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HEART
OF GLASS
8/10
Herz
aus Glas : (West) Germany 1976 : Werner Herzog : 94 mins
Combining
aspects of gothic horror movie, weird fairytale and crazy comedy, Heart
of Glass is a way-out bit of seventies experimental cinema that’s
also a wildly over-ambitious chronicle of a nation’s history, art and
philosophy – nothing less than an attempt to analyse the essence of Germany’s
tortured soul. It’s also one of the most aggressively soporific films
ever made.
Moments
of magic along the way aren’t enough for some viewers – the rare public
screenings are renowned for walk-outs and, perhaps even worse, noddings-off.
Although it’s barely an hour and a half long, it can often feel like an
endurance test. But it is worth it. There are some staggering things
here, and in retrospect the memory of tedium fades - you realise the scale
of Herzog’s intentions, and the surprising degree to which the finished
product measures up.
If
nothing else, he’s crafted a terrific, original story on which to hang
his metaphysical musings. It’s the early days of the industrial revolution
in a small, isolated German town where the only large-scale employer is
a glassware business owned by a decadent family of local aristocrats.
The firm – and thus the town – are plunged into crisis when glass expert
Muhlbeck dies, taking with him the secret of the firm’s renowned ‘ruby
glass.’ The impact upon bosses and workers alike is a mood of desolate,
terminal, dejection. The only person immune from this cloud of depression
is a bear-like shepherd, Hias (Joseph Bierbichler), who happens to be
gifted with second sight. As the general mood darkens to a more violent
hysteria, Hias’s visions gallop forward in time, through the bloody events
of the 20th century, and beyond…
Heart
of Glass (nothing to do with the legendary Blondie song of the same
name) is best known these days for Herzog having supposedly ‘hypnotised’
the entire cast, with the presumable exception of Bierbichler, in order
to convey the world-out-of-joint impact of the ruby-glass crisis, and
also recapture the pace of an era completely removed from our own. But
even if we accept that such a thing as ‘hypnotism’ exists (most psychologists
don’t), the briefest glance through Herzog’s life and work should warn
us how dangerous it is to accept anything he does or says at face value.
He isn’t in any way malevolent – as with Lars Von Trier, it’s more a manifestation
of a very individual sense of prankish humour, and a general way of looking
at the world, and it’s partly what makes both men such fascinating film-makers.
And
whether Herzog actually ‘hypnotised’ the cast, or merely directed them
to give hypnosis-type performances – or even if he sedated them by chemical
means - doesn’t ultimately matter. Whatever the process, the results are
often agonisingly protracted, with heavy-lidded rustics intoning their
lines in a robotic monotone. The effect extends to the viewer, and we
may find ourselved being sucked into this sleepy world of nightmarish
stasis. It’s the horror, ultimately, of failed progress – as the
world teeters on the cusp of a brave new industrial era, the crisis in
the glassworks (a spectacular instance of “trouble at t’mill” indeed)
opens the possibility that the whole of humanity may actually be poised
on the precipice of a terrible abyss. Partly thanks to the questionings
of Martin Luther, man has moved slowly away from a reliance upon God –
and now finds himself stranded in a cold, lonely universe of imminent
bloodshed, apocalypse, holocaust…
But
this presents a misleadingly depressing picture of what Heart of Glass
is about. While it’s a long way from being light-hearted, there’s
a surprising amount of humour in the movie, both specific (the servant
who keeps dropping glasses; the senile father looking for his shoes; a
cardplayer holding his hand rigid as a lynchmob jostles him around an
empty beer-hall) and general - the way everything is taken to ludicrous
extremes.
And
while Herzog points towards the horrors lying in wait for Germany just
around the next corner, he indicates that Hias represents another way
forward, in stark contrast to the other principal character, the unnamed
heir (Stefan Guttler) to the glass business. While Hias recalls the sturdy-yeoman
character played by Gerard Depardieu in Bertolucci’s roughly-contemporary
1900 (Novecento), the heir combines aspects of two of that
movie’s representatives of the ruling class: Robert De Niro’s torpid young
aristo, and Donald Sutherland’s vampiric Nazi. When he heir stumbles across
what may or may not be the ‘ruby secret’ it involves murder, his Lestat-pale
skin finally splashed with deep red blood.
A
Byronic, tall figure with flowing black locks and prominent cheekbones,
the heir may not be superficially repellent, but he’s at least as sinister
as anything in Herzog’s later Nosferatu. He plays most of his early
scenes against gnome-like retainer Adalbert (Clemens Scheitz), appearing
commandingly tall. But when we see him the the same room as Hias, he’s
dwarfed by the psychic shepherd. Later, when both are placed in the same
prison cell the heir attempts to establish common ground (“You are like
me, you have a heart of glass”) but Herzog again undermines him by emphasising
their differences: the heir slumps, resigned in his chains, while Hias
rages, desperate for a view of his beloved countryside, just like Lecter
in Silence of the Lambs.
The
cell is one of the film’s numerous cavernous, candle-lit spaces, its two
windows eerily resembling a pair of eyes, too deep set to afford more
than token blocks of sky. Herzog often has large sections of the screen
in shadow, precisely regulating how much light is allowed to enter the
shot. There are some remarkable sequences in the glass factory - onlookers
fade into the darkness the further away they are from the orange-hot glow
of the molten glase, the artisans blowing it into bulbous vase-shapes
or, in one remarkable sequence, teasing out a horse from the treacly gloop
as we watch.
But
in the end these interior sequences pale alongside the staggering visions
of the countryside (even if Popul Vuh’s prog-classical accompaniment ties
them rather too closely with their actual mid-1970s origin), with one
amazing use of time-lapse very early on showing clouds rushing over a
subfusc forestscape. The debt to 19th-century German artists
is evident, with Caspar David Friedrich prominent among the influences
(various shots recreate his famous ‘Wanderer Over a Sea of Fog,’ and ‘Chalk
Cliffs on Rugen,’ among others.)
Herzog’s
treatment of the natural world has a specific goal – like Hias, we’re
never too comfortable inside. And while the gloomy prison cell is the
last we see of the heir, Hias is soon returned to his proper habitat,
wrestling an invisible bear out of its cave in a snowy forest. The film
ends with us finally being allowed to share one of his premonitions: Hias
(visionary) and Herzog (artist) merge into one voice, telling a fable
of an island community who, suspecting the world may not be flat, send
out a search party to discover the truth.
Being
right, of course, won’t save the mission from probable madness, starvation,
and death, but that isn’t the point. As long as there are individuals
like these, like Hias – and, of course, Herzog – there’s always hope,
even if it’s just a ‘sign of hope,’ to quote from the epilogue title-card:
a poetic, ambiguous shaft of inspiration that’s enough to reward the viewer’s
sorely-tested patience. While Heart of Glass clearly isn’t like
anything else, that’s not necessarily a good thing. But it is recommended
- and so is drinking some black coffee beforehand.
17th
August, 2001
(seen National Film Theatre, London, Aug-8-01)
by Neil
Young
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