Herzog, Landscape, and DocumentaryEric

Abstract: This essay explores Werner Herzog's approach to landscape as a site forperforming his notion of documentary as a repudiated mode offdmmaking. Whatemerges from this inmic peiforuiancc is an altemativc documenianj epistemohgtj,one that refers primarilij to the inner world of affect and to forms of eniljodiedknowledge.

Werner Herzog has often rejected the distinction between fiction and documen-tarv as an illicit one. Imt the Cierman-boni filmmaker has also traded on the au-thority of docuiueiititry for more than fi)ur decades.' Recently, he has even madea kind of second career for himself as a documentaban, reaching wider audiencesthan ever before, while exploiting new markets via cable telexisioii, D\T) sales,and the Internet." He has al.so developed his own inteq>retation of documentary,with particular emphasis on its contested relationship to knowledge.^ Most of hisdt)cumentaries claim to visuali/e the inner world of the euiotions, the psyche, andthe soul—vast areas ot liuuuui experience that are not in themselves visual andtherefore tend to be either overlooked or neglected by scholars of documentary.Nevertheless, at least one cHtic has identified Herzog's "uni(iue contribution tothe documentiiry tradition" as ari.sing from "his desire to confront that which lies[last man's understanding, to suggest through what may be captured on screen thatwhich resides just beyond the visible." ' While I agree with this early assessment ofI Icrzog s achievement ;is a dtK umentarian, 1 want to complicate it by adding that healso stages this "desire" in a deliberately ironic context, as evinced by his use of land-scape. Other .scholars have observed the vital importance of laiulscape to Herzog'snarrative features, yet little has been said about the documentar) mode, which hasincreasingly come to define his practice. Instead, most commentators simply echothe directors repeated claim that the boundaries between fiction and documen-tary are blurred throughout his work, ller/og and his critics even seem to share cer-tain assumptions about documentary as a repudiated mode of filmmaking, owingto its liistoriciil association with reportage, its institutional identity as a branch ofjournalism, and its discursive claims to "truth," "reality," and authenticity."

Eric Ames is an assistant professor of (Merman at the Universit)' of Washington, where heteaches courses in film, literature, and cultnrai studies. His research monograph, Carl Ha-genlieck's Empire of Entertainnwnls, is forthcoming from the University of WashingtonPress. Currently, he is preparing a book manuscript on Werner Herzog.

© 200.9 by the University of Texas Pr^ss, P.O. Bc*x 7819, Austin, TX 78713-7819

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what interests me, by contnist, are the many ways in which Herzog has cre-atively and insistently performed documentary as a repudiated practice. In thisessay, I want to concentrate on one of them—namely, Herzog's use of landscapeas a site for appropriating and revising documentary iis a key form of imaginativeknowledge. What is at stake here is not the filmmakers artistic vision, but rathertlie larger domain of documentary epistemolog)'. I contend that Herzog has devel-oped an approach to documentary that is anti-referential for an effect. The refer-ential world does not disappear from Herzog's documentaries; it remains visible(even dazzhng), but its apparent presence creates an occasion for irony. Landscapeprovides the physical setting, the visual form, and the "cultural power" for a doc-umentary practice that cleaves to the referentiid world as an ironic strategy forovercoming it.''

The different terms of my argument—documentary; landscape, interiority,and irony—can be briefiy illustrated by a scene from Tlie Dark Glow of the Moun-tains (1984), a portrait of the elite mountain cUmber Reinhold Messner. On onelevel, the film hears witness to an unprecedented (and, since then, unparalleled)event—namely, tlie attempt by Messner and his partner to climb two of the world'stallest peaks in succession, without returning to base camp in the interval. On iui-other level, the film concerns the very ratios of emotional and physical intensitiesthat not only distinguish such climbers, but also connect them to other people. AsHerzog puts it, in one of his signature voice-over commentaries, "We weren't somuch interested iu making a film about mountain climbing per ,sc, or about climb-ing techniques. What we wanted to find out was what goes tm inside mountainclimbers who undertake such extreme endeavors? What is the fascination thatdrives them up to the peaks like addicts? Aren't these mountains and peaks likesomething deep within us all?" While Herzog speaks, tlie camera actively scans thehorizon of the Himalayas, as seen from a distance of several kilometers tlirough apowerful telephoto lens, panning and tiltiug in a long, continuous movement,which traces the jagged outline of the peaks. The lens and camera movement Hat-ten out the pro-filmic scene, transforming the physical environment into a graphicpattern, re-signifying the depicted mountíüns and ravines as the "highs" and "lows"of an inner world, which the camera seems to register like the moving stylus of auautomatic instrument. This method of surveying and displaying physical terrain—the film's key visual stratej^—is also the way in which Her/og charts an innermovement traversing desire, fear, passion, dependence, and fascination, acrosssome of their various phases. The strategy relies for its effect on the spectator'spowers of visualization and projection, so that the cinenuitic landscape also be-comes a site for ehciting emotions from the auchence. At the same time, however,the telephoto lens also marks off the extreme distance at which the audience is sit-uated vis-à-vis the documentary subject, for it is only from such a remove that anexterior landscape of this magnitude can serve double duty as a screen for project-ing the inner world of the spectator.

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Emotional Cartography. P'or a filmmaker who has worked on every continentand in as many as twenty different countries, Herzog approaches the physical en-vironment with striking uniformity of vision. Combining a passion for landscapeviews with an insistently inward movement, his documentaries render a cinematicterrain that is largely detached from the referential world and oriented toward theinner wi)rld, instead. Herzogs ephemeral Wstas open up a paradoxical space ofimagined iuteriorit); which is also a representation ofthe physical worUl that weinhabit. The practice of aestheticizing the psychological interior by means of land-scape has an extensive histor)' in German art, literature, and cinema, but it is un-usual in the context of documentar)- fdm. Herzog is clearly aware of this history,and stakes a certain claim to it: "For me, a true landscape is not just a representa-tion of a desert or a forest. It shows an inner state of minil, litenilly inner land-scapes, and it is the human soul that is visible through tlic landscapes presented inmy films, be it the jungle in Aguirre, the de.sert in Fata Morgana, or the burningoil fields of Kuwait in Les.som of Darkness. This is tny real connection to C LSjiarDavid Friedrich, a man who never wanted to paint landscapes per se, but wautcdto explore and show inner landscapes."'' Here, indeed, we can identify Herzog'sconnection to tlie German aesthetic tradition, acknowledging his debt not only toRomanticism, but also to Expressionism in film, as suggested by Lotte Eisner.''While Her/og .scholar.'îhip lias been greatly enriched by these categories—Romanticism and Expressionism—they have also had the inadvertent effect ofrestricting the frame of analysis, so that the interrelationship of landscape andemotinn, for instance, becomes either totally overdetermined or seemingly self-evident. In this context, it would be helpful to experiment with a ditterent analyt-ical framework, one that allows us to exjilore some ot the ways in which aliectiveexperience is not merely referenced, but staged and activated by the films. This isespecially true of Her/og's documentaries, whose tnith claims rest on forms ofembodied knowledge (such as ritual, memory, trauma, displacement, spirituality),whicli are often articulated in terms of an intensely physical involvement withlandscape. Tlie task is to open up a liroader view of Herzogs landscape pictures,beyond the categories of Romanticism and Expressionism, while at the same timeaccounting for the idiosyiicnisies ol the filmmakers st)Ie.

In her recent study. Atlas of Emotion, Giuliana Bnmo outlines a theory of fihnas a form of cartography that is highly and particularly sensitive to the inner wi)rldof affect. Part of a larger challenge to the p.syciioanalytic bias in film theory and itsemphasis on the di.sembodied "gaze," Bnuios model of film as affective mappingforegroimds the coqxjreal experiences of .spatiality and movement, their emotioniddimension, and the ways in which this dimension is simulated and stimulated onscreen." By cartography, Bnino understands not a visual instniinent for dominat-ing foreign places and cultures, but a means of self-discovery.'' If maps ami moviesfunction similarly as vi.siial forms of virtual travel, they can al.so be used to exploreintimate, subjective, and imaginative spaces, putting the spectator in relationship

Cinema Joumal 48. No. 2, Winter 2009 5 1

to a private domain of embodied knowledge, which is ba.sed on subjective experi-ence. From this perspective, Bruno suggests, moving pictures evoke both an innerworld of emotion and an embodied respon.se to geographical place. Art scholarJill Bennett has likewise focused on "the motllity of affect," its power of activemovement—a point that widens the parameters of affective response, and its the-orization beyond the usual focus on narrative and character ideutification. Ratherthan inhabit a character, "one inhabits—or is inhabited by—;m embodied .sensa-tion," as it is simultaneously roused by and registered in a given film.'" This is es-pecially true of documentary representations of place that re.sonate internally,even in the absence of story and character. Whereas Bennett refers to film, move-ment, and place in order to theorize affect in relation to specific concerns of con-temporary art, Bruno charts a history of correlations between virtuiJ travel andsensitivity to subjective states, which, of course, predates the cinema and is inte-gral to various modes of cultural production."

If Bruno's theory of affective mapping offers a helpful framework for analy-sis, Herzog's documentaries provide a fascinating test case (albeit one that Bnmodoes not explore), for several reasons that are worth noting. First, Herzog is knownfor making highly "optical" films, and the visual aspect of his work has usually beenthe focus of discussion. Now that this idea is firmly entrenched within the schol-arship, it becomes interesting to reconsider liis films iu terms of affect and cartog-raphy, to see what a shift in emphasis might bring. Second, the spectator in Bruno'stheoretical model is explicitly gendered female, and the voyage of discovery is of-fered as a feminist project, whose wider iiuplications are suggestive, but implicit.Whereas Herzog's films once seemed to identify with, and give expression to, mar-ginalized social figures, women have rarely been featured in his fift>--some films,the major exceptioTis being the documentary portraits of Fini Straubiuger {Landof Silence and Darkness, 1972) and Juliane Koepcke (Wings of Hope, 1999). Evenin light of these exceptions, it would probably be too much of a stretch to associ-ate lus work with a feminist project of any kind. Nevertheless, Herzog has clairuedto infuse his images with "a new form of'emotionality,'" which at the very least in-dicates that he is intrigued by the idea, and that it has a live fimctiou iu his film-making practice.'- Tliird, Bruno's model is theoretically interesting, because itrequires a more subtle, active, and exploratory relationship to tlie image than thatwhich is u.sually assumed by Herzog's critics, one that allows for a spectator whoresponds to the image in iui embodied way, through the senses, without simply dis-missing such a response as regressive.^^ Fourth, the case of Herzog demonstratesthat it is not necessary to soft-pedal issues of power in order to chart an emotionalcartography, as Bnuio would seem to do. Finally, as we shall see, Herzog's "inuerlandscapes" are permeated by a sense of irony, creating a set of interpretative con-ditions that are left unexamined in Bmno s study. Herzog's documentaries bring allthese issues to bear.

The travelogue films, which constitute tlie majority of his documentaries,provide rich ground fnr rethinking the role of landscape in Herzog's work. If

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travelogues are "nonfiction films that take place as their primary subject," as onescholar h;is suggested, Herzog's contribution to this tradition is to steer it away fromlocale or place in the geographical sen.se, and toward the inner world of affect,'*'No example suqiasses that of L« Soufrière (1977), with its spectacular iootage ofan explosive volcano on the Caribbean island of Guadeloupe. There is an obvioustemptation to fruuic this film in terms of the Sublime, wliidi is a standard theuii't)i" Herzog scholarship.'"' Yet it can also be read in Bnmos terms as an instance ofaffective mapping, eliciting and charting a sense of awe, fear, boredom. fa.scination,excitement, uunisement. fnistration, disappointment—all of which register on aviscera] level that is interesting in its own right. (From this perspective, the Snb-lime might even be nnderstood as an inherited mapping that Herzog in turn mobi-lizes and re\ises throngh the cinema.) The sheer andacionsness of volcano hnntingas a project makes La Soufrière a key film in Hei-zog's body of work, becau.se itscaled the myth of the director as risk-taker. The resulting film, however, offers usan ironic and highly self-conscious performance of the documentarian as failure.

IM Soufrière begins with the ptirtentous sound of nmibling and the image ofsmoke rising from the open fissures of a mountain. First, the film's title is super-imposed onto the landscape, and then the snbtitk% "Waiting ior an Inevitable Ca-tastrophe" (Figure I). While the film takes its title from the nionntain's name, italso evokes the word souffrir, whose connotations of enduring sometliing with afelt sense of pain or annoyance resound across the film's subtitle, as well. Thelatter creates a sense of representati(mal tension not only between the signifyingimage and the event signified, but al.so between the cinematic landscape and itsnarrative framework. Indeed, after thirty minutes, the d(x.'unientary ends abruptlywith aTi interesting sliow of embarrassment. Since the film premiered the follow-ing year on West German television, most historical spectators—those who fol-lowed the news story, at least—knew that the volcano never actually exploded.Nevertheless, in a dramatic reversal of the film's subtitle, the program ckxses witlithe voice of Herzog apologizing to the audience for a "pathetic" and "embarnLss-ing" result: that is, "a report on an inevitable catastrophe that did not take place,"The filmmakers apologv' is spoken over images of the volcano belching smoke andash, anil accompanied by the tragic chords oí the funeral march from Wagner's"Twilight of the Cíods." Ultimately, the flow of documentary leads the audience tothe brink of laughter (or the felt need to suppress it), which results from compar-ing what the film puqiorted to show, the putative reality of "an inevitable catastro-phe," to what was actually shown. The use of irony here is dramatic, indeed, for itreseñes the footage from certain disaster. For Herzog, that is, the "ultimate" catas-trophe is not the event oi a volcanic explosion (which wonld have been bad cnongh),but a historical practice of observational documentary—namely, cinéma vérité—and its blatant claim to tnith. Indeed, this is preeisely what Herzog would "suffer"for an effect. IAÍ Soufrière stages a typical scenario uícinema vérité, which placesthe filmmaker in a situation of waiting hopefully for a crisis to emerge, as a wayof parodying it from within. The f^ilmmakers show of embarrassment is neither

Cinema Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009 5 3

Warten auf eineunausweichliche

Katastrophe

Figure 1. AVaitiiig for an Inevitable Catastrophe," IM Soufrière {Werner HerzogProductions, 1977).

serious nor disingenuous. Rather, it is a provocative performance of a dtx'umen-tary mode that he has relentlessly dismissed. Yet, it is only the crisis situation (andnot the film as a whole) that denotes "vérité," leaving ample space for Herzog torehearse and combine other historical styles of documentary elsewhere in the film.

The most interesting ¡ilteniative to vérité can be found in Herzog's treatmentof Basse-Terre, a town of forty-five thousand inhabitants located at the base ofthe volcano. Although the entire population had been evacuated shortlv beforeHerzog's arrival, the urban landscape provides the physical setting for visualizingthe inner terrors and desires of those who fled in haste. In tliis context, Herzogflaunts the creative intervention of the filmmaker on the scene, as opposed to tak-ing an observational stance. Curiously, what begins as a volcano-hunting expeditionturns into a far-flung city travelogue. The result is a bizarre clash of historical doc-umentary styles for the .sake of soliciting an emotional response from the audience.Herzog renders Basse-Terre in a manner that is strongly reminiscent of early travel-film genres—"scenics," "foreign views," panorama films, and urban travelogues—that proliferated at the turn of the twentieth century. As Bnino has shown, thecamera in these films typic ally "practiced circular pans, up-and-down tilts, and for-ward, vertical, and lateral tracking motion, offering a variety of vistas across thecity space, from panoramic perspectives to street-level views. In this way, the genrereproduced the very practice of urban space, which involves the public's d;iily ac-tivity and circulation.""^ Herzogs camera rehearses many of these movements, butit does so in the absence of any public, creating an effect that is doubly uncanny.

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In one passage, a camera is mounted on the front of an unseen car, which seemsto move unimpeded through deserted city streets. This simulation of movementnot only recalls the "phantom ride" films of early silent film, but also infiises tbedepicted space with drama and narrative in the absence of social actors.'' The soleforce of movement in this abandoned city, the moving camera renders a contradic-tory urban panorama that is conspicuously devoid of inhabitants, yet seeminglyfilled with emotion. Visual signs of former presence, such as a blinking trafTic liglit,make palpable a sense of fear and panic around the moment of mass departure.(Cutting abruptly fnim one shot to anotiicr, the street modulates into an aerial view.'We flew over Biissc-Terre by helicopter,"' Her/og says in a hushed and tensevoice. "During the flight, we got the impression that these were the last hours ofthis town and the last pictures ever taken of it," Voice-over conuiicntarv' plays animportant role in dramatizing space as well as in creating a uarrativc stnicture ofcrisis and intensification. At the same time, the aerial changes the angle of viewand adds a sense of sciile, producing a grid-sliaped image o( the town, with theenormous volcano líK>ming omiuousi)' iu the background. In IM Soufrière, how-ever, it is not the volcano that invades space and transforms it, but the simulatedmovemtMit of the camera, instead. Through aerials and traveling shots, Herzogmobilizes uninhabited landscapes iis a strate^ for coaxing emotions out of thespectator, as if to "fill" the depicted absence on screen.

The point can be made more vividly by comparing the use of archival imagesand the treatment oí historical landscape pictures (Figure 2). By the same token,this material also indicates that the filmmaker's itinerary is an ironic one, veeringaway from La Soufrière as a strateg)^ for approaching it indirectly. When the vol-cano fails to explode, Herzog makes a narrative tietour to the nearby island of Mar-tinique, where another volcano, Mont Pelée, enipted in 19()2, destroying the townof Saint-Pierre. In this ciLse, which is generally considered to be the worst volcanicdisaster of the twentieth century, the town's residents ignored all warnings of apotential catastrophe, resulting in the deaths (if more than thirty thousand people.Historical photographs seem at first to provide the sort of images that Herzog hadanticipated l)ut never loiind ou the island of Guadeloupe, (In a sense, the entirefilm unfolds in a series of "before" shots without "after" images.) It is almost asif the documentariiui needed to compensate for contingency, to make up for themountain's refusal to perform, by referring to an earlier event. Ultimately, how-ever, historical documents fail to provide that which exceeds mere observation, forthe "found images" that Herzog displays turn out to be equally elusive. Filming ina local history museum, the camera pans across a series of archiv;il photographs,all shown in extreme close-up, zooming in and out on selected details, and therebymimicking the very fetishism of conventional television documentaries that Herzogclaims to dcspi.se. Indeed, the use of the zoom shot here is so extraordinary thatit calls attention to itself as a documentar)- trope. Tyjîically, it is ii.sed to renderpoignant a still image, while drawing the spectator "closer" to the material—indeed, to "history"—by slowly magnifying and perusing certain details of the

Cinema Jimmal 48. No. 2, Winter 2009 5 5

Figure 2, A "found iProductions, 1977),

ol Martinique in 1902, Ui Soufrière (Werner Herzog

scene. In tliis case, by contrast, the effect produced is a double movement, theconspicuous use of zoom being an unexpected corollary to Herzogs more charac-teristic use oí telephoto to distance spectators from the documentaiy material byemphasizing its status and mediation as an image.'^ If the zoom represents a hack-neyed technique for manipulating the spectators affective experience, Herzog em-ploys it agaiast convention, as a strategy for mocking and blocking the emergenceof feeling.

Here, as in The Dark Glow ofthe Mountains, Heraogs landscapes move in-ward by pulling back from the referential world, observing and representing itfrom a position of ironic detachment, which is al.so the position from which hisperformance of documentary needs to be seen. The affective d)Tiainic which is in-ternal to Herzogs documentaries involves not only the evocation of emotion, butalso its diminishment by an encroaching sense of irony.

Landscape and Irony. Landscape represents for Herzog both a point of depar-ture and a destination, hut it is not necessarily located in a geographical place,"The .starting point for many of my films is a landscape, " he states, "whether it bea real place or an imaginary or hallucinator)' one from a dream, and when I writea script I often describe landscapes that I have never seen. I know that somewherethey do exist and I have never fiiiled to find them,""^ Strangely, Herzog describesthe natural, phenomenal world as if it were in total obedience to liis imaginings,despite all evidence to the contrary.^' Equally peculiar is the "physical" approach

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to landscape that he claiuis to take. It is strongly reminiscent of location scouting,the practice of Iniding in the world actu;il .settings that already seem to embody thefilmmakers vision. Of course, there is nothing remarkable about this practice inthe making of narrative features. In the context of (locuiuentar\\ liowe\er. it wouldseem to be anathema. What makes the analogy of location scouting cveu more in-teresting in regard to Herzog's landscapes is their attenuated relationship to place.Traditionally, landscape lias ser\cd to convey a sense of locale, creating in tuni auieaiiinglul site where individual and social identities are formed.-' It al.so embod-ies aspects of cultural memoiy, as Simon Schama has amply demonstrated.^ Onec'uii easily iuiagine developing similar arguments (with all the necessary modifica-ti(ius) for the cinema.-' Inileed, one comuientator hits evcu suggested that "Herzogsfilms are, in great part, limned in memory by their landscapes."" It is a thomyproblcui, then, to realize that the filuutiaker tra\els to far-fluiig locations in searchof particular landscapes, but the resulting images tell us little if anvthing abouttheir referential c-ontexts. Instead, tliey cx>nfront us with a paradoxical space, atouce de-territoriali/cd and sensuous, imaginarv' aud physical.

Ha\ing said this, I hasteu to add that Her/og describes his approach to land-scape iu terms that are deliberately hyperbolic and misleading. As other scholarshave argued, landscape per se can neither be "found" nor "discovered," as if itsimply existed in the phenomenal world. Ou the contrary, it is created by culturalluodes of perception, shaped and reshaped by distinct practices of representa-tion, and surrounded by historical discourse. "^ This is obviously true of Herzog'slandscapes, as well. Some of theui are inspired by traditional framed images (ininterviews, the filmmaker repeatedly mentions such names as Bosch, Goya, andFriedrich, among others). A.s cinematic views, all of them are mediated by teclmo-logical recording and supplemented by sound aud movement. Significantly, Herzogemploys interviews to highliglit the representational quality of his landscapes, of-fering up previously unkuowu details about the stagiug and blocking of particularsettings.^' What emerges from such contradictory evidence is the extra-filmic basisfor an ironic performance. Iu making this observation, I do not mean to imply thatperformance is iuhereiitly ironic; the point, rather, is to acknowledjte that Her/ogis extremely skilled in the art t)f sajing one thing as a way of doing another. Oneeffect of this extended performance has been to divert attention away from thepremise on which his documeutarics are based: that is, the very idea of appre-hending the world ILS a ciueuiatic landscape.

The world according to Herzog is rife with representation. In one of the mostimportant stateiuents on Herzog's practice, Tiuiothy C^orrigun points out that, cni-cially. Her/og addresses the world as a physical or uiatertal imagc.^^ This is alsothe sense in which he claims to "tliscover" landscapes. It seems to me, however,ihat this approach am also be understood as literalizing for an effect what MartinHcideggt-r callctl the world picture." Part of a larger argument about the emer-gence of modem life from a metaphysical perspective, the "world picture," asHeidegger defines it, "does not mean a picture of the world but the world

Cinema Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009 5 7

conceived and grasped as pictnre," This intellectual move implies a shift of his-torical consequence, "The world picture does not change from an earlier medievalone into a modem one, but ratheT the fact that the world becomes picture at all iswhat distinguishes the essence of the modem age."^^ For Fieidegger, the worldpictm e is a metaphor for what he untlerstands to be the primary structure of mod-em tiiought and experience. For Herzog, by contrast, the natural world has beenactually reified and thns transformed into a picture. The act of xiolence impliedby this transformation also plays ont in strikingly literal terms. Documentary im-ages of the natural world bear witness to the ecological destmction viTought by in-dustrial modernity.-" In other words, they show what Herzog frequently calls "theembarrassed landscapes of our world."^

It is important to stress, however, that the world according to Herzog is alsoshot tlirough with irony. ' Although seldom acknowledged (mnch less explored) inthe literatnre, the central importance of irony as a condition of Herzog's films hasin fact been emphasized by a few scholars, whose work is worth mentioning.Thomas -Elsaesser, for one, identifies an "irony of d(x:ument," which is particularlyrelevant. For Elsaesser, Herzog is "a director who heightens the documentarystance to the point where it becomes itself a powerful fiction,"'- More recently.Brad Prager has cited this dynamic as evidence of Herzog's affinity to Romanticirony, not only in the philosophical sense of a hnman condition i)r predicament,but also in the Ibrnitü" sense of emphatic self-referentiidity and sell-contradictionas a principle of aesthetic unity.^ Building on a psychological concept, TimothyCorrigan has identified in Herzog's work a "regressive irony," which works to po-sition spectators in a "hypnotic" relationship to images as a way of apprehendingthe world, and to confront them with the "childlike" or regressive nature of thisposition, at the same time. As Corrigan points out, however, there are many dif-ferent kinds of irony operating vvithin the director's body of work. Indeed, he sug-gests, any assessment of Herzog's films will ultimately depend on the role that oneassigns to the action of irony and the way in which one defines it.*'

Wayne C. Booths now-'classic" study ol rhetorical irony develops a modelof ironic reading as "reconstruction," a term he borrows from the domain of engi-neering, because it implies "the tearing down of one habitation and the bnildingof anotlier one on a different spot."^^ Herzogs documentaries would seeui to re-quire a similar interpretive process; they are not meant to be read straight. Rather,landscapes serve to conjure unseen worlds of affect and spiritruality, even as theyrepresent the physical world that we inhabit. There is, however, an important dif-ference that needs to be made explicit. The principal stmetures of meaning inthese films, snch as landscape pictures, can be mentally broken down, bnt resist allattempts to reconstruct them (as Booth would have us do). In other words, they in-vite an ironic reading withont, however, offering the comforts of rhetorical irony—i.e., the unspoken niles and absolute notion of truth that allow ns to understandthe speakers intended meaning. Rather, Herzog maneuvers to either suspend or

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block understanding by deploying a circle of familiar and .self-referential gestures,which may afford Herzog aficionados a certain pleasure of recognition, but onlyobtains as a type of fetish.^ That Herzog very clearly enjoys dismissing the verydistiiKtion between (íocuiiientar\- and fiction makes the act of reconstruction allthe more difficult. Add to this his wcll-know7i penchant for sublimating absurdi-.ties into mysteries, and a broader movement eomes into view. It is when the ac-tion of irony is multiplied without end that "we finally lose all sense of stability,"according t<t li(K)th, "and sink into the bogs of unstable irony."^"

Indeed, this is precisely where Herzog seems to thrive {all claims to the con-trary notwithstanding). An early and particularly important example is Fata Mor-gana ( 1970), a film that the director describes as having "crystallized" his audienceat a pivotal moment in his career.^ It began as a side project, filmed parallel to Theffyhifi Doctors ofFjist Africa (1969). as Herzog and his crew scouted numerouslocations in the Canarj' Ishuids and across the South Sahara for the narrative fea-ture Even Dwarves Started Small {1970). At the time of production, Herzxig de-scribed Fata Morgana as a "land inspection" {Landheschau), as if it were part of anofficial geographical survey.''' Ultimately, however, Uie film constructs a shifting,contradictory, and ephemeral landscape. It is first intmduced by the films title,wliich refers to a type of mirage. A physical phenomenon that is transient in na-ture, a fieeting landscape that is unattached to place yet originating in the mate-rial world, the mirage represents for Herzog a cinematic landscape par excellence.\u tins regard. Fata Morgana represents not an Afrtcan travelogue, but an ex|ilo-ratiou into the paradoxical nature of the cinematic image, which confronts thespectator with a space of referentiality that is also fleeting and inaccessible. To thiseffect, Her/og uses visual analog)- and extremely long takes. In one passage, for ex-ample, the camera performs a 180-degree pan, as if it were slowly moving along acinematic continuum, from the seemingly solid ground of a rock formation to theshimmering mirage of a desert lake. Another passage, shot from a fixed camera po-sition, creates a similar continuum by compressing it into a single frame, witli theinterval here extentling from the foreground to the horizon by means of deepfocus (Figure 3). The paradox is clear: by "holding" on the phy.sical world that ap-pears before it, the camera renders a shifting landscape picture that appears tolose its referentiality in the course of its depiction.

The film's significance lies in the dominance of landscape motifs over narra-ti\'e development, of which there is almost none. Fata Morgaim consists of a .seriesof sweeping vistas, featuring aeri;U views, traveling shots, and 36()-degree panora-niîis of mostly uninhabited land.scap(^s. It replays cinematically the Romantic fasci-nation with niins, as the camera lingers on traces of industrial detritus (abandonedfactories, oil drums, plane wrecks, and so on), which are strewn about the laiul. Ifthe film creates travel images, then they have been radically detached from anysort oí context. Where did these things come from, and why are they "here" in adesert? The image track begs the question, but the sound track answers back with

Cinema Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 20m 5 9

Figure 3. Desert landscape from Fata Morgana (Werner Herzog Productions,1970).

escalating uncertainty. Instead of historical or politicid analysis. Fata Morganacreates a quasi-mythological framework that is "deliberately inadetjuate and highlyironic."^"

Structurally, the film is divided into three parts; "Creation," "Paradise," and"The Golden Age."^' Each part features a different voice-over narrator and adifferent "mythical" source, ranging from the sacred (excerjîts from the Mayancreation myth, Popol Vuh, as read by Lotte Eisner) to the absurd (original textswiitten by Herzog). Rather than promote understanding by creating a sense ofnarrative cohesion, the framework generates dissonance and scnuuitic chaos. Mul-tiple narrators and nonsensical discourse (a male voice states matter-of-factly,"While you are sleepbig, acids gnaw and leeches suck at the tuna fish") combineto parody the authorit)' of "voice-of-God" narration in expository documentaries,The pseudo-mythical framework, in turn, promotes an ironic interpretation of theimage track. Thus, "Création" can be understood as a litany of colonial violence,•'Paradise" a postapocalyjjtic landscape of rnination. The (îoklen Age" an era ofinescapable destitution. Yet this is only one possibility, and there is uo secure ref-erential stnicture to support any one interpretation as opposed to another, "In par-adise,'" the narrator repeats, "there is landscape even without deeper meaning."The refusal of other meaning is also true of the film itself

Fata Morgana initiates a pri>cess of mythologizing the landscape as an inter-nal space, which is also emphatically a documentary representation of the materialworld. If Herzog approaches the world as a cinematic landscape picture, he does

6 0 Cinema Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009

s(t without providing a stable framework for preconceived understanding. Mythol-ogizing the landscape becomes a strateg)' for implicating spectators in the play ofirony by inviting them to ask interpretative questions of meaning and simultane-ously scuttling any attempt to draw consequences from the depicted world. Theaudience is offered a stake in the affective register that Herzog then deconstmctsthrough the action of irony. Neverthele,ss, the veiy tilmic techniques that serve tocreate distance and dissonance also generate an affective resonance, which hasnothing to do with meaning or interjiretation. Even when the condition of irony ismade explicit, there remains an intensity that wells up in the spectator when con-fronted with Her/ogs landscapes (a.s will be clear to anyone who has tried teach-ing this material on the undergraduate level). Over time, this excess of feeling hasitself become internal to Herzog's project, e,specially in the context of documen-tar), and through the growing number of films t oucerning sacred landscapes andtlic trcincndous ¡otn-ncys that they inspire.

Sacred Spaces. The idea of sacred landscape has emerged as a major topos ofHi r/ogs wovk, ÜL1C that he has mainly exploreil in the documentary mode (anearly exception being Where the Green Ants Dream, 19S4). It is also a topos thatother scholars have yet to address, perhaps because it might seem to be merely an-otlier version of the sublime (whicli it is not), but more likely due to its affinity forthe mystical and the supernatural.'*^ Of course, this affinity is exactly what interestsHerzog, as evidenced by the documentary shorts Bells from the Deep: Faith andSuperstition in Rus.sia (1993) and Christ and Demons in New Spain (1999), bythe compilation film Pilgrinmge (2001). and by the feature-length Wheel of Time(2003). One of the coimections among these different films is the idea of visualiz-ing the sacreil. Asked about the motivation behind Wheel of Tinw, Herzog an-.swered with bravado, "I had a physical curiosity to depict .spirituality, and it can bedone on film,"'' The strategy' in each case is to f(K-us on places where the sacredis thought to manifest its presence in landscape, such as historical sites of pilgrim-age. Wliat all these places and lived spaces have in common is the belief that eachrepresents a juncture of the material and the immaterial, the exterior and the in-terior. Herzogs project is to obsene and repre.sent what takes place at this inter-section, while positioning the spectator in a certain relation to it. The act of visitingshrines and being intensely (even physically) engaged in a landscape may be em-bodied b\' [jilgrims ou the move, but sucii passionate feelings can also be stirredand felt to some degree by s-pectators who embark on virtual voyages. In variousways, Herzog exploits the affective response to the embodied experience of sacredland.scapes on .screen,^' To explore this topos of Herzogs work means to add yetanother dimension to Bruno's model of film as a "cosmography that draws the uni-verse in the manner of an intimate landscape,"^''

A sacred landscape i.s a thoroughly para(k)xical space, which is also what makesit a challenging subject for documentary film. In his important study on the imageol Tibet in Western travel writing. Peter Bishop theorizes the sacred landscape as

Cinema Joumal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009 6 1

an "imaginar)- geography." Drawing on the work of Mircea Eliade and VictorTurner among others. Bishop observes that "sacred space has been defined interms of its separation from the profane world, by the limited access accorded toit, by a sense of dread or fascination, by intimations of order and power combinedwith ambiguity and paradox. Sacred places also seem to be located at the periph-ery of the social world." " At the same time, however, they are historical destina-tions for travel and meaningful centers of social activity. In this case, he argues.Western travelers did not 'discover" Tibet, but rather created it—visually, histttr-ically, discursively, socially—as sacred landscape. To elaborate this idea, Bishopmakes a cnicial distinction between sacred places and utopias as two differentkinds of imaginary constructs. Utopiixs, by definition, lie outside ttf time and space(they are designed to accommodate future dwelling, not regular visits by actualpilgrims, for example), whereas sacred landscapes are grounded in geographicalplace and situated in time. Moreover, utopias serve to resolve and eliminate con-tradictions, instead of emphasizing their mysterious incommensurability, as sacredspaces tend to do.^' It is from this perspective that Herzog can also be .seen to em-ploy documentary as a means of exploring sacred landscapes (not as a quest forUtopian images) and the ways in which people traverse them. Traveling aroundthe world, he visits and records actual places that are widely regarded by others assacred.'"*

My signal example is Wheel of Time, for it revolves around the idea of sacredlandscape while approaching it from several different angles. Tiie film takes placeat three separate locations. Its original occasion was the making of the Kalachakramándala, also known as the wheel ( or cycle) of time. The sand mándala is carefullyassembledoveraperiodof two weeks, viewed by masses of pilgrims, and then rit-ualistically destroyed. In 2002. the ceremony was convened by the Dalai Lamahimself in Bodhgaya, India, only to be postponed a few days later on account of hisdeteriorating health. It wiis reconvened the following year in Gniz, Austria, whichis home to the largest Buddhist community in Europe. Herzog is again pre.sent,and this time he conducts a brief hiterview with the DÍUÍÜ Lama, wlio describes hiswish for a politically and environmentally harmonious world. As the film unfolds,the two ceremonies serve to frame a third and othenvise unrelated event, whichmarks the film's symbolic and structural center—namely, a ritual pilgrimagearound Mount Kailash in Tibet.

Wheel of Time does more than just refer to the special relationship betweenthe venerated mountain and the sand mándala; it mimics that relationship in thecontext of documentary. As Herzog has noted, "the focal point of the KalachakraInitiation is a highly .symbolic and complicated sand mándala which is laid outaround the symbol of Mount Kailash, the centre of the world. The mountain itsell"is not only a very impressive pyramid of black rock with a cap of ice and snow onits top, it immediately strikes the voyager as something much deeper—an innerlandscape, an apparition of something existing only in the soul of man."^'' If theKalachakra mándala serves to visualize consciousness during the initiation, this

6 2 Cinema Journal 48, No. 2. Winter 2009

inner luncLscape" is all that renuuns after the p;ünting hius been destroyed, its sandscattered in the wind. Herzog's Wheel of Time explores this ancient idea and givesit a new twist, flaunting the spatial, kinetic, and apparitional qualities of the filmmedium and the assertive stance of documentaiy in particular. Structurally, theentire film is organized aronnd the rhythmic creation and destmetion of landscapepittnres (with the fleeting images of Mount Kailash at its center), and the power-lul feeliugs they arou.se in tiie viewer as "voyager." Iconographically, the moimtainprovides Herzog with a potent visual metaphor for his project (Figure 4). Here isan exterii)r landscape that already inspires and models an interior one.

By framing the images of Monnt Kailash in this way. Wheel of Time partakesof the Westem fascination with Tibet as a "visual display," which, according toBishop, is preci.sely what distinguishes this area from other, predominately textualtonstnictions of the Orient. Tracing its distinctive visnality throngh a range ofmedia (including travel writing, painting, and cartography), Bishop shows thathuulscape images gave Tibet its imaginary coherence throughout the nineteenthand early twentieth centuries—ending in 1951, with China's invasion and tlieresnlting exile of the Dalai Lama, Since then, it is no longer landscape that h;isserveil to organize Westem fantasies of Tibet, but rather its esoteric religion.™This histor\' of travel images al.so informs Wheel of Time. Herzog travels downwell-trodden paths in depicting sacred landscape as he does on screen.

Significantly, however, the fdm as a whole both exemplifies and complicatesthis trajectory from landscape to religion. On the one hand, the framing sectionsconcentrate on the physical practice oí Bnddhism ontside of Tibet, which is totallyin keeping with Bishop's account. The Austrian section is particularly interesting(this being cmly the eighth time in history that the Kalachakra ceremonies havetaken place in a Westem city), because it gives voice to the political agenda of Ti-betan exiles and their efforts to exert pressure on China through outside channels(which is probably the reason why the Dalai Ij^ma's office invited Herzog to filmihis event in the first place). On the other hand. Wheel of Time is emphatically nota documentary about either Buddhism or politics. Instead, the film recalls and ex-tends the earlier tradition of apprehending Tibet as a .sacred landscape. The his-torical shift from landscape to religion is momentarily reversed.

The ceremonies may provide the occasion, but the landscape (literally) pro-\ides the gronnd for Merzog's project of "filming spirituality." In a BBC interview,Her/og says of Mount Kailash, "This, we have to believe, is not just a sacred, sym-bolic cosmography like the mándala, but it has to do with a landscape that is feltto l)e sacred lor the Buddhists and the Hindus and others, as well." The presump-tion that Herzog makes, and asks us to make with him—"we have to believe"—could also be used to describe the film's assertive stance toward tlie cinematiclandscape as a moving image of conscionsness. Here, once again, is Herzog: "Itwas a deep curiosity to show a tmly sacred landscape. This was one of the reasonswhy I wanted to shoot Mount Kailash by myself. I was my own cinematographerlor these sequences."^' Emphasizing his control over the camera implies an

Cinejna Journal 48, No 2, Winter 2009 6 3

Figure 4. Telephoto shot of Monnt Kailash, Wheel of Time {Wemer Herzog Pro-ductions, 2004).

especially close—indeed, physical—connection between the sacred landscape aru!the cinematic image. It further reduces the imagined distance between the viewerand the site of pilgrimage as mediated by the body of the filmmaker.

The use of multiple lenses and angles of view serves to highlight differentaspects of Mount Kailash. which elicit in tuni an equally wide range of affectiveresponses. In some passages, the mountain appears in isolation as a solemn, mono-lithic peak; in others, it is shown as part of a larger panoramic grouping. Sensuousimages of Lake Manasarowar, a sacred landscape in its owii right and the moun-tain's legendary "feniide consort," are rhythmically interspersed with images ofKaiiiish. Tlie result is a cineuiatic ensemble, in which landscape elements aremythologized as figures that seem to silently interact with oue another The inten-sity of their imaginary engagement is only enhanced by images of pilgrims circum-ambulating the mountain, especially those who travel in prostrations. We witnesstheir excniciatingly slow, deliberate, and recurring movement, as well as the re-markable toll that it takes on their bodies over time. The movement of pilgrimbodies in space, like the films movement from place to place, has the effect offoregrounding the haptic and the kinetic—conditions that are central to Bruno'stheory of film—rendering passionate feelings with a tactile force that is particularto the film medium. Indeed, Wheel of Time offers a "positive" example of affectivemapping extended to the domain of spirituality. Rather than undercut the sensa-tion that arises out of the emotional intensity- of pilgrims and their physical involve-ment witli the land.scape, Herzog lets it escalate for the film viewer to experiencethrough the mind as well as through the senses.

6 4 Cinenm Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009

liy shaqo contrast, the sense of irony that pervades his other travelogues is no-ticeably ciiminlshed in Wheel of Time. For example, the use of telephoto shots andvoice-over commentary—^key devices that Flcrzog t\pically employs to generateestrangement, disrupt identification, and destabilize interpretation—here serveto intensify feelings of spiritual ecstasy. It is worth adding that other sections of thefilm, which shift the focus of visual interest to social actors and ceremonial perfor-mances (as opposed to landscapes), include scenes that have been actively stagedfor the camera, as Herzog is wont to do—a contested practice in dtK'umentary,where it always carries the possibilit>' of disniption.^- In this context, however,even the staged scenes work to engage the viewer on an emotional level, insteadof creating an Interpretive impasse. Significantly, the film's ultimate image returnsfrom Austria back to Tibet. In a long, single take, we see the sunlight as it fiickersand pixelates on the surface of Lake Manasarowar, creating a view tliat is stronglyremini.scent of the desert landscape in Fata Morgana. Unlike that film, however,no commentary is added or u.sed to take away from the landscape in Wheel ofTime. Here, tlie stress lies on the evocation of afí'ect and emotion, and not on theaction of irony. It appears that the sacred nature of the landscape is the crucialcharacteristic in explaining the shift of emphasis. Hei-zog's treatment of sacredlandscape demonstrates not a difîerent approach to landscape and documentaryaltogether. It merely exhibits a different ratio and manifestation of the same set ofrelations between affect and irony that distinguish his work as a type of emotionalcartography.

Throughout Herzog's documentaries, as we have seen, landscape picturesserve not merely to project the filmmaker's subjectivity into space. They positionthe spectator vis-à-vis tlie depicted world in ways that foreground the productionof afiective exjierience and its mediation by image-making technology. Most no-tably, Herzog's documentaries mythologize the landscape as depicting an internalspace, which is also an indexicíü image of the external world. Even in documen-tary, they suggest, we cannot identify clear and fixed boundaries between exteriorand interior spaces of representation. Underlying this cinematic terrain is docu-mentary's unstable anti constantly shifting relationship to knowledge. As I havesuggested, Herzog's landscape offers a site for performiug his notion of documen-tary as a repudiated mode of filmmaking. What emerges from this ironic perfor-mance is a revised and revitalized notion of documentary epistemology, one thatis fundauientally b;iscd on and devoted to the visibility of afTective experience andother forms of embodied knowledge.

Notes

I am grateful to Marianne Hirsch and to Cinema JmimaVs anonymous readers for theirhelpful comments and suggestions on earlier drafts of tliis essay.

1. By documentaries, I mean "films of presumptive assertion." This definition, which Iborrow from Noël Carroll, undei-scxires the assertive stance (toward what is shown) thathoth the viewer mid the filmmaker expect each other to adopt. It also recognizes that

Cinema Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009 6 5

documentaries may lie. "That is, they are presumed to involve assertion even in caseswhere the filmmaker is intentionally dissimulating at the same time that he is signalingassertoric intention." Such is the case with Herzog's documentaries, as will be shown.Noël CaiTolI, Engaging tlie Moving Image (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,2003), 208.

2. All the films discussed in this essay have been "indexed" (designated for distributionand marketing) as dfX'umentaries hy Herzogs production company, a pnictice that notonly reinforces the vvr^' distinction that he dismisses in public, hut also shapes the con-ditions of reception, as Herzog is well aware. On indexing, see Noël Carroll, "From Healto Reel: Entangled in tiie Nonfiction Film," Philosojihic Exchange 14 (19S3): 5-45.

3. For a key .statement, see the manile.sto that Herzog delivered at the Walker Art Cen-ter in 1999, tilt' so-called "Minnesota Dt'claration: Truth and Fact in DocumentaryCinema," which is readily accessible on the fihnmaker's ol'licial Web site, littp://www.wenierht'r7.og.fom (accessed September 13, 2006).

4. David Davidson. "Borne Out of Darkness; The Documentaries of Wemer Herzog,"Film Criticism 5 (1980): 10.

5. The idea of landscape as "an instrument of cultural power" comes from W. J. T.Mitchell's introduction to Landscape and Power, ed. Mitchell (Chicago: University ofChicago Press, 1994), 1-2.

6. Qiioted in Paul Cronin, ed., Herzog on Herzog (London: Falier and Faber, 2002), 136,Herzog rehearses this speech almost verbatim in his autobiographical short, PortraitWemer Herzog i\9H6).

7. See Lotte H. Eisner, '•Hera)g in Dinkelsbiihl," Sight and Sotntd 43 (1974): 212-13;and the German edition of The Haunted Screen, first pnhlislied in 1975, and readilyavailable as Die dämonische lA'imvand, ed. Hilmar Hoffmann and Walter Schobert(Frankfurt am Main: Fischer, 19S7), 337. 353. For reflections on Herzog's landscapesthrough the aspoct of Eisner's study, see Jan-Christophor Horak, "Werner Herzog'sÉcran Alimrde," in Literature and Film Quarterhj 7. no. 3 (1979): 223-34.

8. Giuliana Bnino, Atlas ofEnwtion: journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York:Verso, 2002), f5-16. For an earlier, localized version of this intervention, see Street-walking on a Ruined Map: Cultural Theory and the City Films of Elvira Notari(Princeton, NJ; Princeton University Press. 1993), 37-38.

9. Bruno, Atlas of Emotion, 207.10. Jill Bennett, Empathie Vision: Affect. Trauma, and Contemporary Art (Stanford, CA:

Stanford University Press, 2005), 10, 34.11. To support her theory, Bruno develops an alternative history of the cinema and its pre-

cursors through ;ui older tradition of what she calls "emotion pictures." Madeleine deScndéry's Carte du pays de Tendre (Map of the Land of Tenderness. 1654), wliich waspublished to accompany her novel Céline, provides a key cxainple and what proves tobe a useful guide to "moving pictures" through the centuries.

12. Cene Walsh, ed., "Images at the Horizon": A Workshop with Wemer Herzog, con-dticted by Roger Ebert at the Facets Multimedia Center, Chicago, Illinois, April 17,1979 (Ch'icago: Facets Multimedia. 1979). 22.

13. For a thorough discussion of this issue, see Laura U. Marks. The Skin of the Film: ¡n-teradtural Cinema. Embodiment, and the Senses (Durham, NC: Duke UniversityPress, 2000).

14. The definition i.s Jennifer Peterson's, quoted hy Jeffrey Ruoffin his "Introduction; TheFilmic Fourtli Dimension; Cinema as Audiiivisual Vehicle," Virtual Voyages: Cinemaand Travel, ed. Ruoff (Durham, NC; Duke University Press, 2006), 17.

15. See, e.g., Brigitte Peucker, "Wemer Herzog; In Quest of the Snhlime," in New Ger-man Filmmakers, ed. Klaus Phillips (New York; Frederick Ungar Pnblishing, 1984).

6 6 Cinetiui Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2(X)9

168-94. Cf Alan Singer. "Comprehending Appearances: Werner iler/xig's Irouic Sub-lime," in Thr Fihns of Werner lierzitg: Between Mirage and History, ed. Tunothy Cor-rigan (New York: Methuen, 1986), 183-205.

IB. Bruno, Ai//w of Emotion, 20.17, III his fasciuatiou with early cinema, Herzog is obviously uot alone. See Tom Gunuiug,

"An Unseen Energy Swidlows Space: Tlie Space in Early Film and Its Relation toAmerican Avaut-Garde Film. ' in Fihii hiforc CriffHh, ed. John L. Fc-ll (Berkeley: Uni-versitv' of Ciilifonua Press, 198,'3), .'í.'íS-fiB, Within Merzog's oeuvre, this use of mobilecamera recalls a sceue from Hiffis of Life (1967). in which a roving camera explores thestreets of a Creek island town, without any obvious relation to the storvline,

18, Voice-over commentary enhances the effect. As the camera pans across an extremelyhlurry image of Saint-Pierre taken after tlie volcano's explosion, Her/og remarks, "it isan actual photi». not a painting. ' The gesture here is to the sense of historical "authen-ticity'" that is commouly iLs.sociated vvitli photographic reportage. Iroiiicaliy, however,"the effect is not the immediacy of 'realitv,' hut ratlier the distancing of art," KentCasper, "Herzog's Quotidian Apocalypse: L^ Soufrière," Film Criticism 15. no. 2(1991): 33.

19, Cronin, Herzog ou Herzog, 83; original emphasis.20, La Simfrière gives the lie to Herzog's claim, for "the mouutaiu refuses to perform,"

Tom Cheesman, "Ap<x:iUvpse Nein Danke: The Fall of Werner Herzog," in CreenThought in Cennau Culture: Historical and Contemporanj Perspectives, ed. ColinKiuidan (Cardiff: Univeniit)' of Wales Press, 1997), 293.

2f. See on this point Yi-Fn Tuan, "Topophilia," Landscape 11, no. 1 (Autumn 1961);29-32.

22. Simon Schama. Landscape and Menumj (New York: Vintage Bonks. 1995).23. See, e.g., Wim Wenders, "A Sense of Place," a March 2001 talk at Princeton Univer-

sity, available at the filmmaker's official Web site, http^/www.wim-wenders,com (ac-cessed September 13, 2(X)6),

24. Lawrence O'Toole, "The Creat Ecstasy of Filinmmaker Herzog," Film Comriient 15,no, 6 (Novcmher-December 1979): ,36.

25. [n addition to Schama and the antliologv-' edited hy Mitchell (op. cit.), see HildegardBinder jotmsoii. "The Frame-d Landscape, ' ¡Mnd.scape 23, no, 2 (1979): 26-32; JohnBrinckerhoff Jackson, Discovering the Vemandar ÎMVukcape (New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press. 1984); and Malcolm Andrews. Landscape and Western Art {NewYork: Oxford University Press, 1999).

26. The key example is Herzog on Herzog, edited by Cronin; see especially chapter 8,"Fact arid Tnith."

27. Timothy Corrigan, "Producing Herzog: From a Body of Images," in The Films ofWerner Herzog: Between Mirage and History, ed. Corrigan (New York: Methuen1986), 15.

28. Martin Heidegger, "The Age of the World Picture," in Tlw Question Cona-niing Tech-nology and Other Essays, trans, William l^ivitt (New York: Harper. 1977), 129, 130.

29. If the Illuunaker ami the pliilosopher have anvíhing in common, it is the German tra-dition o{ '/¿vitisatioivikiitik. For Herzog's part, see the interview ctiiiducted hy LjiwrenceOTooIe, "I Feel That I'm Close to the Center of Things," Flhi Cotwiwiit 15, no, 6(November-December 1979): 41. For an important statement on Herzog's criticalproject, see Cheesmim, "Apociilypse Nein Danke."

30. See. e,g„ O'Tíxile, "I Feel," 48; Cronin, Hci-zog on Herzog, 47-48, In Cernían, Herzogemploys the term beleidigt, meaning "offended," which is also one sense in which heuses the English word "embarrassed." Both words attriliute aiithropomoqiliic qualitiesto landscape, a move that is commonly discussed in terms of Expressionism.

Cinema Journal 48, No. 2. Winter 2009 6 7

31. I say this being well aware that the fihiiniuker has often identified himself as "someonewho takes everything verj' literally." He claims, "I simply do not understand irony," asif relishing his own supposed shortcoming. This move, which is also a good example ofHerzogs penchant for self-contradiction, can be seen as part of a larger repertoire,which the filmmaker has rehearsed almost verbatim throughout his long career. For arecent example and the source of this quotation, see Croniii, Herzo{i on HerziJ^. 26.

32. Thomas Elsaesser, 'The Ciinema of Irony," Monogrnm 5 (1973): 2; New Geniian Cin-ema: A Histonj (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 165,

33. Brad Prager, Tlie Cinema of Werner Berzug: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth (London:Wallllower Press, 2007), 14-15-

.34. Corrigan, "Producing Herzog," 14-16.35. Wayne C. Booth, A Rhetoric of i wm¡ (Chicago: Universityof Chicago Press, 1974), 33.36. See on this point Corrigan, "Producing Herzog," 10. 13-14.37. Booth, A RJietoric of Irony, 62.38. Wemer Herzog, interview b)' Kraft Wetzel, in Werner Hei-zog: Werkst^tdie, Filmof;,ra-

phie, Gespräch, ed. Claus Huebner and Kraft Wetzel (Stuttgart: Kommunales KinoStuttgart, 1973), 40.

39. Quoted in Kraft Wetze!, "Werner Herzog: kommentierte Filmographie," inHerzog/Kiuge/Si raub, ed. Peter W. Jansen and Wolfram Schütte (Munich: Carl HanserVerlag, 1976), 96.

40. Elsaesser, Neiv Geniwn Cinemu, 166.41. Herzog has compared this stmcture to that of Hieronymus Bosch's triptych, Garden of

EartMy Delißftts, a reproduction i)f which was reportetll)' mounted above Herzogs ed-iting table. See Raimund le Viseur and Wemer Schmidmaier, "Playljoy Interview:Wemer Herzog," Playboy (German edition), Januarv' 1977, 30. The screenplay is avail-able in Wemer Herzog. Drehbücher I (Munich: Skellig Edition, 1977), 193-202.

42. Prägers study is unusu;tl and noteworthy for its emphasis on "faith" as a theme ofHerzogs work, but it does uot explore the idea of sacred landscape and the particularissues that attach to it. See chapter 4.

43. Wemer Herzog, BBC interview (Fehruar)' 13, 2003), http://www.hbc.co.uk/print/bbcfour/documentaries/storyville/wemer-her/og.shtml (accessed September 8, 2006).For a similar statement on Belhfrom the Deep, see Geoffrey O'Brien, 'Werner Herzogin Conversation with Geoffrey O'Brien," Parnassus: Poetry in Review 22. nos. 1 and 2(Spring-Sunmier 1997): 42.

44. Herzogs well-known claim to ofTer up "the ecstatic tmth" is certainly relevant in thiscontext, but it lacks theoretical purchase. The phrase is often cited and recycled in tlit-press, mainly in relation to the theme of tlie filminaker as visionär)-. Rather than try toelaborate his pecuhar conception of truth, I would simply note that the usual languageof Herzog criticism is largely beholden to him.

45. Bnmo, Atlas ofEnunion, 245.46. Peter Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La: Tibet, Travel Writing, ami the Western Cre-

ation of Sacred Landscape (Berkeley: Universityof C^alifomia Press, 1989), 10. Here itshould be noted that the cinema itself has been imagined as a modem form of sacredspace, which not only is separate and special, but also produces a feeling of awe andmystery. See on this point Rachel O. Moore, Savage Theory: Cimniui (Ui Modem Magic(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2(H)0).

47. Bishop, The Myth of Shangri-La. 215-18.48. Herzog often has compared the practice of filmmaking to the act of making a pil-

grimage, espousing the nomadic idea of walking as a lost way of life. See, e.g., Cronin,Herzogon Herzog, 14-1.5, 50, 279-82.

6 8 Cinema Journal 48, No. 2, Winter 2009

49. Werner Herzog, Introduction to Pilf^rinui: Becominfi the Path Itself hy Lena Her/og(Uindon; Arcpt'dpliis, 2(K)4), 1 ]. The .siuid mándala "slioukl be visualized as a pyramidwith its tip resting on the suninùt" of Momit Kailush, exteiuting the idea of the moun-tain as íj.rí.'i miindi, a physicül connection between heaven and earth (2Ü).

50. Bishop, The Mijth of Shaunn-lM, 244..51. llcr/xig, BB(;; emphasis added.52. The playful seeiie in Wheel of Time, in vvliieli a lone bodvíínanl stitnds watch over an

empty rcxiin, is admittedly staged (Herzog, BBC). Here it should be noted that Bellsfrom the Deep is replete with profes.sional performers—an exorcist, a faith healer,and a Jesns impersonator—and staged scenes, all of which go nnmarked (see Cronin,Herzo^on //rr;*)^;, 251-53). In many instiuices, however, the camerawork in efíect dis-tances the d(K'nnu'ntarian from his subject, as the subtitle. Faith and Superstition inRufi.HÍa, would alieady seem to suggest,

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