Every Night the Trees Disappear

by Alan Greenberg

  “In the United States, language is used in the most brutal ways. There they use language that is impossible for a German, and that horrifies me constantly. During the Vietnam War, for years and years, men who were killed were called ‘casualties.’ Casualties. And such a word as ‘mobilization’—to declare a state of ‘mobilization’ is one of the most horrifying things that can happen. How can someone dare to speak like this, as if it were a normal act?”

  I recalled a related incident. A filmmaker in Great Britain had made a film to be shown only to dogs. A screening was held in a little theater, and one hundred and fifty dogs were brought in to watch it. As soon as the film began, all of the dogs instinctively leaped at the screen and ripped it to pieces.

  Responded Herzog, “A lot of damage has been done. It is a plague, a media plague. It will be like the extinction of a species of animals. The damage is irreparable—you cannot fix it later.”

  In the back of the van sat the cameraman, the script girl, and Hias, who was snoring. Herzog drove on, telling me we were going to look for a burning cow.

  At the hamlet Buchenwald, not far from the Forlorn Bluff, where the afternoon shooting would take place, the van came upon a succession of rolling meadows at the forest’s end. Herzog pulled over and parked by a fallen tree. He got out to begin the search for the fiery cow. But off to the side, a sheep had just given birth. The tiny lamb rolled over and over the earth as its mother licked off the slime. Then the newborn rose upon its trembling legs—for a minute it stumbled around like a funny little drunkard—and Hias bent down to touch it. Herzog took a moment’s glance; then he stood on the trunk of the fallen tree and turned his back on the sentimental scene. The sheep eyed Hias suspiciously as he reached for her child.

  “So what,” muttered Herzog. “She just got fucked like everyone else.”

  The five team members returned to the van and continued on to the shooting location up the mountain road. At the top we met the rest of the team, and a hike commenced through the deep snow in search of a spot for Hias to have his visions. Again every member of the team lugged their equipment for a kilometer over the capricious forest terrain, often tumbling comically into hidden holes or tripping on limbs buried in the knee-high snow.

  Herzog hastened ahead. After a quick appraisal of the topography, he chose a seat for the prophet: a strange granite hulk that rose from the crest of the mountain dome like a crown. Hias climbed up and sat, his back to the pastel valley veiled by the hazy miles beyond. Then Herzog noticed bright sunlight passing through the face of the hulk; inside the fissure was a rectangular slot that pierced completely through the cliff to betray the distant landscape. The visionary switched his position, perching himself above the bright eyelet. The cameramen placed the camera on a tree stump. Herzog gave Hias the visions, Hias repeated them, and the scene was finished just before sundown.

  Trekking back to the cars a kilometer away, I packed some snow into a snowball and threw it at a tree seventy feet away. It hit the tree trunk dead center. The entire team stopped to watch Herzog try to match the feat. He did. Then he declared, “No one moves any further until you’ve all hit that tree.” Sixteen very cold people started hurling snowballs at the weary tree in vain as Herzog and I trudged on toward the road.

  “An odd thing happened to me when I was making my first film, Signs of Life, on the island of Crete,” confided Herzog. “I was asleep in the hotel room I shared with my best friend, who was helping me then, and suddenly I thought I heard some airplanes flying overhead. I looked outside my window and imagined a formation of fighter planes coming right at me. This made me extremely frightened, so I jumped down and hid on the floor behind the bed. I called over to my friend and had him do the same. We covered ourselves against the wall as the airplanes attacked. For two hours, maybe three or even four hours, neither of us would move. The attack passed, and still I refused to move. This is something I don’t understand, but I know it’s not a good sign.”

  I remembered an image in that film of thousands of windmills spinning silently in the violent light of the sun.

  Herzog and I could hear the moaning of cows in a distant meadow. “The English word ‘meadow’ is a beautiful word,” commented Herzog.

  PALLBEARERS

  I stood in the little graveyard and stared at the image of a horse etched upon a weathered gray slab. Inside the nearby chapel were Herzog and Saxer; they emerged a few seconds later, shaking their heads. The local pastor and magistrate had denied Herzog permission to film his brief scene in their graveyard. Saxer ordered me to stay by the grave, and he and his boss drove off.

  A woman wrapped in black came through the gate, and behind her walked the Priest, bent forward from the heavy wooden tripod on his back. I signaled to the Priest to get rid of his gear; he did, and upon retracing his steps he saw me motion to him. I told the Priest to choose a different grave to feign his sorrow beside.

  An old working man entered the yard and stood respectfully next to the Priest at the foot of the other grave. He lowered his head, then spoke to the faux clergyman at his side.

  “Why would the God who made us ever destroy us?” he sadly beseeched.

  “Because the God who made us is an Asshole,” muttered the Priest.

  Moving fast in order to trick the pastor and magistrate, Herzog returned with Mother Anamirl. He led her into the graveyard while the set designers placed wooden grave markers wherever they found an open space. Herzog faced Mother Anamirl and asked her to relax, to concentrate on what he had to say. He told her she was feeling woeful, that her heart was filled with a terrible grief and everything she saw was dark and dreadful. The woman listened to his gentle, suggestive tones and rhythms, and soon she was hypnotized. Now Herzog directed her for the scene. She would kneel, he said, and pray, and her prayer would be the most heartfelt prayer possible; it would be a sad prayer, a funereal prayer, a prayer for a loved one who has died. Mother Anamirl, her eyes wet and burning red with tears that never fell, kneeled. The cameramen moved in and filmed the scene.

  Leaving in procession with the other mourners, I set a stone on one of the graves. The bells in the church steeple never tolled their dull clang as the set designers retrieved the grave markers, trying to make sure that the visit left no trace.

  The Scenario

  MANSION

  The factory owner is sitting in an easy chair by candlelight, wearing a ruffled shirt that is open at the throat. Before him is a ruby-red mug, half filled with wine, and the burning candle. He stares hypnotically upon the glowing mug, and we realize that it must be made of particularly valuable glass. Behind and to the right of the easy chair is a fireplace with a feeble fire.

  The factory owner rubs his heart slowly, over and over.

  Gradually the picture unravels with light; then the circle diminishes down to a point. The final thing our eyes rest upon, precisely in the center of the picture, is the mug of Ruby glass.

  THE CASTLE FLIES

  For persons involved in the making of a feature film, all basic coordinate points must shift inside and out in order to thrive and survive for the better part of two months, or however long the shooting takes. Experience defines circumstance for one thing; the senses dominate reason, for another. Reality becomes a series of selected scenes proceeding beyond time. In order to create the film, people flit from spot to spot, moving without hindrance, going where they will, fulfilling immediate needs and desires. Thus lives evolve and reach a higher realm. People become freer, more instinctive. Like flies.

  The old Castle Walchsing was a ruddy, barren, two-story dwelling in Lower Bavaria, possessed by an anonymous past. In a normal, chronological context, it was the first location used by Herzog’s team, the place where the filming began. Inside its dark door, a dank and shadowy staircase crept around to the upper floor, where the work was taking place. There were six rooms upstairs, plus a beautiful tiled furnace that was kept burning to keep the actors and team members warm.

  With three of the ro
oms on this level designated for several scenes and two rooms set aside for camera equipment and costume storage, one room was largely forgotten about. It was a tiny cell, with an ancient bed against one white wall and a pale blue chest of drawers against the other. A heavy iron crucifix stood atop the chest of drawers, casting a fuzzy gray shadow across the wall. Curiously, beneath the one window in the cell, hundreds of German houseflies rested dead on the rough wood floor. These flies apparently had crashed into the glass en masse while trying to get outside. The poor flies were very Bavarian, I thought. To let them rest in peace, with dignity intact, Herzog cordoned off the area, forming a barrier with empty camera cases.

  On the first day of shooting in the sad little castle, Claude and I discovered the tiny cell and took a few photographs. The Frenchman stepped to the window and, aiming his lens through the dust and grime on the wavy pane, snapped away at the farmland beyond. I squatted in a corner and took three photographs of him as he stood with his back to the iron crucifix and his feet unknowingly planted on a few hundred dead flies.

  Taking a break later on, Herzog entered the cell and noticed that the peace of the flies had been violated. This disturbed him and made him angry, and he demanded to know who had crossed his barrier and mutilated the flies. But no one else was with him, so he abruptly stopped shouting. He returned to the set, his composure restored, as if nothing had happened.

  The set designers furnished the large room with a carved-oak oval dining table, which had six chairs around it and two easy chairs nearby; an old carpet; a glass display case filled with various blown-glass objects and one mug of Ruby glass; and the effigy of a girl with antlers hanging from the ceiling over the table. Here the team prepared to shoot the first scene on the production schedule. It was a night scene, so all the windows were covered with opaque plastic. And since it required a slight forward movement with the camera, boards were laid lengthwise for the double-wheeled dolly to roll on.

  The young glass-factory owner would be the only character in this short scene. He was played by Stefan Güettler, a twenty-one-year-old piano student living in Colombia who, while visiting Munich, had answered an ad that Herzog had placed in the newspaper regarding a hypnosis session. When he walked to the head of the table in the pitch-black room, the air was filled with tension, partly because the team had instinctively responded to the lightless room’s transformation with the hush that suspends the night, but mostly because the hypnosis experiment was about to be employed for the first time.

  A candle was lit and flickered before the glass-factory owner’s eyes when he sat down. A small spotlight made the mug of Ruby glass glow. Herzog leaned forward and ordered his actor to relax. He told him he was tired, very tired, that his head was heavy and his soul was empty, as if his spirit had flown away. Herzog instructed the entranced factory owner to rub his heart with the kerchief in his hand, to rub it over and over again, slowly, to soothe his heart and lessen its heaviness. The actor opened his eyes and began rubbing. As he stared at the cow eye of the camera, it seemed that he had been rendered hollow, that no life of his own was motivating the movements he made.

  Herzog nodded to his cameramen. The dolly rolled forward slowly, silently. At the head of the table, the factory owner sat in the middle of the chilly room, rubbing his heart with his kerchief, eyes open in slits, gazing ahead blankly at a spot beneath the lens. As the scene ensued, a large black fly landed on the actor’s breast and began walking upward. The actor, who was visibly disturbed, flinched as the fly buzzed near his left ear. Herzog stopped the camera and delicately shooed away the fly. Perspiring, the factory owner shuddered, then finally relaxed. The camera rolled again, and the exact same thing occurred. Then it rolled once more, and the scene was completed. The disturbed actor was relieved. Due to the fly, Herzog called for an early midday break.

  Over lunch a short while later, I sat down with the factory owner and his girlfriend. I asked him what the hypnosis experience had been like.

  “Absolutely nothing,” he declared dismissively. “It didn’t work at all. I was perfectly aware of everything at all times. Herzog won’t believe me, but it’s true.”

  I told him that he certainly seemed to be hypnotized, that his eyes had gone blank and all his movements were stilted and ponderous.

  “I was just acting,” explained the factory owner. “Herzog wants me to be a certain way, so I comply. Maybe the hypnosis has some slight effect, but no, I was aware of everything. I can even tell you this: I felt utterly ridiculous over there. Tell me, didn’t I look ridiculous?”

  I assured him that he looked all right. Then I explained to the factory owner that to be under a hypnotic spell does not rule out self-consciousness.

  “It doesn’t matter,” the actor protested. “I am absolutely sure I wasn’t hypnotized.”

  “Herzog is wrong,” the girlfriend added.

  The factory owner began to yawn and complain of fatigue. “I couldn’t sleep last night. I think I was dreaming that a fly was buzzing in my ear. That’s one thing I simply cannot stand; flies like that disturb me. I continually saw it on the opposite wall, but it kept buzzing in my ear—”

  UNDER THE ICE

  One week after shooting commenced at the old Castle Walchsing, Herzog summoned me as the team was passing through. He stood alone, upstairs by the door, a few feet from the furnace.

  “I can’t see it yet,” Herzog said, stooping to toss some wood on the fire. “For me, the film hasn’t begun. What do you think?”

  “I expect the film to rely on its editing in the end,” I supposed. “The film’s movements are slow; the thoughts and utterances and emotions are slow. A particularly inventive sort of editing will be essential to reinforce the slowness in a moving way, to create a compelling image without losing the essential slowness.”

  “Impossible,” responded Herzog. “The rhythm of a film is never established in the editing room. Directors who rely on editing are cowards. Rhythm is made in the shooting—that is filmmaking. It is what you shoot, the images. Editing merely puts it all together.”

  That morning, a difficult scene was to be shot in front of the castle by the river Vils. It was a scene involving Hias and his lover, Ludmilla. They were to stroll along the river bank, and Ludmilla would describe her vision of a land of glass. She would be hypnotized for the scene, and her monologue would be improvised.

  Herzog took Ludmilla down to the river. He commanded her full attention and made her fall into a hypnotic spell. Then he instructed her to open her eyes. She looked up to see a peaceful river covered with ice, which Herzog said was glass, just like the glass that touched or covered the rest of the countryside. Then, holding the clapboard before the camera, he asked her for a full description of her dreamland.

  “The whole landscape is moving,” she uttered. “It is filled with the light of the sun. The trees glow, and the leaves on the trees glitter, and the breeze passes by sad and forsaken because everything is alone—everything is made of glass.”

  A pickup truck rumbled across a nearby bridge, so Herzog stopped the camera. He reassured Ludmilla that she was feeling well, that she had spoken beautifully and would carry on in a similar fashion when the signal was given. Then Herzog, suffering from a bad bronchial infection, took some medicine that the script girl had gotten for him in Vilshofen. The scene began again, and Ludmilla’s meditation exceeded her first effort. But once more the filming was interrupted, this time by the passing of a noisy auto. When the same thing happened a third time, the team, shivering in the frigid morning air, started to get frustrated and annoyed. Herzog recognized this right away. He kept Ludmilla at ease, made sure that Hias was as comfortable as he could be with the difficult circumstances, and gathered his team before him.

  “If this scene succeeds,” he declared, hoarsely, “I will dive into the river and swim across it and back beneath the ice.”

  Work resumed, and after Hias and Ludmilla had done their task well an hour later, Herzog staggered to the riverside
and, without hesitation, began to disrobe. Stripped down to nothing but a pair of black athletic shorts in the wintry air, he dove into the water and swam beneath the ice as he vowed to do earlier. Herzog stayed underwater for several minutes before climbing out, almost blue from the cold. The script girl threw some blankets over him. He took another shot of medicine, then headed back to the castle to redress and write dialogue for the next scene.

  Knowing that the otherwise athletic Herzog was not a particularly good swimmer, I whispered in his ear, “Werner, how did you do it?”

  “There is a two-inch space between the ice and the water,” he whispered, “so I didn’t have to swim. I just clawed myself across and back, breathing in the small space.”

  That evening, the team threw itself a party in the miniscule hamlet of Pischelsdorf, population six, not far from the production headquarters in Arnsdorf. The site for this party was the reconstructed provincial Bavarian bar that would be a key location in the film, a place that Herzog wanted to look thoroughly used for the shooting. It was originally a dirt-floored stable in the rear of a humble gasthof, or tavern. The set designers toiled to totally transform the chamber. They built a sturdy plank floor over uneven ground, placed handmade benches and tables on top of it, set up the bar in a far corner, and decked the tables and walls with small wooden fixtures that held candles with dripping wax. Carbon stained the walls around the flickering flames. The team did a good job.

  Everyone lumbered in to find tables brimming with typically Lower Bavarian eatables. There were platters of beef, pork, sausage, and fish and varieties of bread, cheese, salad, and other provisions. Different types of beer were plentiful, among them a smooth wheat beer of superior quality that is unavailable outside Germany and a strange green local beer of medieval origin. Herzog brought a stein of the green beer over to me so I could try it.