In what has been a remarkable year for Toronto documentaries, two of the biggest names, and two of the most playful filmmakers, have been Werner Herzog and Errol Morris.
Herzog’s “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” is a 3D doc that uses the Paleolithic paintings in the Chauvet-Pont-d’Arc cave in southern France as a jumping-off point for the veteran German director’s musings about humanity, art and identity.
In typical twisted Herzog fashion, he even manages to throw in some albino crocodiles (or, as he imagines, mutant radioactive albino crocodiles) that live near the cave.
Morris’ “Tabloid,” on the other hand, takes a comic approach and uses screaming headlines, buzzwords flashed on the screen in mid-interview, and contradictory interviews, all to tell the strange and tangled tale of one-time beauty queen Joyce McKinney (below).
McKinney was arrested in 1977 for kidnapping, imprisoning and raping her Mormon boyfriend; she resurfaced decades later when she went to Korea to have her dog cloned.
Herzog and Morris joined a Toronto doc line-up that also included Alex Gibney's "Client 9: The Rise and Fall of Eliot Spitzer," Charles Ferguson's "Inside Job," Davis Guggenheim's "Waiting for 'Superman'" and Thom Zimny's "The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town."
The two men are longtime friends who appeared jointly at Toronto to have an onstage conversation about their films, and about the blurring line between fiction and nonfiction films. In individual interviews, they both sat down with TheWrap to talk about their films, and their art form.
Werner Herzog, Part 1 — the lure of cave paintings, and the mysteries of Chauvet:
Herzog, Part 2 — 3D, mutant albino crocodiles, and why film schools ought to teach forgery.
Errol Morris, Part 1 – why dog cloning + sex & chains = irresistible subject matter:
Morris, Part 2 – playing on that blurry line between fiction and non-fiction:
