Salt and Fire

Dir: Werner Herzog

2016

***

Salt and Fire is a thriller in that the story fits the genre, however, if you're expecting action, espionage, twists and indeed thrills, this might not be for you. It is however, still technically a thriller. Werner Herzog only went to film school to steal a video camera, he is essentially self-taught and not one of his films adhere to the norm or any sort of formula. I'm not sure whether any of his films even fit a genre - apart from maybe Nosferatu the Vampyre which is definitely a vampire film, but not a horror. I'm sure someone else coined the phrase before me (answers on a postcard readers) but Herzog's films are very much his own, they are Herzogian. His third film of 2016, Salt and Fire, is based on Tom Bissell's Pushcart Prize nominated short story Aral, and he sticks to it far more than I thought he would. However, although a lot of the dialogue in Bissell's story is in the film, there are certain lines that are a pure Herzogian (I'm aiming to get this term in the dictionary) but I don't feel there is enough Herzog in the overall script. I'm going to be brutally honest. The film feels like an amateur dramatics version of an award nominated story made by a genius filmmaker on a bad day. The script doesn't work at all, it sounds fine in the short story but it is delivered remarkably unnaturally in the film. The film starts with three ecologists being kidnapped in South America by masked gunmen and couldn't feel less threatening if it tried. Granted, there is more to the kidnappers as the film progresses but their amateurish handling of the situation isn't part of their character, it has everything to do with poor performance and, I hate to say it, shoddy direction. The film was filmed in sixteen days and it looks it. There seems little point having strong actors such as Gael García Bernal, Volker Michalowski and Michael Shannon when more screen time is given to the likes of Lawrence Krauss. Lawrence Krauss is a brilliant, brilliant man, but he couldn't act his way out of a paper bag. He's a brilliant theoretical physicist, cosmologist, activist and public speaker, but I'm afraid he's a rubbish would-be villain. I like it when directors throw in fascinating non-actors into films but only when it works, and up until now it had worked for Herzog. The actors might as well have been reading the scripts for the first time when they read it out aloud in front of the cameras and I'm positive this was a one-take movie. Everything about the dialogue and delivery is wrong, even when taking into account the fact that the cast is multi-cultural and no one is speaking in their mother tongue, apart from Krauss and Shannon - who still sound like they're talking with a non-American accent for some reason. However, now and again Herzog sticks a purely Herzogian line in the conversation - my favourite being an anecdote about Alexander the Great and a helmet full of rainwater. The film is often frustrating and a little boring, I soon cared little about the reasons why the group is kidnapped or who was being the kidnapping. The story itself is actually rather profound and towards the latter half of the film, the story, visuals and performance become profound, and of the quality you'd expect from the great director. The film is always at odds with each other, our protagonist Dr. Laura Sommerfeld (Veronica Ferres) has the same expression and same reaction when told the world will end and when informed of what foods will give her chronic diarrhoea, she answers questions before the question is finished and has none of the trappings of a leading lady, but when suddenly forced to look after two blind children in the middle of the desert, she becomes Katharine Hepburn. It seems clear to me that Herzog loved the story and wanted to adapt it and add a few of his own ideas to it, which he's done, but he's rushed through all of Tom Bissell's bits and has painted the town red with his own stuff. When Salt and Fire is bad, it's really bad, but when Salt and Fire is good, it's a profound masterpiece. So as a huge Herzog fan I'm torn, I found the film frustrating and rewarding, but I just know he could have done better. I love it for not being formulaic and for breaking all the rules but I just wish more time had been spent on the detail in the first half of the film. A rewrite, a change of a couple of cast members and a bit of editing, and the film could have been something masterful, as it is, it's a bit of a complicated mess, but worth perseverance.