Sure, this is dressed as a "novel", so I guess readers were supposed to immerse themselves into Onodas situation - but that was impossible, because the language is sparse and the chapters are both brief and without much emotional context. Why? Because this is written, in my opinion, as a documentary piece. The text, as it stands, should rightfully have been accompanied by documentary videos. Since it wasn't, Herzog wrote his brief scenes but only he saw the images. Hauling a steamship over a mountain in the jungle; walking from Munich to Paris in the dead of winter; descending into an active volcano; living in the wilderness among grizzly bears - Werner Herzog has always been intrigued by extremes of human experience. Here, he illuminates the influences and ideas that have driven his creativity and shaped his unique worldview.

Herzog, along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Wim Wenders and Volker Schlöndorff, led the beginning of the New German Cinema, which included documentarians who filmed on low budgets and were influenced by the French New Wave. He developed a habit of casting professional actors alongside people from the locality in which he was shooting. His films, "usually set in distinct and unfamiliar landscapes, are imbued with mysticism." [19] Herzog says his Catholic upbringing is evident in "something of a religious echo in my work". [20]Werner Herzog Interview | PLANET°". Planet-mag.com. 7 September 2010. Archived from the original on 18 October 2014 . Retrieved 15 August 2013.

Anyway, Herzog adds, pushing his spectacles up his nose, the point is that the money he made from acting in The Mandalorian was used to bankroll Family Romance, LLC. He shot it on video, in Japan, using non-professional actors and what he refers to as “intelligent translators” – although the budget was still so pinched that he was forced to shoot without permits and plot his film like a heist. Out of this frenetic activity came a picture that is quiet, moving and melancholy. Family Romance, LLC paints an off-kilter portrait of modern-day loneliness. It also raises the possibility that every human relationship is, at heart, a performance. Herzog nods. “The film is deceptively simple on the surface,” he says. “But these are deep, deep questions.”

His treatment of subjects has been characterized as Wagnerian in its scope, but film theory has in recent years focused on the concept of the ecstatic and the nomadic character of his film. The plot of Fitzcarraldo is based on the building of an opera house and his later film Invincible (2001) touches on the character of Siegfried. [60] Herzog's documentary The Transformation of the World into Music goes behind the scenes of the Bayreuth Festival. Herzog has directed several operas, including Mozart's The Magic Flute, Beethoven's Fidelio and Wagner's Parsifal. Teaching [ edit ]