Great Directors: Herzog and Cronenberg Series
During the first half of November the Seattle International Film Festival will be presenting showings of films by Werner Herzog and David Cronenberg, two idiosyncratic and independent directors whose recent successes have sparked a revival of interest in careers that now span four decades.
The Herzog screenings are not a retrospective but a “tribute” and feature four newer films, including The Wild Blue Yonder, a science-fiction/science-fact “existential mystery” that has received favorable attention at a number of recent film festivals. Herzog first came to notice in the 1970s as one of the pre-eminent German New Wave directors and was known for his fantastic, lyrical treatments of outsiders and visionaries. Aguirre, Wrath of God, arguably his masterpiece, featured a dazzling performance by Klaus Kinski as a conquistador desperately searching for El Dorado in the South American jungle and sliding ever deeper into madness. Herzog’s films have always tended to include a documentary component — as hallucinatory and bizarre as Aguirre may seem, for example, the story is based in historical fact, and the lengths to which Herzog went to film it on location are now the stuff of legend. In recent years Herzog has become better known for his documentaries than his fictions. Grizzly Man, an account of the life and death of bear fancier/fanatic Timothy Treadwell, was very well received at SIFF last year and enjoyed almost universally positive reviews.
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