Werner Herzog Eat His Shoe Sparknotes

Werner Herzog was well know for his interesting personality and his ability to interact with people. He was a man of his word but very set in his ways. He would do anything for his team but also expected them to return the favor. Werner was a man that literally ate his own shoe as a bet to urge on his friend, a man that threw himself into a cactus for his cast(Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe). Herzog did expect recompense for his actions, he required his cast and crew to do outrageous deeds such as during the making of “Heart of Glass”, he required that all the members of the cast be subject to hypnosis(Cook). Herzog tried his best to have a good relationship with his cast and bring to be all they could, to push them as far as they could go, Herzog

Whether Werner Herzog was making a documentary or a fiction film, he always had to have an extreme setting. Herzog thought that the landscape that is being shot on should tell as much story as the actors. He even goes as far as to begin blending people with the landscape seen in “Aguirre, The Wrath of God”. The natives begin to blend in with the trees, only showing their eyes so that the Spanish know that they are being watched and are under threat. The once triumphant Spanish, now are insignificant and dwarfed by the might of the environment(Sharman). A critic once stated that Herzog’s films were a, "unique contribution to the documentary tradition as arising from his desire to confront that which lies past man 's understanding, to suggest through what may be captured on screen that which resides just beyond the visible."(Ames) This obviously applies to most all of his films for the fact that Herzog believes that so much of the story can be told by the scene alone. Herzog also tends to have the audience view the land as sacred or sought after (Ames). In “Aguirre, The Wrath of God”, it is evident that the land of El Dorado is sacred and sought after, the natives guarding it and the Spanish will stop at nothing to reach it. Similarly in “Fitzcarraldo”, the Rubber tree grove is saw a goal, a destination that must be reached. The open plains where the bears roam in “Grizzly Man” are very apparently sacred as Timothy guards over it, and the Native Alaskan spoke of it as almost taboo to visit there. In Herzog’s “Into the Abyss”, although it is not technically a landscape, Herzog presents us with the room where men take their final breath and it is very difficult to view that room without a sort of bewilderment. Herzog uses landscapes in ways that display irony. His films often begin with an image that acts as a place to begin from, a position to build the story from, but Herzog will also often bring the viewer back to that same place for the end. Werner shoots a large