see the world how he sees it.” Fellow cinema magnate Wim Wenders states that he “invented his own accent,” and later calls him “a mythological character.” Carl Weathers (who co-starred with Herzog on “The Mandalorian”) says about Herzog’s filmmaking approach: “That’s fresh, that’s new, that’s bad-ass.” Christian Bale and Nicole Kidman also share their amazement about previous collaborator Herzog, with excitement that does become infectious as the doc kicks off.
After such an introduction, “Radical Dreamer” more or less goes through the life story of Herzog as an artist, a creator and the way that filmmaking flourished from his mind. But in a manner that presents him clearer than his own documentaries feel, it’s about taking away the mythology of Herzog. “Radical Dreamer” casts him in daylight; it’s funny to then see him in sunglasses that block out all light. It’s also just regular, casual Herzog, which this movie seeks to establish by following him around as he drives through Los Angeles, or watching him lead a workshop with young filmmakers eager to make their own “Aguirre, The Wrath of God.”
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“Radical Dreamer” is aware of the hits in Herzog’s story, and touches on the biggest ones by also short-handing how he fell in love with movies as his major expression and skipping over numerous chapters for the sake of running time (not a word and only a couple shots from “Stroszek,” really?). But, the documentary is concerned with: did Herzog really eat a shoe? Chloé Zhao is shown talking about it, among the famous other talking heads like Pattinson, and then there’s footage of when Herzog cooked it, a way of feeding into the way Herzog’s seriousness has developed and now creates its own awe. There’s an image catering going on in “Radical Dreamer” to humanize him beyond the persona that has been created, especially by American pop culture in the past 20 years. But this doc also wants to feed that novelty too.
And among the many films sets that Herzog has been on and created throughout the world—to shoot like the memory of history as a documentary, as someone says—“Radical Dreamer” touches on his most audacious filmmaking adventures: “Even Dwarfs Started Small,” “Aguirre, The Wrath of God,” “Cobra Verde.” When tracking his documentary features, “Radical Dreamer” more or less sums them up by making a supercut of his iconic, wild questions that he unleashes off-the-cuff. It’s an important element to touch on, but the humor that it does it with is more cutesy than insightful to his thinking.
It’s telling that “Radical Dreamer” dedicates about 15 minutes to the production of “Fitzcarraldo,” in that for all we already know about the infamous, dangerous production—covered in feature-length behind-the-scenes documentary “Burden of Dreams,” for one—this project is more about honoring the hits than establishing a unique journey through the endless curiosities of Herzog. And when thrashing guitars kick in as we watch Herzog sit in front of a fireplace or when he’s cruising down the waters of the dangerous film set, it’s corny in a way his approach rarely is. (At least knowingly; the existence of Herzog’s “Salt and Fire” is omitted here probably for a reason.)
In its best form, this documentary is a tribute in its way of also sharing the philosophy of Herzog, as his story is also one of how to live a full life as a person and an artist. In front of the camera is a guiding light to always be adventurous, always question, to always learn. Behind the camera, he encourages us to think outside the frame of truth and the typical. “Radical Dreamer” does not leave much of its own footprint. But at least its subject, handled by this film with enough care and awe, always will. [C+]
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