{"id":304569,"date":"2025-10-15T05:36:17","date_gmt":"2025-10-15T05:36:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/304569\/"},"modified":"2025-10-15T05:36:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-15T05:36:17","slug":"werner-herzog-the-future-of-truth","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/304569\/","title":{"rendered":"Werner Herzog: the future of truth"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cIf I abandoned this project, I would be a man without dreams and I don\u2019t want to live like that.\u201d Werner Herzog sits on a hammock in a hut deep in the Amazon. Rain lashes down outside, thunder rolls in the distance. The German filmmaker hasn\u2019t shaved in days; he looks knackered. But his eyes are alight with purpose. \u201cI live my life or I end my life with this project,\u201d he says<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The year is 1981, and Herzog, then in his late thirties, is shooting Fitzcarraldo, an epic about a manic dreamer who hauls a steamship over a mountain in search of rubber, in the hope of making enough money to build a glorious opera house in the rainforest. The filming of Fitzcarraldo, chronicled in Les Blank\u2019s documentary Burden of Dreams, was more dramatic than most Oscar-winning dramas. Herzog insisted on shooting in the Amazon, where the starry cast slept in humid tents, fought off snakes, and dodged poisoned arrows<\/a> hurled at them by disgruntled locals. He also refused to use special effects and insisted on actually pulling a steamship over a mountain \u2014 a feat which required months of gruelling engineering, and the help of Amazonian tribes.<\/p>\n

Few directors have ever gone so far in pursuit of a vision and come out with a cinematic masterpiece. Directing Fitzcarraldo, Herzog gazed into the abyss, but the abyss didn\u2019t dare gaze back at him. His dream was too magnificent, too irresistible. It had to be woven into the fabric of reality.<\/p>\n

Since then, Herzog has realised many more dreams. He\u2019s directed feature films, documentaries and even operas; he\u2019s written poetry, essays and a novel. In the process, Herzog, now 83, has become a pop-culture icon, acclaimed for his lyricism and erudition \u2014 as well as his hypnotic voice and thick Bavarian accent. Like his countryman Friedrich Nietzsche, he has a knack for coining aphorisms (a favourite: \u201cCivilisation is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness\u201d). In an era of shallow influencers, he has struck a chord with audiences hungering for meaning.<\/p>\n

\"\"Herzog on the set of Fitzcarraldo in Peru. Jean-Louis Atlan\/Sygma\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Now comes a new book grandly titled The Future of Truth<\/a>. Think of it as DMT in hardback. Beautifully translated from German by Michael Hofmann, it\u2019s a collage of reflections, visions and stories about what constitutes truth.<\/p>\n

Look up the definition of \u201ctruth<\/a>\u201d and you\u2019ll learn it is \u201cconformity with fact\u201d. But this doesn\u2019t impress Herzog. \u201cIt\u2019s a definition of a complete dimwit,\u201d he tells me when I ask him over Zoom. The director is sitting in his study in Los Angeles, looking down at the camera. \u201cIf facts constituted truth, it would be fairly simple, but it is not,\u201d he continues. \u201cWe would have the accountant\u2019s truth, and not something much deeper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herzog tells me there exists no scholarly consensus on what truth really is. \u201cIt may be related to facts to some degree. But at the same time, the question arises: what are facts? And what is reality?\u201d he says. \u201cReality is hotly disputed as well. What is the reality of the man in the lunatic asylum who believes he is Napoleon Bonaparte or Lenin or Jesus Christ?\u201d<\/p>\n

For Herzog, it doesn\u2019t matter that we have no definitive definition of truth. \u201cIt is within the human condition that we know that we are in search of truth,\u201d he says. \u201cWe know vaguely where it is, vaguely a direction, and all the rest is nothing but search, an expedition into the unknown, a quest, an endeavour never ending.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is within the human condition that we know that we are in search of truth.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an endeavour that has animated Herzog since he first picked up a camera as a teenager. From the glaciers of Antarctica to the dunes of the Sahara, he\u2019s been on a personal expedition for what he calls \u201cecstatic truth\u201d \u2014 truth beyond facts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m speaking now purely of art,\u201d Herzog warns, making clear that if you are in the business of political journalism, \u201cyou better do fact checks and you better not mislead your audience\u201d. But for artists, he continues, \u201cdeparting from the clear, understandable, natural facts can enhance the truth of something\u201d.<\/p>\n

Herzog gives the example of Michelangelo\u2019s Piet\u00e0, a sculpture in St Peter\u2019s Basilica which depicts Jesus in the arms of Mary after he was taken down from the cross. \u201cHis face is correctly the face of a 33-year-old man,\u201d Herzog explains, \u201cbut when you look into the face of his mother, the mother of a 33-year-old man is probably only 15. So I immediately asked myself the question: did Michelangelo try to give us fake news, did he try to cheat us?\u201d Yet the opposite is true. \u201cHe gives us a deeper truth, something deeper about the essence of the two figures.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a nutshell, that\u2019s Herzog\u2019s approach too. Take his 2001 film Invincible, set in Berlin at the outset of Nazism, which follows the tribulations of Zishe Breitbart, a Jewish strongman who performs nightly in a cabaret. The cabaret\u2019s owner, Erik Jan Hanussen, is a clairvoyant who dreams of becoming Hitler\u2019s Minister of the Occult. Given the rampant antisemitism, Breitbart cannot perform under his own name, since Jews are supposed to be weaklings. Hanussen therefore makes him play the part of a Germanic folk hero \u2014 until Breitbart resolves to reveal his true identity.<\/p>\n

Though Breitbart and Hanussen were real historical figures, their paths never actually crossed. Breitbart died in 1925, nearly a decade before Hitler gained power. Herzog sculpted a fictional story around their real lives. \u201cWho cares that I invented a meeting that could have not taken place?\u201d he says. \u201cIt doesn\u2019t matter. I am a poet, period.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Invincible, poetic licence illuminates a reality that eludes facts. The film illustrates the sinister spell Nazism cast on Germany and how it affected Jews. Herzog, who was born during the Second World War and is part of the generation of Germans that had to confront the Nazi past, said of the film: \u201cThat\u2019s my answer to the darkest history of Germany.\u201d It\u2019s an answer that doesn\u2019t replace the study of history but completes it.<\/p>\n

Watch any Herzog film, and you\u2019ll see the same process at play. Many of them are inspired by true stories, but Herzog sublimates those stories to reveal their essence. Just don\u2019t ask him to explain what that essence is. He once referred<\/a> to Fitzcarraldo as \u201ca big metaphor\u201d, adding, \u201cbut don\u2019t ask me what the metaphor means, because I wouldn\u2019t know\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u2018Directing Fitzcarraldo, Herzog gazed into the abyss, but the abyss didn\u2019t dare gaze back at him.\u2019 Jean-Louis Atlan\/Sygma\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Even before he picked up a camera, Herzog was chasing the ineffable. At the age of 13, growing up in the Bavarian Alps, Herzog was briefly a devout Catholic. \u201cThere was a deep void in me and a longing for something transcendent, so that was probably the deeper reason behind all this,\u201d he tells me. He then leaps elegantly from his youthful flirtation with Catholicism to his search today for \u201cecstatic truth\u201d. \u201cEkstasis in Greek means to stay out, to step outside of yourself,\u201d he tells me. \u201cYou see that in late medieval mystics and the kind of insight they have on the nature of faith by stepping outside of their existence.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herzog likens this experience to that of ski jumpers. In 1975, he released The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner<\/a>, a documentary about Walter Steiner, a Swiss sculptor and ski-jumping champion. \u201c[Steiner] defies gravity and flies off ramps, and he has the experience of ecstasy, stepping out of his existence and morphing into a bird,\u201d Herzog tells me. \u201cAnd it\u2019s strange,\u201d he continues, \u201cbecause I wanted to be an athlete when I was very young, I wanted to become world champion of ski flyers.\u201d He quit after his best friend had a \u201ccatastrophic accident\u201d. But \u201ceven if I had continued\u201d, he adds, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have gotten even close to what [the greatest ski jumpers] are capable to do\u201d.<\/p>\n

But Herzog\u2019s youthful desire to be an extreme athlete helps to explain his radical approach to filmmaking. For Herzog is to cinema what Steiner was to sport. When Steiner jumped off a ski ramp into the void, he hadn\u2019t lost his mind. He knew exactly what he was capable of. What appears insane to us appeared possible to him. And it was possible. Ditto with Herzog. His career is a masterclass in how to discipline the mind\u2019s eye. He\u2019s a practical visionary; a poet with the discipline of an engineer.<\/p>\n

Herzog has long gravitated towards characters who, like him, reject limits, from scientists working in Antarctica to cops who flaunt the law in New Orleans. Then there\u2019s Elon Musk, whom Herzog interviewed in his 2016 documentary about the internet, Lo and Behold, Reveries of the Connected World<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cElon Musk, I think, he\u2019s not one of these imposters,\u201d he says, when I bring up the Tesla and SpaceX CEO. \u201cHe\u2019s a serious businessman, but he knows about the power of myth\u2026 This is why he keeps insisting on colonising Mars with a million human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cElon Musk, he\u2019s not one of these imposters.\u201d<\/p>\n

Herzog doesn\u2019t share Musk\u2019s enthusiasm for the red planet. \u201cSpeaking about colonising Mars with a million is an obscenity by itself, because we should keep our own planet habitable and not try to make a hostile planet habitable for us,\u201d he says. \u201cSo there\u2019s something wrong about it\u2026 and it is not attainable. It cannot be reached.\u201d<\/p>\n

He\u2019s clearly given the project some thought, however. We\u2019d need \u201cto fire salvos of rockets, thousands of them almost at the same time\u201d; we\u2019d need to build \u201crobots who construct huge domes\u201d; we\u2019d need to detonate \u201catomic explosions at the poles of Mars for melting water\u201d. And if that wasn\u2019t enough, we\u2019d need to build pipelines to transport the water. \u201cNow, please, how do you construct the pipelines?\u201d Herzog asks. \u201cIt is ridiculous. We know that. You don\u2019t need to be a chicken to know the egg is rotten. You don\u2019t need to be an astrophysicist to know that.\u201d If the man who pulled a steamship over a mountain calls for time-out, you know you\u2019re in trouble.<\/p>\n

\"\"Herzog at this year\u2019s Venice Film Festival. Ernesto Ruscio\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

But Musk\u2019s Martian hype is cunning PR. \u201cHe acquires the aura of the visionary. That\u2019s important,\u201d Herzog says, \u201cbecause when you buy an electric car, you do not buy it from the Chinese because it\u2019s just a factory in China. If you buy one of his cars, you buy the car of the visionary. It\u2019s an attribute that goes into mythologising the product. I\u2019m sure he\u2019s aware of that. He\u2019s not a stupid man.\u201d<\/p>\n

Musk also dreams of creating a new life form: artificial intelligence. It\u2019s a prospect that unnerves Herzog. In The Future of Truth, Herzog acknowledges that AI will lead to extraordinary breakthroughs, but also foresees \u201cthe possibility of comprehensive, mass supervision of disinformation, of manipulation on a vast scale\u201d. This echoes the haunting epilogue of his memoir, Every Man For Himself and God Against All, in which he imagines a world \u201cturning away from thought, argument, and image\u2026 a darkness filled with fear, with imaginary monsters\u201d.<\/p>\n

In this dark new world, nobody will read. Herzog has long warned<\/a> that the decline in reading spelt doom for humanity. New studies highlight how serious it is: reading for pleasure has collapsed<\/a>, and even elite university students now struggle<\/a> with long texts. \u201cStudents read less and less and less, and young filmmakers do not read at all,\u201d he tells me. \u201cI keep telling them, I keep hammering into them: if you want to become a filmmaker, you may become a mediocre filmmaker at best, but you will only become a good filmmaker if you read.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRead, read, read, read, read,\u201d Herzog says, like a mantra. \u201cThat\u2019s of fundamental importance for our future.\u201d Only by reading widely can we develop critical thinking. \u201cYour mind engages with the soul in the thinking of someone else, and then you read another book, and you have another worldview, and all of a sudden you start to balance it out\u2026 and see our daily reality in critical terms,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

In The Future of Truth, Herzog calls on us to discern fake news by consulting a plethora of sources. Don\u2019t take anything on blind faith. Only then can we hope to build a \u201cmore nuanced version of what reality might be\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt has to become second nature for us the same way it was apparently second nature for prehistoric men, hunters and gatherers,\u201d Herzog continues in a flight of poetry. \u201cThey would go out and pick berries and mushrooms, and I\u2019m certain they did not pick the poisonous ones. Over long, long experience, they would know. And I keep saying: I\u2019m fairly certain that these people did not hate nature because there was poison in it\u2026 It\u2019s the same thing today. You do not have to hate the world as it is. You just have to get acquainted with doubt and critical thinking.\u201d<\/p>\n

The search for truth, as Herzog tells us in his book, is eternal. Our ancestors looked for it on the walls of prehistoric caves; we can\u2019t now forsake it for the shiny screens of our smartphones. \u201cTruth has no future, but truth did not have a past either,\u201d Herzog tells me. \u201cBut we must pursue it. We have to continue, we must, we shall continue to search for it.\u201d<\/p>\n

***<\/p>\n

The Future of Truth<\/a> by Werner Herzog, translated by Michael Hofmann, is published by Bodley Head.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIf I abandoned this project, I would be a man without dreams and I don\u2019t want to live…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":304570,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[691,66,171,1020,53,2592,67,132,68,104488],"class_list":{"0":"post-304569","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-movies","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-elon-musk","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-film","12":"tag-movies","13":"tag-truth","14":"tag-united-states","15":"tag-unitedstates","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-werner-herzog"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115376566325659755","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304569","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=304569"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/304569\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/304570"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=304569"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=304569"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=304569"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}