Letzte Worte

Already at the age of 25 or 26, at the same time as he was crafting his first film as a writer and director, Werner Herzog had a firm grip on how his worldview could be represented on film: absurd, sad, apocalyptic to a degree, but also full of the repetition of poetry (or the poetry of repetition, you pick), plus a story that is both insane and funny and delightful. Also, musical interludes that are lively, soulful and grab your attention.

This is just a 12 minute film, but in it we get the story of a man who was the last one on an island that had been plagued by lepers. At least, that's as far as I can figure out. The information we get is in pseud-documentary (this is probably when that was only getting started so I'm sure Herzog was ahead of the curve on that), and people being 'interviewed' repeat their responses. Why do they do this? I think it can come down to sounding almost like a prayer in information form, like we are discovering this story as a call of confusion and anguish and even indifference (which is perfectly ironic for a prayer).

Or it's simply that having people repeat things puts one in a kind of trance (Herzog loved himself, maybe still does, hypnosis as can be seen in Heart of Glass and Invincible), and it may be as much or more for the actors than for the audience. These people don't seem to be 'actors' in the professional sense; he likely found these people on the island or by the coastline - certainly the musicians, who seem so authentic as to not be from anywhere else - and it lends everything a sense of 'huh, so... what's the deal with these people, and the lepers, and why is this guy describing that lepers have a "distinct sex life?"

It's all mad and off-kilter and maybe unsettling. It's a fully- formed artist at a young age knocking something off quickly while doing his first big work. What a man!