The Cinema of Werner Herzog by Brad Prager

Author:Brad Prager
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: PER004030, Performing Arts/Film & Video/History & Criticism, PER004010, Performing Arts/Film & Video/Direction & Production
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2007-11-18T16:00:00+00:00

The Dark Glow of the Mountains / Scream of Stone

The scenes in Nosferatu the Vampyre that Herzog filmed in the Tatra mountains depict mist-covered peaks and a protagonist who grows smaller and smaller relative to the rocky landscapes that surround him. These sequences are very similar to certain ones in Herzog’s The Dark Glow of the Mountains, a film shot by cameraman Rainer Klausmann, the one who had found himself stranded on a rock during the filming of Fitzcarraldo. Klausmann later made Scream of Stone with Herzog, a film that is in many ways related to The Dark Glow of the Mountains. The latter is a ‘documentary’ about Reinhold Messner, a mountain climber who sets out with another mountaineer, Hans Kammerlander, to climb two Himalayan peaks, Gasherbrum I and II, on a single excursion – something that has never before been attempted. Both peaks are over 8,000 metres high. In this film, Herzog takes the opportunity to explore Messner’s climbing obsession, asking him not only why he climbs, but also to confront the fact that his brother had a fatal accident when the two were climbing together.

Among other details, Messner shares with Herzog that he has only four toes; the rest have been lost, presumably to frostbite. As in the case of Walter Steiner, Herzog has chosen a protagonist with whom he has some affinity. He says elsewhere that he could not make films about people with whom he does not feel some kind of connection, and one sees evidence of the connection early in the film. The two share an obsession with walking, and Messner makes comments here almost identical to ones that Herzog had made in earlier interviews (see especially O’Toole 1979: 48). Messner says that if he could not climb mountains, he would walk continuously, as far as he could. Herzog says: ‘This is something that I have always thought about. I like the idea of just disappearing, walking away, turning down the path and just carrying on until there is no path to follow. I would like to have Huskies with leather saddle bags and just walk and walk on until there is no road left’ (Cronin 2002: 193).

When Messner tries to explain his fascination with climbing and the risks that he has forced himself to take, he acknowledges that there is no real justification for these activities that he can properly articulate. He can only say that he likes to test himself, and he speaks of climbing as an addiction. When Messner sits naked before Herzog’s camera, having returned from his excursion, Herzog asks him what the point of climbing is. Messner explains that he has the feeling that he can write his name on the top of the mountains he climbs, and that although no one can see it, it stays written there for eternity. The permanent inscription of his name is, it seems, a way of combating his own mortality, something that is all the more evocative when one thinks about this film

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