If you know much of anything about Werner Herzog‘s approach to documentary narrative, you can probably guess the answer to what’s asked at the start of a new video essay, Werner Herzog and the Ecstatic Truth. It’s more-or-less right in the title, in fact, and the meaning behind this particular phrase — in short, a cinematic vision of “poetic, ecstatic truth” might be reached “through fabrication, imagination, and stylization,” or “forgery can be a means to an end” — launches a consideration of his documentary cinema.
While this approach would be considered blasphemy by some of the form’s practitioners, the video makes a strong case by highlighting lies — some of which I’d have never picked up on myself — and the extent to which they empower a particular film. Herzog is a storyteller first, and many, many projects make clear his hope to provide the most compelling example of a given thing. (Again: means to an end.) In a brief, focused take, this complements the pictures at hand rather nicely.
Watch it below: