Cuánta corteza cortaría un castor

Rather tiresome Herzog documentary, in which he performs his usual variation on Brechtian alienation by providing his audience with space to think, and then hitting them over the head anyway. The subject matter is the 1976 Cattle Auctioneering World Championships, wherein a bunch of rednecks speedyodel at cows. Herzog would use this phenomenon with great dramatic power in his similarly bludgeoning treatise on America, STROZZEK, but without a fictional framework, the subject becomes monotonous and irritating.

Herzog sees these auctioneers as a major site of American capitalism. Unlike other World Championships, where a skilled jury honour the most successful, this competition is strictly business, the jurors voting for the man they'd most like to represent them. Herzog compares this to the Amish community - enemies of capitalism - in whose town the event takes place. This is an easy jibe, and one that ignores the possible intolerance and repression that can breed in such close-knit groups.

The film is full of such contentiousness. Herzog is a last bastion of righteous modernism in a prevaricating post-modernist age of crisis, confusion and doubt. All his films are made with a firm point of view, offering an unproblematic alternative, but his attacks on convention and tyranny can be rather tyrannical themselves. Herzog appropriates everything. Take, for example, the issue of voices. He interviews competitors. They speak in English, but he talks for them, over them, in German, speaking for them. If the subtitles (another level!) are anything to go by, he's also translating them without due precision, and subtleties of meaning are lost. If his English isn't good enough, it's a mark of his arrogance that he thinks this doesn't matter.

Herzog points out that there is a strange musicality to the auctioneering. He then makes us endure the art for over 20 minutes, presumably to give us time to ruminate over it. So we do. Sometimes it sounds like yodelling, at others babbling dictators, at others raving evangelists. We think about how this 'new' language (both verbal and body) developed, and note the disparity between its local specificity, almost ethnicity, and its centrality to an international capitalism. We may even note the link between the auctioneers and the cattle they're selling, in the businessmans' minds.

All this will probably come to you after two minutes, but Herzog refuses to stop, piling on these yokels whose meagre curiosity value has long since waned. Can you imagine - 20 minutes of cattle moving from one pen to another, buyers whooping, and this insane, ghastly yodelspeak ringing through your ears like a trapped bluebottle. Then - then! - after you've been given time to make up your own mind, Herzog comes along and tells you what he thinks anyway! And guess what? It's exactly the same as what you'd figured out for yourself! Arrrrgh!

(The film has one value though. Canadians really do speak as SOUTH PARK suggested. Which, when you think aboot it, is unfortunate.)

Obviously not Herzog's best, but still definitely worth watching. The theme is classic Herzog-- I doubt that any other filmmaker would have considered cattle auctioneering world championships worth their celluloid. At 44 minutes, this isn't really a major work, but as usual Herzog is able to communicate to his audience what it was that drew him to the unique subject. Like Herzog says, there's something "fascinating and frightening" about what these auctioneers do; it's almost like music or "art" but what purpose does it serve? Cattle gets sold as quickly as humanly possible. If the subject doesn't drive you away, give this a try. Technically, it's quite basic, but the Herzog magic is there.

Apparently, Werner Herzog was very fascinated with the vocal skills and cadence needed to be a livestock auctioneer. Here, he and his crew attend the livestock auctioneer world championship and seem to record EVERYTHING. While this might have been interesting for 10-15 minutes, at 45 minutes it was a bit of a chore to stick with this one. Just how many fast-talking auctioneers do you need to hear before boredom sets in--I don't know for sure, but Herzog more than surpassed that. Had the film had more back story and information about the participants themselves, the film probably would have sustained my attention longer. In addition, a few little vignettes could have been expanded--such as Herzog and the Quakers trying to communicate in German together. I am no expert on German language, but I could tell that the two languages had diverged considerably over the centuries and I wish this segment had been a bit longer. Or, perhaps he and his folks could have interviewed some of the members of the audience or the auctioneers' families. All I know is that it just felt way over-long.

How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976)

** (out of 4)

Werner Herzog documentary about cattle auctioneers is rather strange to say the least. We really don't learn anything about the actual auctioneers except how they got into the business. It seems Herzog's main interest is just listening to them speak their fast talk and asking them what it means when they say it slowed down.

I've seen quite a few of Herzog's documentaries and this one isn't the best but he has many great ones out there.

You can buy this film from Herzog's website.

I had to shake my head in wonder for 45 minutes. This has to be one of the most bizarrely motivated documentaries I have ever seen. It documents an auctioneer's contest. And believe me, we have to sit through the whole routines of every contestant, a death march of blather.

Its not that he's making fun of this American "institution." He really is fascinated by this and had the winner here appear in "Bruno S," in a fabricated part. And he has on numerous times commented on how he finds this hypnotizing. The interesting part of the film is not in the film; that's amazingly boring. Its in the wonder of why this German filmmaker, this sometimes genius who had by then made one of the best two dozen films in history, this risktaker, this idealist – why he would spend his time and ours on this. If it were 45 minutes of dirt and clouds, I might understand, but this?

There are a few transcendental moments that he's caught, The context is in Amish country, and he had a crew, so before we begin the contest proper, he shows us some of these people. Now that's the Herzog we know and love. Some of these faces are worth cherishing, especially the women: and one little girl, so cleanly groomed, with hair so perfectly and carefully combed back in an ultramodest style. Except, except for one twist that you know requires an artist to create and wear. A whole life of creativity in that one movement on a patient cherub's head.

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