Wendy Ide 

Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer – fascinating portrait of the maverick film-maker

The German director is more illuminating than anyone else in this rich profile
  
  

a smiling Werner Herzog in the street
’A wealth of meaty anecdotes’: Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer. Photograph: PR

Thomas von Steinaecker’s documentary portrait of Werner Herzog, the singular German film-making talent who gave us pictures such as Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo and the documentary Grizzly Man, is every bit as fascinating as you would hope. A director who is not just open to the chaos on the fringes of civilisation, but who voluntarily invites it into his life (in the form of the actor and world-class pain in the ass Klaus Kinski), Herzog has a wealth of meaty anecdotes. Radical Dreamer is less successful in its attempt to bring in other voices to appraise his legacy: interviewees tie themselves in knots of gushing superlatives, but the real insights come from the man himself.

Watch a trailer for Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer.
 

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