The Werner Herzog Lecture, or One Consequence of Studying Performance

Image from Lessons in Darkness via screenjunkies.com

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Whitney and I went to the second Werner Herzog lecture last Thursday in the Auditorium and found it illuminating on several different levels, not all of them pretty.

The lecture focused on the use of music in film, and after an introduction of himself and his complex relationship to music, Herzog spent the evening showing us a series of clips and then commenting on them. The clips showed many different ways that music alters our perception of an image or enriches our experience of an event, and they came from his own films as well as other sources.

He defended his love of Fred Astaire with a clip that he said was the best possible use of film because it is only light and shadow and movement. In the black and white clip, Astaire dances in a small open room, and two shadowed silhouettes dance in unison behind him. As the song progresses, Astaire dances sometimes in unison and sometimes in opposition to the shadows.

We saw everything from an upside down image of a burning oil rig in Kuwait to a dancing chicken. I was very moved and intrigued by both the clips and Herzog’s commentary on them. The last clip was of a skier leaping from a high bank of snow out into empty space in slow motion. His movement was as beautiful and serene as a bird’s, and the music was a lyrical orchestral piece. But by the time the clip played, my attention had been drawn by something else.

In the row behind us, there was a man who began having some kind of medical emergency. At first there were a few noises, like coughing or groaning, and they got louder. Herzog didn’t know that the man was in trouble, so he continued with his lecture and his clips. Paramedics came and the man was lowered down into the aisle while they put on an oxygen mask and tried to help him. I felt very uncomfortable. Many of the stories and images that Herzog had been showing us were achingly human and even difficult to watch, but they were difficult in a grand and beautiful and meaningful way. That state of mind was suddenly interrupted by a very different kind of small human pain that was not at all beautiful, and the collision was part of what made me uncomfortable. I could see other people reacting the same way, not knowing whether to look at the stage or the man in the aisle.

I was also a bit unnerved by the way I began to look at the situation through the lens of performance studies that we have been discussing this term. Whitney and I talked afterward about it, and she said she had thought and felt similarly. As it was happening, I wished there was something I could do for the man, but I also thought, “What an interesting moment. I can write about this on my blog,” which doesn’t strike me as a very ethical response. But it was an interesting moment.