The singular German master director Werner Herzog, 83, recently honored for his lifetime achievement at the Venice Film Festival, has now launched an Instagram account. Five posts, 459,000 followers…and counting. Herzog himself follows no one, presumably because he has no idea how to. He has always cut his own path through the thickets of the world, and with his bare hands if need be.
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The first Instagram reel posted is an excerpt from his new documentary Ghost Elephants. Its protagonist, an elephant researcher, says: “I’ve spent my life in a dream I never dreamed.”
The second video shows Herzog himself, standing before a grill with a large piece of meat cooking on it. Though he still does not use a cell phone, he tells the camera that from now on he has decided to share his work and daily life with his Instagram followers.
As welcome as any Herzog content may be, the maestro’s new online presence has a faintly disappointing note. For years, Herzog insisted in interviews that he would only approach the internet, if at all, through a “good, well-thought-out” filter, which meant he could never be active on social media.
But now Instagram? Herzog has always been a man of unyielding principles. Once, for example, he said he would never under any circumstances speak French; a gun would have to be held to his temple. And in fact, it really did happen: drunken child soldiers in Africa pressed Kalashnikovs to his head and ordered him to speak French. He still regrets having obeyed (does that mean he believes he would have been better off being shot?).
Perhaps Herzog was dragged onto social media at gunpoint. Or perhaps he simply changed his mind. Which, if you think about it, would be a supremely confident act. Very Herzog.
In any case, the director, this steely humanist, comes across in the video as rather gentle and mellow in his old age. It is wonderful that someone like him is willing to push past his own boundaries in the hope of embracing even more of the world.
