Aug 16th 2013, 20:22, by Jay A. Fernandez
The power of reading received a plug last night from an unlikely source: one of the most probing and innovative filmmakers of the last half-century. While in Switzerland attending the Locarno Film Festival to receive a lifetime achievement honor and present a retrospective of his work ("Aguirre: The Wrath of God," "Rescue Dawn"), Werner Herzog gave a typically intense and intelligent interview to The Hollywood Reporter. In it, the seventy-year-old director considers his self-applied mantle of "soldier of cinema," his many Herzog imposters on Facebook, his feelings on Southern California, and his efforts on the behalf of younger filmmakers daring to break new artistic ground.
But during an aside about the many "funny things" floating around on the Internet, Herzog casually asserts, "people cannot read." Pressed for an explanation, Herzog says this: "If we look closely, no. Most are illiterates, even though they know how to combine letters and make phrases and so on. I say: Consuming the Internet, TV, and even cinema makes you lose the world. Only by reading can you gain the world."
Few artists have indulged their restless, searching spirit as much as Herzog. With documentary films as varied as "Grizzly Man," "Into the Abyss," "Happy People: A Year in the Taiga," "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," and "Little Dieter Needs to Fly," the Oscar-nominated German-born filmmaker has explored every corner of the world and dark crevasse of the human soul. So hearing him declare so straightforwardly that even his best, most enlightening films can't touch the power of books is compelling encouragement, indeed. Clearly, the fevered dreams he pursues in his sometimes-harrowing day job are fed and inspired by the vastness of his reading (we'd love to get a look at his bookshelves).
Though his film work doesn't often unspool with literary flavor — more often than not it's as direct and immediate as a punch to the gut — Herzog does have two projects in development that give us hints at his reading tastes. He's co-adapting the Daniel Mason novel The Piano Tuner, a war drama that takes place in late nineteenth-century Burma, for Focus Features (the recent "Anna Karenina"), and he's pulling together a film about early-twentieth-century British writer, explorer and spy Gertrude Bell called "Queen of the Desert" that has Naomi Watts a potential pick for the lead and Robert Pattinson playing T. E. Lawrence.
If you want to dig into Herzog's methods, philosophies and nutty history, we're sure he'd endorse a read of one of the many books about his work, such as Conquest of the Useless or Ferocious Reality.
The post Werner Herzog Wants You to Learn How to Read appeared first on Word and Film.
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