"Blair Witch Project" meets "Living in Oblivion" in this peculiar, gratuitously artsy-smartsy mockumentary about legendary German film director Werner Herzog's misadventures in Scotland, where he has traveled to make a film about the ethos of Nellie, the Loch Ness monster.
The structure is film-within-a-film: a crew headed by John Bailey is shooting Herzog and his team making the "documentary" about Nellie. Featured on this film team are Zak Penn (he and others play themselves) as the self serving, sociopathic producer of the Nellie "doc"; Michael Karnow, an actor posing as a zany crypto-zoologist - meaning that he studies unclassified, mysterious life forms; Kitana Baker, a shapely young actress who is supposedly a sonar expert (inspiring salacious thoughts about plumbing her depths); and Herzog, of course, who by turns seems to be amused, edgily tolerant, or seriously irritated about the proceedings, which degenerate outrageously. It is made clear that Penn intends to employ large fake models to suggest Nellie in the water.
Things get out of hand when an apparently real monster shows up to the party, sinks the boat the crew is using and wreaks other havoc resulting in the "deaths" of two of the crew (by then we know this is all fakery, though the actors keep up a mock seriousness about the disaster). Mr. Penn gets the final word in an interview with a reporter when he deadpans that the two who died surely made sacrifices, but they hardly compare with the sense of guilt he must live with for placing them in peril.
In a way this film is like a Farrelly Brothers comedy (but made for Herzog groupies, rather than 12 year olds): it's silly without being very funny. In case the homage to Herzog is not apparent to somebody, brief footage from his films "Fitzcarraldo" and "My Best Fiend" is shown. Now, if only Herzog had tried to move Loch Ness to Romania for the shoot, then we'd have something. Herzog and Penn co-wrote and produced.
Of course there's another possible take on this film, and a serious one at that. Herzog has long been interested in the question of whether films do or even can tell the truth. He gets into that issue a bit in "Loch Ness." He has coined the phrase, "ecstatic truth," as opposed to "factual truth" or fact. By ecstatic truth he means that one can employee fictional devices fakery, if you will - in the service of larger, more essential truth telling.
What filmmaker would disagree? Fellini, for one, always referred to himself, when making films, as "a liar." Yet I'm sure he would have felt misunderstood if one extrapolated from this self description the idea that he thought his films portrayed his personal history, human nature or Italy untruthfully. By, he meant simply that he used fictional contrivances and photographic sleight of hand to get at the essence of a story that at its core was truthful. For "ecstatic" one might substitute the term "essential" or "existential" depending upon the themes of a film.
I think Herzog would agree that this issue pertains as much to documentary film-making as to fictional films. One is always selective in what to shoot, how to shoot it, and how to utilize the footage within the narrative and editing strategies chosen for the film. The seminal history of the documentary is steeped in sociopolitical propagandizing (e.g., the films of John Grierson or Dziga Vertov) and fictionalizing, for that matter (e.g., the work of Robert Flaherty).
Herzog and Penn could easily be seen as toying with these notions of relativism and subjectivity in making "truthful" documentaries. Perhaps they captured in this kinky movie something of the essence or ethos of Nellie, or Nellie seekers, after all. My rating: 6/10 (B-) (B+ for Herzog devotees). (Seen on 12/12/04). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.
The structure is film-within-a-film: a crew headed by John Bailey is shooting Herzog and his team making the "documentary" about Nellie. Featured on this film team are Zak Penn (he and others play themselves) as the self serving, sociopathic producer of the Nellie "doc"; Michael Karnow, an actor posing as a zany crypto-zoologist - meaning that he studies unclassified, mysterious life forms; Kitana Baker, a shapely young actress who is supposedly a sonar expert (inspiring salacious thoughts about plumbing her depths); and Herzog, of course, who by turns seems to be amused, edgily tolerant, or seriously irritated about the proceedings, which degenerate outrageously. It is made clear that Penn intends to employ large fake models to suggest Nellie in the water.
Things get out of hand when an apparently real monster shows up to the party, sinks the boat the crew is using and wreaks other havoc resulting in the "deaths" of two of the crew (by then we know this is all fakery, though the actors keep up a mock seriousness about the disaster). Mr. Penn gets the final word in an interview with a reporter when he deadpans that the two who died surely made sacrifices, but they hardly compare with the sense of guilt he must live with for placing them in peril.
In a way this film is like a Farrelly Brothers comedy (but made for Herzog groupies, rather than 12 year olds): it's silly without being very funny. In case the homage to Herzog is not apparent to somebody, brief footage from his films "Fitzcarraldo" and "My Best Fiend" is shown. Now, if only Herzog had tried to move Loch Ness to Romania for the shoot, then we'd have something. Herzog and Penn co-wrote and produced.
Of course there's another possible take on this film, and a serious one at that. Herzog has long been interested in the question of whether films do or even can tell the truth. He gets into that issue a bit in "Loch Ness." He has coined the phrase, "ecstatic truth," as opposed to "factual truth" or fact. By ecstatic truth he means that one can employee fictional devices fakery, if you will - in the service of larger, more essential truth telling.
What filmmaker would disagree? Fellini, for one, always referred to himself, when making films, as "a liar." Yet I'm sure he would have felt misunderstood if one extrapolated from this self description the idea that he thought his films portrayed his personal history, human nature or Italy untruthfully. By, he meant simply that he used fictional contrivances and photographic sleight of hand to get at the essence of a story that at its core was truthful. For "ecstatic" one might substitute the term "essential" or "existential" depending upon the themes of a film.
I think Herzog would agree that this issue pertains as much to documentary film-making as to fictional films. One is always selective in what to shoot, how to shoot it, and how to utilize the footage within the narrative and editing strategies chosen for the film. The seminal history of the documentary is steeped in sociopolitical propagandizing (e.g., the films of John Grierson or Dziga Vertov) and fictionalizing, for that matter (e.g., the work of Robert Flaherty).
Herzog and Penn could easily be seen as toying with these notions of relativism and subjectivity in making "truthful" documentaries. Perhaps they captured in this kinky movie something of the essence or ethos of Nellie, or Nellie seekers, after all. My rating: 6/10 (B-) (B+ for Herzog devotees). (Seen on 12/12/04). If you'd like to read more of my reviews, send me a message for directions to my websites.