The most disarming thing about seeing Werner Herzog in person was hearing him admit to tinkering with the truth, exaggerating the facts and just making things up. The talk opened with a clip from his newest film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, in which we hear his voiceover telling of the radioactive water from the nuclear power station near the Chauvet caves. In the humid conditions a nest of crocodiles has thrived and their offspring have mutated. We see tiny albino alligators swimming in pairs, fascinated by their reflections. Herzog suggests that as we look at the cave paintings of Chauvet, we are like these mutant reptiles, catching glimpses of echoes from the past, struggling to understand what it is we’re seeing. He then tells us, that of course, he made up the mutant crocodiles.

The night is a hodge-podge of clips, anecdotes and diatribes. Herzog is gleeful when declaring his loathing for the mass tantric meditation and superficial spirituality that underpins James Cameron’s Avatar; his 3D film will have none of that. He breaks the heart (perhaps) of a few yoga devotees in the audience with his message “to the women of the world; I could not marry you if you do yoga.”

We are shown clips from his 1992 film Lessons of Darkness and Herzog and Holdengraber discuss his apocalyptic visions of the world that seem to predict the disasters of today. The director expresses his wish to be filming in Japan now as it is like something “straight from science-fiction”. Instead he is in the middle of filming on death row in Texas. We are shown snippets of his conversations with these men, condemned to life with almost no hope of appeal. The interviews are staggering, the men eloquent and open. Herzog tells us, he has a way with them; it is to be completely blunt. “I will not watch an execution, even though one of them has invited me to his. I am a film maker not a witness.” In an astounding clip one inmate recalls in telescopic detail his last meal (served to him just before his sentence was suspended).  

We also hear Herzog’s thoughts on the Pope; “I have to admit, I like the pope for his intellectual depth, even though he’s not media savvy.” He subscribes to the Pope’s view of social media, suggesting that for all its possibilities of communication it may have the effect of distracting people from their present world.

Throughout the evening Herzog fuses a sense of nihilism with a giddy recklessness. He is pessimistic about the future of the world; “it doesn’t worry me that dinosaurs disappeared, the human race will too, the universe couldn’t care less.” And yet this pessimism allows him the freedom to do what he wants and damn the consequences.  “My mandate is poetry, period.”

This sold-out talk took place at Cadogan Hall on 23rd March 2011. Audio and video will be available soon.

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