The Future of Truth
Herzog’s last book really stuck with me. Its biography and musings were wide-ranging. I was caught in the stream of his thoughts, bobbing through vivid scenes of a Bavarian childhood, violent natural wonders, and encounters with human extremes.
This book feels like a coda or afterthought. Like leaving the party he turned to add “just one more thing” before launching into a monograph on truth.
But it’s a provoking one. I used to idolise Cinéma vérité and documentary filmmakers who sought to get to the truth of things. I find myself less confident in that project now. When a humble nature documentary is composed of images shot across years, sometimes even continents and different animals, yet strung seamlessly into a sequence of seconds, it’s easy to become disillusioned about truth. This line of thought never led anywhere productive, though. Just to a kind of grumpy sniff at those who reach for the real.
Herzog returns to tell us that in an age of ever-easier fabrication, a reach back to Vérité brings no truth. Only ‘accountants’ truth’; he seeks an ‘ecstatic truth’. In his 1999 manifesto, he described this as:
“There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”
He wants something that goes beyond a mere retelling of events into something that resonates more deeply. Something almost dreamlike but which holds great meaning.
It feels timely. In a world where trusted ground is eroding in a sea of slop, truth feels difficult to come by. I think he’s right that a mere description of the facts is likely insufficient in response to that tide. Something deeper, more resonant feels like the order of the day. There’s something empowering in that, a feeling of agency in a world that seems designed to make you question if anything solid can be held on to.
But I’m left with a fear, too. Ecstatic truth might burn bright, care less about the nitpicking details in favour of the resonant whole. It may have a shattering force of emotion that bridges voids to touch an audience, but do those virtues mean it’s less susceptible to deceit?
Aren’t we talking about a tool demagogues the world over have employed with the shattering force of their rhetoric? Is the ecstasy the important bit, and the truth or lie of it a secondary concern? Aren’t we talking about a tool the demegougs the world over have employed with the shattering force of their rhetoric?
Is the Ecstasy the important bit and the truth or lie of it a secondary concern?
After "The Future of Truth" I read: Normal People
Before "The Future of Truth" I read: Helm