In the story of the breakdown of a small glassblowing factory in a Bavarian village around 1800, Werner Herzog's Heart of Glass sees the melancholy of communities depending on manufacture, the disconnectedness of people without a feeling of purpose. Dashed hopes and visions of a desolate future come in the guise of the soothsaying of a shepherd, who prophesizes in a hypnotic state. Stay with me here.
This is one of the most legendary of Herzog's films, known as the one where most of the actors were put in trances for most of the scenes. It hasn't been seen much, maybe since it isn't to the predilection of most people. There's no orthodox story, no conclusion, and the final scene is an allegory apparently not related to anything that's gone before. The movie's like a piece of music, where everything is understood in terms of tone and ambiance.
Herzog's panorama has two shots from the tops of peaks, looking down over the earth and the ocean. The rest of the movie is set in a few houses, a beer hall, a glass factory, and in the forest engulfing the village. The people rely on the manufacture of rose- colored glassware. The head glassmaker Muhlbeck has died, taking with him the secret of the glass. Reckless attempts are made to retrieve the formula, but all blunder. A sensible person might say the factory can make other kinds of glass. But there are no sensible people around here.
The dialogue the actors perform under Herzog's hypnosis is delivered with a barren conviction. It lacks energy and identity. What if what we're really hearing are Herzog's own inflections as he hypnotized them and told them what to say? Is he acting through them? These are not really characters, though they have idiosyncrasies. They're people who have had their spirit taken from them by the deterioration of their work. It's a bleak life, but it's a purpose.
The survivor of a drunken free-fall from a hayloft waltzes despairingly with his friend's corpse. People drink and stare. In a particularly memorable scene, one guy breaks a beer stein over another guy's head, who doesn't react. Then, he unhurriedly pours his own beer over the first one's head, again yielding no reaction.
You can feel what Herzog is driving at. In reality, you don't break a mug over someone's head without some apparent rationale, but that's gratuitous for Herzog's intentions. He shows the animal texture of the two men fighting. They need no explanation. They're devoid of motivation, to fight or to live. They've been rendered into shells of despondency and bitterness. Some imagery works fine without literal interpretation. Heart of Glass seems to me to be such a piece of work. We may not quite know what it makes us think, but we know how it makes us feel.
This is one of the most legendary of Herzog's films, known as the one where most of the actors were put in trances for most of the scenes. It hasn't been seen much, maybe since it isn't to the predilection of most people. There's no orthodox story, no conclusion, and the final scene is an allegory apparently not related to anything that's gone before. The movie's like a piece of music, where everything is understood in terms of tone and ambiance.
Herzog's panorama has two shots from the tops of peaks, looking down over the earth and the ocean. The rest of the movie is set in a few houses, a beer hall, a glass factory, and in the forest engulfing the village. The people rely on the manufacture of rose- colored glassware. The head glassmaker Muhlbeck has died, taking with him the secret of the glass. Reckless attempts are made to retrieve the formula, but all blunder. A sensible person might say the factory can make other kinds of glass. But there are no sensible people around here.
The dialogue the actors perform under Herzog's hypnosis is delivered with a barren conviction. It lacks energy and identity. What if what we're really hearing are Herzog's own inflections as he hypnotized them and told them what to say? Is he acting through them? These are not really characters, though they have idiosyncrasies. They're people who have had their spirit taken from them by the deterioration of their work. It's a bleak life, but it's a purpose.
The survivor of a drunken free-fall from a hayloft waltzes despairingly with his friend's corpse. People drink and stare. In a particularly memorable scene, one guy breaks a beer stein over another guy's head, who doesn't react. Then, he unhurriedly pours his own beer over the first one's head, again yielding no reaction.
You can feel what Herzog is driving at. In reality, you don't break a mug over someone's head without some apparent rationale, but that's gratuitous for Herzog's intentions. He shows the animal texture of the two men fighting. They need no explanation. They're devoid of motivation, to fight or to live. They've been rendered into shells of despondency and bitterness. Some imagery works fine without literal interpretation. Heart of Glass seems to me to be such a piece of work. We may not quite know what it makes us think, but we know how it makes us feel.