I will be writing about just what his meticulous and brilliant use of archival footage in these films does to the stories, and how there is a thread connecting them to his original work and fictional films. This isn’t a discussion of who Herzog is as a filmmaker, what his beginnings were like (okay, there’s a little bit of that). It’s a purpose-driven piece looking at a specific fascination of mine that can be found in his work.
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I love Werner Herzog. I think of the Hollywood Reporter’s 2022 Actors Roundtable featuring Nicolas Cage where he mentions a moment where Herzog had told him he needed to “let the pig loose, Nicolas.” I think of his work with Harmony Korine, in Julien Donkey Boy (1999), as he transforms himself into a humorously cruel disaster of a father. I think of Fitzcarraldo (1980) and how his films are emblematic of humanistic forces of good and bad. Or Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), where he creates an epic with the proportions of a Greek tragedy. Then I turn to his documentaries, his disdain for nature but his fascination with human relationships with the world we live in. I could go on, but I won’t because I want to discuss two of my favourite Herzog pieces, documentaries that, try as I might, I couldn’t find enough writing on. So, I decided I would be the one to throw myself over the saddle. Here I am looking at Grizzly Man (2005) and The Fire Within; A Requiem for Katie and Maurice Krafft (2022). I won’t, however, simply be analysing or musing on which parts I liked and disliked, or what they give me as a human. I will be writing about just what his meticulous and brilliant use of archival footage in these films does to the stories, and how there is a thread connecting them to his original work and fictional films. This isn’t a discussion of who Herzog is as a filmmaker, what his beginnings were like (okay, there’s a little bit of that). It’s a purpose-driven piece looking at a specific fascination of mine that can be found in his work.
The first film of Herzog’s I will be discussing is Grizzly Man (2005). I’ll begin by giving some background on his style of filmmaking and why it aligns with these documentaries, as well as how his use of archives creates a sort of mythology and fable-like narrative as explanation for his subjects’ untimely deaths. Herzog is regarded as the pioneer of New German Cinema, a movement during the 1970s, inspired by French New Wave and Italian neorealism but working with shoestring budgets with no special effects used and one widely enjoyed by arthouse audiences. His films usually tell stories of protagonists with ambitious and impossible dreams, or a man’s (it’s usually a man) struggle against nature, or protagonists with odd or divine talents. They are often intensely realistic, but there is something mystical about his settings, and his brief stint with Catholicism in his early twenties seems to have inspired a sort of religious fervour that echoes through his work. These concepts are all present in Grizzly Man. Herzog uses a mystical approach through Timothy Treadwell and the story the latter is telling in the archival footage, managing to warp space and time to create a metaphysical conversation between two filmmakers, one dead and the other alive.
The film opens with a shot of Treadwell standing in a wide-open space with two bears moving around peacefully behind him. It is our first meeting with him; we see a surfer tuft of bleached-blonde hair and tanned skin. He delivers a rousing speech, of heroics, tinges of delusion seeping through as he likens himself to a samurai, a kind and gentle warrior who is one with the bear. There is something spiritual about this reverence he has for the creatures that appear behind him; as viewers we begin to feel a great respect for this man who has clearly found a way to bond with these creatures. Then in a sadistically funny twist, his name appears under him on screen with the date of birth and death. It sinks in. It is as if Herzog is rolling his eyes through film. There is still a mystical irreverence in the bears galloping in the background, but now we understand that this film is a cautionary tale from Herzog about a man with an impossible dream, trying to become one with nature, whose dream and passion end up killing him.
But it is also a fairy tale that one man was desperately trying to live, and Herzog, being a generous filmmaker, makes room for both these narratives, admitting that an “astonishing beauty and depth” reside in this story while he remains cold and unsentimental toward the beasts. Herzog clearly sees this archival footage as more of an exploration of the human spirit and the lengths someone will go to for a cause they believe is their destiny. He initiates this conversation between himself and Treadwell, and it is through it that the narrative of the documentary comes alive. Herzog positions himself as having discovered this hidden narrative underneath the archival footage. He as the filmmaker gets to decide where the narrative presented in the archival footage lives in relation to the rest of the documentary. It is also arguably easier for Herzog to do this since Treadwell is no longer here to dispute the narrative in his own footage.
However, Herzog positions Treadwell as a coauthor of sorts. The back and forth between present-day Herzog and past Treadwell transcends the ordinary documentary experience. So, Treadwell remains alive within the world of the documentary, meaning the narrative that Herzog presents is in a sense co-signed by Treadwell. It is a clever way to manipulate footage to adhere to a narrative that both cannot be confirmed and is unarguably true. But this is how Herzog gets to the truth, “poetic, ecstatic truth [that is] mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization” (1999). This is why his use of archival footage feels less like he’s trying to depict a moment in history through historical footage and firsthand footage of the months leading up to Treadwell’s death and more like he is using this footage and this documentary as a way to show why and what it was that drew his subject to these animals and why it drove him closer and closer to insanity as he spent more and more time isolated with the bears. He is giving the answers that Treadwell himself cannot, through the editing of archival clips. However, aside from the narrative, and the conversation between the two filmmakers, it feels as though Herzog is competing with Treadwell. Both filmmakers, the professional and the amateur, have gone to extreme lengths in the middle of the wilderness to achieve shots and dimensions that oppose the other in perspective. Herzog ends up performing himself, his cool, authoritative narration contrasting with Treadwell’s higher-pitched and enthusiastic wildlife documentarian voice. There is no inkling of objectivity in Herzog’s writing or narration here; it is clear that whilst pouring over the archival footage he saw a character in Treadwell and decided that this character was a way of injecting his personal views of man versus nature into this documentary. “Ultimately, Herzog uses Treadwell’s footage to seemingly create a character with naïve and quixotic views concerning nature” (Dewberry).
Moving on, The Fire Within: A Requiem for Katie and Maurice Kraff is made up entirely of archival footage shot by the two volcanologists who are its subject, and as Herzog says at the beginning, he is trying to “celebrate the wonder of their imagery.” This is not another biography since their story has already been told in documentary form in films such as Fire of Love (2022) and Into the Inferno (2016), the latter another documentary directed by Herzog.
The film opens on an utterly glorious image of Katie Krafft standing in front of a wall of lava erupting from an active volcano. It is a haunting and otherworldly image, made more powerful by the choice of operatic music as the score. Katie wears a silver suit; she looks like an astronaut setting foot on another planet for the first time. She turns around and her face is one of pure joy. It is no surprise that Herzog once again chose to repurpose the images and footage taken by humans pushing their passion and love to the absolute limit. He uses these images to create a new narrative rather than regurgitate the one that has already been explored by himself and others, celebrating here the couple’s magnificent achievement in filmmaking rather than their achievement as volcanologists.
He simply narrates over what he believes to be going on in the images. Once again he is being completely subjective; there are moments where he will simply interject his own opinion of what he likes about certain points in the footage. “Look at this guy in the background,” he says. “I love his fake acting.” This is not something we would typically see from a documentary, the narrator directly interacting with the archival footage on screen. However, he also lets large stretches of footage play out without intervening, letting the audience form their own opinion on the narrative while the Kraffts’ unbelievable footage plays out. At one point Herzog utters “this is a vision that only exists in dreams” in reference to footage of a lava flow shot by Katie and Maurice. It is once again clear that Herzog deeply admires the Kraffts’ filmmaking prowess, just as he admired Timothy Treadwell’s.
There is something arguably unethical in the way Herzog uses archival footage in his documentaries. “Reflective analysis by a film-maker will often involve an exercise in personal reflexivity as they seek to reveal the manifestation of subject position in their work – whether expressed in the point of view adopted in a film or in the imprint of personal experience in its treatment” (Bell, 2011). Because of Herzog’s ideological differences with Treadwell, it’s obvious that he’s trying to discover just why he (Treadwell) would find it so difficult to see the lines between man and nature that have gone uncrossed for thousands of years. He tries to figure out this question by creating a conversation between himself and Treadwell.
The generally accepted idea is that nonfiction archival historical footage has some sort of inherent truth to it, a kind of inartistic truth that reverberates through the footage (Grue, 2006). In Grizzly Man he decides to re-edit and re-purpose the footage of a man slowly descending into madness to fit this certain agenda, or opinion he has on the age-old concept of man versus nature. The fact that he had never met Treadwell, and that Treadwell could not confirm nor deny the narrative that Herzog creates through his editing, feels manipulative. However, as I mentioned before, Herzog’s filmmaking does not rely on this sort of inartistic proof to get to the truth. He sees the fabrication and manipulation of certain truths reveal the hidden truth underneath it all. So, while the documentary claims to be chronicling the moments, hours, days, months, and years before Treadwell’s death, what Herzog is actually doing is creating a wild and mystical tale of a man drawn closer and closer to insanity by the inartistic proof and inherent truth seen in the footage. The truth of what he saw as his life mission, protecting these grizzly bears, is shown clearly in the footage. So, Herzog accepts this and decides to find out why it ended the way it did, and to do so he must concoct or reimagine a narrative or a new truth that helps the audience and Herzog himself figure out why one man could blur the lines between man and nature. There is also this reverence Herzog has for the visual mastery of Treadwell’s archival footage. He uses small moments throughout the film to stop all narration and let the footage sit in silence, allowing a sort of respect for Treadwell. While it is clear they had ideological differences, this respect Herzog has for Treadwell and the pity he has for him is elevated by his fascination with the small beauties that appear on-screen during his footage. Herzog does not overtly appeal to the audiences’ emotions. Another unusual aspect of his documentary-making style is that he is not looking to change our mind or appeal to our sympathies. His use of juxtaposition in Grizzly Man is one of comedy. He edits moments of Treadwell’s intense delusion next to a coroner’s description of his final moments. He lets Treadwell speak for himself, and the audience begins to find him endearing. There is no emotional manipulation behind the footage, but there’s narrative manipulation. Often, it is the other way around.
It is slightly different with The Fire Within. Herzog is not looking for any answers. He is looking for the audience to understand the beauty and otherworldliness of these images we are seeing on-screen. The footage is edited chronologically, but as I mentioned it is not really about their lives or their story, which has already been told. It is only about the images, and once again the inherent truth that is revealed within them. Not of the Kraffts but of humanity, and of nature. These are things that Herzog believes the Kraffts understood and knew while they were exploring. Unlike in Grizzly Man, he is not recontextualising the images. He is laying them out simply for the audience; the inartistic proof of the footage sits there untouched. However, the inartistic truth of the images is almost unbelievable because the images are so otherworldly and surreal.
The documenting of found footage is all about preserving the memory of those lost in the quest to find these images. Rather than the footage being a sort of reference to a historical moment that others can either remember or find proof of, it’s now a figurative aesthetic of a moment that doesn’t have a set or complete narrative (Bell, 2011). In Grizzly Man, Herzog uses this inherent lack of narrative to create his own, give himself the answers or the truth that he sees in the aesthetic of the images. In The Fire Within, Herzog uses the inherent lack of narrative to create a montage of beautiful images that we can appreciate without context or outside interference. He transforms Timothy Treadwell and Katie and Maurice Krafft into artists and filmmakers as well as explorers and people drawn to the limits of human experience. He does this through archival footage.
Another point I’d like to make in terms of Herzog’s mystical style in his films and documentaries is his narration. With the rise of archives, there comes a decline of a sort of primal storytelling. But in both these documentaries, Herzog is a kind of all-seeing narrator who is guiding us through these unbelievable fables of the human condition. “Narratives of liberation, emancipation or progression (or their apocalyptic opposites) became the new versions of old stories” (Alphen, 2017). It’s like Herzog returns to the wild and incredible stories of older times, stories of adventurers and explorers who meet their demise at the hands of whatever they were searching for.
Bibliography
Bell, D. (2011). “Documentary Film and the Poetics of History,” Journal of Media Practice, 12(1), pp. 3–25. https://doi.org/10.1386/jmpr.12.1.3_1
Dewberry, E. (n.d.). Conceiving Grizzly Man through the Powers of the False. https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/scope/documents/2008/june-2008/dewberry.pdf
Grue, A. M. (2006). The Use of Archival Footage in Documentary Rhetoric, Scholarworks. https://scholarworks.montana.edu/items/a3a51a9c-bc80-4343-b348-d7630cef4795
Van Alphen, E. (2017). “The Decline of Narrative and the Rise of the Archive.” https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315265018
