Auch Zwerge haben klein angefangen

Herzog is important to me. He seeks out situations that have recoil, he takes chances and makes honest choices. His being is broken, and that means the choices and the power of the situations affect me.

But sometimes he works with a situation that doesn't have psychic danger. Sometimes he makes bad choices. Sometimes his brokenness is all we get.

I can't say that this is a failed project. These things have their own autonomy and find a way that works. I can't say that I am offended or repelled either. It seems no less depraved than most of life. I'm just disappointed that things did not line up so that it could touch my soul.

Herzog is not an accident; he is an engineered vessel. He made himself, makes himself. He works at this. In this case, he successfully created a environment. He already has established the balance he would keep between highly stylized abstractions and discovered raw truth. But his means for abstracting are not yet mature. His choices in what raw things he finds are wrong, wrong for him and us.

I have to think of this as practice for "Hearts of Glass," which is something of a masterpiece along these lines.

A problem apart from all this, all this about him as an immature artist, there is another problem. Werner is German and carries a notion that the guilt of existence can be somehow formalized. This translates for most "reviewers" in this being an allegory of corrupt society I some form; the fears of the reviewer determine the allegory. That stuff gets in the way.

There is a potentially remarkable scene. Since the midgets are of all size and mental carriage, there is a clear order, physically manifest. The two — let's say — weakest members of this society are forced into a bed to have sex. The mob cackles behind the door. Later, a larger wiser woman gives some wisdom to her inferior, the "wife." She shows a cigar box full of dead bugs dressed in formal attire, wedding garments.

"I have a spider here with eight legs. I know spiders have six. I was going to knit it a sweater."

This could have been devastating. This could have changed lives and sparked silent revolutions. A later Herzog would have made it work, found how to make it have power shooting toward us.

Here, it is just part of a dull spectacle.

Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

Werner Herzog's sophomore effort is probably his most bizarre to date. The whole cast is compromised of dwarfs who take over an institution and wreak havoc. This treat for Herzog fans is very entertaining.

The film does have its problems though. The first half hour is hard to sit through but this is the type of film that gets better as it goes on. Also, I was expecting more of an ending. The ending, although funny, seems that it just does not fit and ended too abruptly.

As I said in my title, I think this has Herozg's most powerful images. With the dwarfs wreaking havoc and celebrating with smiles on their while African tribe music is playing, the scenes are very bizarrely beautiful. The movie is very entertaining and very funny. Hombre has probably the best laugh I have ever heard in my life. He definitely brings real evil to the film. The cinematography is great (yeah, what else is new in a Herzog film?). The message of the film is also very profound.

Although this is definitely not Herzog's best, it is one hell of a trip!

Werner Herzog's upsetting, black and white, documentary-like EVEN DWARFS STARTED SMALL concerns the rebellion of a handful of dwarves against the institution in which they are inmates. No average-sized actors appear - just the buildings, furniture and accessories that have been constructed for (and seemingly abandoned by) them. Herzog pulls a double whammy by getting his audience to identify with his performers - indeed, they are shown to express great sensitivity and pain - but doesn't cop out by suggesting that the dwarves will be happy now that they've smashed some windows. A difficult film to watch - and certainly not for the easily-offended.

I actually admire what writer/director Werner Herzog was going for with Even Dwarfs Started Small even if I think he didn't quite execute it in a manner that involved me enough. It's got a great idea behind it- inmates at a mental institution, on one of the Canary Islands pre-tourism, create an anarchic uprising with practically no one else in sight, and the headmaster locks himself in with a retarded patient while the others go wild and crazy, albeit still staying in the confines of the grounds of the area. I also liked when Herzog went for an interesting route in the picture psychologically and in mood, which was to show how chaos and disarray, even if among little people, can actually become rather aimless and uncanny.

There is no plot, it's just a series of interconnected segments that seem to be happening in real time, where they do things like ogle at naked girls in magazines, kill a pig randomly, give constant torture to a couple of blind dwarfs, circle around a constantly 360 degree spinning car, and with Herzog sometimes just as interested in the animals (chickens, a camel, the pig, a monkey) on the premises as he is with his whacked out little folk.

But the problem arises then with the work that since it is plot less- even if it ends with the headmaster, talking to a branch outside, as a metaphor for human control and what is and what isn't a free will or spirit perhaps- there's the danger of becoming tedious with what goes on, and that's exactly the trap that I think Herzog falls into here. It's not that he is out blatantly to mock them (although, like with Stroszek, the tendency to laugh is hard to avoid at times, especially with its documentary-style anything-goes approach), but there isn't any grand metaphor I could really obtain from the material, at least from a first viewing, and Herzog seemed to be having too much fun getting the dwarfs to do both the mundane and whatever to get something consistently interesting.

While he does have one character who ends up being quite memorable, the freaky-laughing, hilarious Hombre (all one-note, of course, but then again isn't everyone here), there's nothing to tie the parts together that are worth watching for to make it good enough for the whole. There's surrealism of course (the fate of the monkey and the car), and an image or two that strikes greatly (when the headmaster or whomever tries to get the attention of the one-passerby on the island), but it just didn't compel me or surprise me in ways that Herzog at his best can do.

Not that I'm telling you to not see the film, as a fan I mean. The title alone should be a calling card to anyone who might have a bit of interest in the subject matter, and I'm sure a work like this has inspired a few avant-garde director's out there (I saw it as a possible fore-father for Korine's Gummo). Yet it's own lackadaisical use of narrative and Herzog's insistence on ambiguity and derangement, makes it a kind of schizophrenic work that makes it a fun yet flawed trip.

I'm almost ashamed to say it but...this film truly TERRIFIED me! Usually speaking, this is like one of the best compliments a movie can ever receive, but I'm afraid that in the case of "Even Dwarfs Started Small" this feeling is very misplaced. Werner Herzog's minor masterpiece is intended as an allegoric social portrait, hence I'm not very proud to admit that it haunted me all night long. As wrong and unsympathetic as it may come across, these little people look naturally eerie and their appearances made an impression on me that was even stronger than the mesmerizing story. "Even Dwarfs Started Small" is a revolutionary film, pretty much covering all the daily wars every human being wages, only the protagonists are all dwarfs. Since these people's position in society already are oppressed as it is, this film looks extra powerful and compelling. All the actors and actresses deliver amazing performances, even though none of them had any experience in cinema. Especially the 'main' character Hombre is a truly intriguing man. Other aspects that increase the depressing intensity of this film are the black and white cinematography, the extended sequences showing farm animals and – most of all – the raw, tribal music. This definitely was one of the toughest reviews I ever wrote, simply because this is such a multilateral classic and I regretfully can't get past my personal fear of small shapes...