La grande extase du sculpteur sur bois Steiner

A very moving portrait of a simple Swiss woodcarver who becomes the world's best ski jumper. The man's life, his motivation, his fears, his hopes: all beautifully relayed in this early masterpiece by Werner Herzog. Here we find a great tribute to Swiss honesty and depth. I know Swiss people who think and feel like Walter Steiner. And then there's that unforgettable story in which Walter Steiner compares himself with a bird he had saved and raised in his youth, a bird he ultimately had to kill to save it from pain and the cruelty of its companions. Only Herzog can give us meditations of that kind. What is Walter Steiner doing these days?

This starts out looking like a more or less standard TV documentary about a ski-jumper. Over time, however, it somehow gets stranger and stranger, until the ending, that somehow, incomprehensibly, left me totally out of breath.

The film works on so many levels: It's a fascinating portrayal of the celebrated ski-jumper Steiner, but it's also an amazing look at the plain aesthetics of ski-jumping, with extreme slow-motion pictures showing the jumpers' fears and ecstasy at a very profound level. In addition, there is also something in this film that's simply very hard or impossible to define, something about man itself, something about longing and - perhaps the most advanced of human emotions - pity.

How much of this portrayal that actually reflects Steiner's personality, and how much of it that reflects Herzog's, is hard to tell. But that's the only catch. Those looking for Herzog classics should not think that this movie can be missed because it's a 45-minute TV documentary. Apart from pictures of some nasty ski-jumping falls, it's not really disturbing to the extent that put me slightly off when watching for example Aguirre and Even Dwarfs Started Small - so it could from my point of view overall be the best of the many Herzog movies I've seen so far.

If, like me, you think documentaries are the runt of the cinematic crown, a lazy option, an unimaginative, dreary response to life, a mendaciously arrogant appropriation of 'truth', than this film might make you see other possibilities in the form. Where documentaries are generally concerned with the 'real', what can be seen, evaluated, and understood, Herzog aims for nothing less than a representation of the sublime. And, as so often, he comes very close.

Walter Steiner is a typical Herzog hero. He carves wood sculptures from ideas that sound suspiciously Herzogian. He tells fable-like stories about his youth, an example of the subject appropriating the language of an all-interpreting creator (Herzog). He is both artist and storyteller. His great gift, however, is in sport, a milieu of order and repetition seemingly alien to Herzog's epic dreams of convention-busting.

Steiner is a ski-jumper. He skis down high slopes, and then just flies over huge distances. He is frequently heard complaining that the slopes are put too high, that he is in danger of jumping too far and killing himself,. This, of course, is why Herzog thinks he is less a mere sportsman, than an exalted attitude to death. He is frequently compared to birds - he is someone who can fly, escape the mundane, transcend the everyday to another spirit level altogether. The very orgasmic brevity of the act makes it all the more precious.

In the act of filming, Herzog appropriates this Wagnerian achievement for himself. By ignoring straight narrative, character, and concentrating on the exquisite moment; by bending, reshaping, slowing down time to elongate the sublime; Herzog goes beyond simple observation to enter new realms of experience. Although there are uncomfortable echoes of Leni Riefenstahl's mountain films, the photography in this film is unparalleled in modern cinema, with the dazzling white vast slopes all mere props for the ecstatic revelation of Steiner's art, this melding of two realms, our human, worldly level, and the mystical unknown.

This kind of Teutonic postering is not usually to my taste, but there are many pleasing more earthy moments, especially the sight of Herzog, cinema's great visionary scuttling around like a nerdy sports fan with ABC and all the other world media. Now there's a sight I never thought I'd see.

After the madness of Aguirre the Wrath of God, Werner Herzog turned his attention to the greatest ski flier of his day Walter Steiner. Herzog follows Steiner as he get ready for and competes in an international competition. The film is less about the man, I know very little more now that I've seen the film, than it is about what he can do, and that is fly very far on skis. Steiner is so good that he starts farther down on the ramp than the competition and still blows everyone else out of the water.

While the film is very good, and at time exceedingly beautiful, it is ultimately a film made by a fan in celebration of his hero. Its really quite amusing to see the seemingly unflappable Herzog reduced to being a rather human sports nut. Herzog is in love with his subject and what he can do and it shows, thankfully in a positive way.

Despite being a very rough film in many ways it still captivates in its rawness. There is something about the imagery and Steiners achievement that makes it all worth watching.

The best of Herzog's shorts, this film documents the mysterious soaring Walter Steiner as he destroys the world ski-flying record in 1974 Yugoslavia.

To be fair, this is not really a documentary about Steiner, the Swiss woodcarver and ski-flyer, nor the sport in general, nor the competition and breaking off the world record, but something more intense and esoteric -- a poem of obsession, ecstasy and escape.

This mesmerizing piece (set to an airy Popol Vuh soundtrack) is marred only by repetitive shots of ski-jump accidents, Herzog's inserting himself into several shots and his unnecessary and clumsy closing line.