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The invincible Werner Herzog is back
Diehard fans will be only a bit baffled by this latest film
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Jeet Thayil
It is difficult to be critical about a new Werner Herzog venture. Invincible, his first feature in over a decade, has all kinds of flaws. Some are apparent, some not so. But those flaws become mere quibbles, petty trifles, when placed alongside this German filmmaker's enormous achievement. This is a director who has never made a false move, whose life is very likely his masterwork, whose iconoclastic vision is so uncompromising the critic needs to remake his own mission in accordance.
With Herzog the word 'legendary', which has been so overused it is almost meaningless, seems somehow inadequate. The legends connected with his life are now widely known, the stories about how each of his films became a personal struggle, how the crew would have to wage life-or-death battles merely to get the project done. But times have changed. Today Herzog lives in Los Angeles and the mythic mountains he has scaled in the past have become less fearsome.
Invincible is the story, though fable seems a better word, of a Jewish blacksmith in Weimar Berlin. Zishe Breitbart, in a blonde wig and answering to the name of Siegfried, finds himself working as a music hall strongman for Nazi functionaries. It is 1932. Hitler's rise is just beginning. It is a bad time to be Jewish in Germany.
The Aryanised operatic Siegfried is a creation of the mysterious Hanussen whose plan is to be Hitler's Minister of the Occult. Breitbart and Hanussen are more than Svengali and Siegfried. There is a bond between them brought to fruition by Breitbart's love for Hanussen's ill-treated mistress Marta. Breitbart dreams of Marta but when he meets her in real life he can do little more than offer an inadequate protection.
Hanussen is Jewish, too, though it is a secret that is bound for revelation, and his house of cards, or Palace of the Occult, is only moments away from crumbling. When Siegfried finally takes off his wig and announces his Semitic origins to a house full of brownshirts Hanussen must step in to avert a riot. Soon enough of course, everything falls apart. Hanussen is marched off by Nazi henchmen and Breitbart goes back to his Polish shtetl. He tries to warn the villagers that apocalypse is nigh. It is a futile effort.
Herzog has made several departures for this movie. He has used (some) real actors for one thing. Tim Roth plays the role of Hanussen and manages to evoke the man's essential character without making him despicable. That is saying a lot, considering Hanussen has built an empire on the coattails of hate. On top of that, he beats women, attempts to prostitute his mistress to Goebbels, and extols the virtue of Hitler. In a deft piece of moral sleight-of-hand the viewer ends up liking him despite his shopping list of sins.
Finnish lifter Jouko Ahola, champion of the World's Strongest Man competition during the making of the movie, plays Breitbart. That he is a first-time actor is painfully obvious throughout, especially when Ahola must say more than a few words. Again, making that sort of criticism seems churlish and petty when the film is looked at in its entirety. Ahola's face is often extremely watchable. He projects frailty and strength at the same time, as many of Herzog's leading men tend to do.
Marta is played by the renowned concert pianist Anna Gourari. She is astonishingly good at times. A key scene in which she plays a Beethoven concerto accompanied by a full orchestra is one of the film's best set pieces. Another is a dream sequence, of course. I say of course because Herzog is the Grand Master of the dream sequence.
In Invincible, Breitbart and his brother Benjamin walk on a beach filled to the brim with red crabs. Breitbart helplessly watches his brother float into the sky. Herzog returns to the scene again and again. The crabs take over the landscape. They crawl off the beach and into the world, swarming over railway tracks as, in the distance, a locomotive puffs into view. It is a cold morning in a European country. The world is about to end.
Breitbart dies days before Hitler's arrival on the world stage. His was a true story and seems to have been designed for Herzog. It is just the sort of tale that has always fired his strange and overwrought imagination. Invincible is not the ideal film with which to introduce Herzog to new viewers.
For that Aguirre: The Wrath Of God or Fitzcarraldo is your best bet. Invincible is for diehard Herzog fans. It will leave them only partly baffled.
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