Director, screenwriter and provocateur Werner Herzog has had a wide-ranging and occasionally confounding career, with his 60 films ranging from the arthouse classics "Aguirre, the Wrath of God" and "Fitzcarraldo" to acclaimed documentaries like "Grizzly Man" and "Encounters at the End of the World" to the overamped pulp of "Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call – New Orleans."
His "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," which opens Friday, is a 3D exploration of the cave paintings in the Chauvet caves in Southern France -- but since it's Herzog, the film is less an archaelogical exploration than a fanciful meditation on the human soul. Filmed during a week of short stints in the heavily restricted space, the doc includes typically Herzogian detours, including a coda that involves albino crocodiles living down the river from Chauvet.
We met with Herzog this week. Last week's death of photojournalist and documentary filmmaker Tim Hetherington prompted a conversational detour into a topic on which the famous risk-taker naturally had something to say.
Also read: Docu-Mania at TIFF: On Cave Paintings, Dog-Cloning and Sex & Chains
Can a filmmaker or photojournalist go too far? Is there a line where you should stop and say, "Wait a minute, this is too dangerous?"
Of course. I don’t care that much about danger for myself, but you have to think about it particularly if you take other people along with you. And these moments have happened to me. For instance, a film I shot in the Caribbean about an exploding volcano ["La Soufriere"].
There was a seismic crisis, and the mountain ripped open with toxic gasses, and it was predicted that it would explode. And one of the two cinematographers asked me, "Werner, what would happen if we're on this volcano filming, and it explodes?" And I said, "Edward, we shall be airborne." What else can you say?
So yes, there is a border line of risk, and you'd better be very cautious. And by the way, in 60 films, contrary to the wild rumors about me, not a single actor ever got hurt. So I have statistics on my side that I'm circumspect, that I'm prudent.
With "Grizzly Man," you made a film about Timothy Treadwell, who was convinced that he could live safely among wild bears. He and his girlfriend ended up being killed by a bear while his camera was running …
Well, there are other border lines, ethical border lines. In the film "Grizzly Man," there is a surviving tape, which contains only the audio portion of his last six minutes. It was switched on by the girlfriend of Timothy Treadwell when a bear attacked and ended up eating both Treadwell and her. And in the drama of events unfolding, she didn’t have time to take the lens cap off the cameras, so we only have the audio portion.
And on this tape, you hear things that you should never hear in an anonymous audience.
