"In November of 1974, Werner Herzog learned that Lotte Eisner was dying in Paris. He was in Munich, but took a compass, a jacket, and a few necessities and began to make his way to Paris on foot, believing that if he walked to her, she would not die.
He kept a notebook as he walked and had not intended to publish it, but as he explains in the introduction, he read the notebook four years later and was 'strangely touched, and the desire to show this text to others unknown to me outweighs the dread, the timidity to open the door wide to unfamiliar eyes.'"
In this book, you find the Herzog of Burden of Dreams, who spoke of the agony of a bird's cry. He writes, 'A tractor approaches me, monstrous and threatening, hoping to maul me, to run me over, but I stand firm... the region I'm traversing is infested with rabies.' You will hear as well the arrogance and absurd beauty that you see in any picture of his face. But there is also an unfamiliar person, a shy kid.
He writes of the intense loneliness and the miniskirts of village girls. He records his dreams without saying, 'This was a dream, not real,' thereby giving them the same reality as he gives a woman he sees outside a farmhouse, crawling on all fours. You get the sense he has come a bit unstuck and is letting it happen, never doubting his mission (he should not).
And when he arrives in Lotte Eisner's room and speaks high Herzogian nonsense, 'Together we shall boil fire and stop fish,' she neither rolls her eyes at him nor pretends to understand. Rather, gently, she slides him a chair."
- Amie Barrodale, Vice Magazine
No comments:
Post a Comment