Elderly German May Be Messiah

I may be an agnostic, but I've long harbored suspicions that German filmmaker Werner Herzog is a divine being of some sort. This may sound like the hyperbole of an overzealous cineaste, but he's the most enigmatically godly man this side of Jesus Christ or Brian Eno. As a Jew, I'm not particularly thrilled about discovering the potential Messiah (as His arrival would theoretically herald the apocalypse), but Herzog has begun advertising his otherworldly nature, and the evidence is convincing.

It began with Joaquin Phoenix's potentially fatal car accident. The actor's brakes gave out, and he swerved into a mountainside causing his car to roll over and cave in. Phoenix found himself trapped under a sea of twisted metal, and he thought himself confined to the passenger seat by the weight of his demolished car. Phoenix recalls hearing a very German voice from beyond the wreckage whispering, "Just relax," and his terror immediately subsided. The actor rolled down the cracked window and tried to communicate that he was all right, at which point he remembers that a "head popped inside and said, 'No, you're not.' And suddenly I said to myself, 'That's Werner Herzog!' There's something so calming and beautiful about his voice. I felt completely fine and safe. I climbed out. When I got out of the car, he was gone." Sure, Herzog has a house nearby, but he was right there, like the nonchalant angel Wings of Desire forgot, and he wasn't done showing his feathers.

Later that week, the 63-year-old director was shot in the thigh by a crazed sniper while being interviewed about his recent masterpiece, Grizzly Man. Blood flooding his boxers, Herzog plainly stated, "Oh, someone is shooting at us. We must go." He then sought cover and continued the interview. Afterward, he politely told the bewildered journalist, "It was not a significant bullet. I am not afraid." Fate and pragmatism may not a deity make, but Herzog seems positively self-actualized-prophets have been anointed so for less.

But perhaps I'm confusing mere eccentricity for holiness, for Herzog is nothing if not peculiar. The Forrest Gump of the directorial community, Herzog's footprints can be found throughout recent cinematic history. Beyond directing a number of the greatest fiction films ever made (Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo spring to mind), as well as a host of similarly impeccable documentaries (Little Dieter Needs to Fly), he's colored the world in ways only he could. My favorite story involves documentarian Errol Morris and his peerless work, The Gates of Heaven. He had been talking up his idea for the film to no end, but lacked the motivation needed to bring it to fruition.

Enter Werner Herzog. An acquaintance of Morris', Herzog was so tired of hearing Morris' dreams without seeing any follow-through that he promised he would eat his shoe if the young American ever realized his now classic vision. Not only did Herzog eat his shoe upon the eventual release of Morris' documentary (often deemed the greatest ever made), it was recorded by Les Blank and fashioned into the film, Werner Herzog Eats His Own Shoe, itself a masterpiece of the short form.

Herzog's unique audacity feeds directly into the great irony of his life (thus far): he, more than almost any man alive seems capable of anything, yet his films are singularly obsessed with human limitations and our lust for the unattainable. Whether it's through the titular Aguirre's futile search for El Dorado or through Grizzly Man's Timothy Treadwell and his ultimately tragic belief that he could assimilate himself into a community of wild bears because of his compassion for them, Herzog tirelessly explores human hubris in some of its more unusual forms. His films endure not because of the (potential) divinity of their maker, but because of the compellingly dreadful humanity he imbues them with. Watching a Herzog film is not like being transfixed by a car crash-it's like being hypnotized by Armageddon.

Cultural titans, however, seldom leave home without their hypocrisy, and Herzog is no exception. Perhaps the irrefutable proof of Herzog's mortal fallibility, the filmmaker's own hubris, is not only apparent in how he dictates his sets, but also in how he lives his life. Herzog, often the perpetuator of his most fascinating stories, claims to have walked from Munich to Paris (500 miles) in order to prevent Lotte Eisner, a sick friend of his, from dying. Inevitably, Herzog's logic was that Eisner wouldn't be so bold as to die before he visited her deathbed.

Herzog too will (probably) die one day, but not before his alarmingly rational works have reached so many people that his soothing voice seems to come from the heavens with the authority of rain. Perhaps cinema, having hijacked the collective unconscious, has afforded all filmmakers such unnatural powers. But only Herzog and his unique brand of metaphysical practicality have used the medium to make life seem so full of possibilities. And though he may not be a prophet, Herzog remains our most promising human enigma. Though Eisner's illness was deemed imminently terminal when Herzog began his slow pilgrimage to her bedside, he would arrive just in time to see her live for another eight years.

David Ehrlich is a Columbia College junior majoring in film studies.