FILM
Three Documentaries by Werner Herzog
/ Tao Lin
11.02.09
The Great Ecstasy of the Sculptor Steiner (1974)
How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)
La Soufriere (1977)
The three documentaries were on one DVD that I think I got off eBay and watched alone in my room sitting on the floor, wearing giant headphones, and eating steamed vegetables, I think, with my MacBook facing me on a chair. I watched the DVD late one night on a day when I had worked the morning shift, I think, at Angelika Kitchen, an organic vegan restaurant I worked at for around 10 months, and didn’t have work the next day. I remember feeling “somewhat confused,” or like I had currently put my worldview “on hold,” while watching it, in part because I believed to some degree that watching the DVD was irrelevant to my life, as a person with certain short/long-term goals who “feels unproductive” when not working toward those goals. While also believing to some degree that my “ideal” goal in life, what I often “reminded” myself was what I “finally” wanted, was to “be free” of goals or hierarchies, to one day be able to derive satisfaction outside of hierarchical systems, for example being able to experience the sensations that I feel, each moment, as “ends,” even if it seems “stagnant” from a hierarchical point of view. I watched the DVD sort of “suspended” between those two opposing beliefs. But in such a vague, pre-intellectual, pre-emotional manner that it mostly manifested as a low-level nausea or “mildly nagging” feeling of having forgotten something somewhat important like turning off the oven or responding to a time-sensitive email.
The first documentary was about the world championship of ski-jumping. People with skis went down a giant ramp on the top of a mountain. The ramp curved up and the people went into the air and then after a while landed more than 100 meters away, near the bottom of the mountain. The documentary showed many people falling when they landed. Then it focused on one ski-jumper named Steiner who seemed much better than anyone else. It showed him at the world championship talking about how he was afraid he would jump too far and hurt himself by landing in an unsafe area. He said he was afraid because other ski-jumpers who weren’t as good as him were jumping around 140 meters and the mountain was only designed to let jumpers jump around 165 meters. Then he jumped 169 meters, landing beyond where measurements were taken, causing the contest organizers to shorten the ramp to stop him from jumping too far. On his second jump he “handicapped” himself by starting even lower on the ramp than it had been shortened, something no one had done before, and then jumped something like 179 meters and hurt himself. His head was bleeding. He said the Yugoslavian judges should have shortened the ramp a lot more. Then he jumped again, while injured and with an even shorter ramp length than before, and went 166 meters. The farthest other people were jumping, using the entire ramp, was something like 140 meters. Steiner was so much better than anyone else that it probably seemed funny to most people instead of impressive.
How Much Wood Could a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)
La Soufriere (1977)
The three documentaries were on one DVD that I think I got off eBay and watched alone in my room sitting on the floor, wearing giant headphones, and eating steamed vegetables, I think, with my MacBook facing me on a chair. I watched the DVD late one night on a day when I had worked the morning shift, I think, at Angelika Kitchen, an organic vegan restaurant I worked at for around 10 months, and didn’t have work the next day. I remember feeling “somewhat confused,” or like I had currently put my worldview “on hold,” while watching it, in part because I believed to some degree that watching the DVD was irrelevant to my life, as a person with certain short/long-term goals who “feels unproductive” when not working toward those goals. While also believing to some degree that my “ideal” goal in life, what I often “reminded” myself was what I “finally” wanted, was to “be free” of goals or hierarchies, to one day be able to derive satisfaction outside of hierarchical systems, for example being able to experience the sensations that I feel, each moment, as “ends,” even if it seems “stagnant” from a hierarchical point of view. I watched the DVD sort of “suspended” between those two opposing beliefs. But in such a vague, pre-intellectual, pre-emotional manner that it mostly manifested as a low-level nausea or “mildly nagging” feeling of having forgotten something somewhat important like turning off the oven or responding to a time-sensitive email.
The first documentary was about the world championship of ski-jumping. People with skis went down a giant ramp on the top of a mountain. The ramp curved up and the people went into the air and then after a while landed more than 100 meters away, near the bottom of the mountain. The documentary showed many people falling when they landed. Then it focused on one ski-jumper named Steiner who seemed much better than anyone else. It showed him at the world championship talking about how he was afraid he would jump too far and hurt himself by landing in an unsafe area. He said he was afraid because other ski-jumpers who weren’t as good as him were jumping around 140 meters and the mountain was only designed to let jumpers jump around 165 meters. Then he jumped 169 meters, landing beyond where measurements were taken, causing the contest organizers to shorten the ramp to stop him from jumping too far. On his second jump he “handicapped” himself by starting even lower on the ramp than it had been shortened, something no one had done before, and then jumped something like 179 meters and hurt himself. His head was bleeding. He said the Yugoslavian judges should have shortened the ramp a lot more. Then he jumped again, while injured and with an even shorter ramp length than before, and went 166 meters. The farthest other people were jumping, using the entire ramp, was something like 140 meters. Steiner was so much better than anyone else that it probably seemed funny to most people instead of impressive.