“I look upon the volcano, the lava bubbles with fury and the Earth spits fire. It’s the end of days and tells of a near future where all we know will be burned and left in ashes.” Werner Herzog never said that, but it sounds to me like something he would say were he to look upon a pool of molten lava, considering whether this means the end of the Earth as we know it, even though he may be looking at an active volcano that’s been spewing lava for thousands of years with no immediate effect on the state of the Earth or humanity.
Herzog has such a unique view of the world that he can do this. It’s almost as if he is able to separate words from reality, looking for a deeper meaning of not only what he’s looking at, but what he’s describing. When it comes to Heart of Glass it seemed to me that’s exactly what he was doing, but I was entirely unable to decipher the message.
Set in the 1800s, Heart of Glass takes us into a Bavarian village whose primary trade involves a “Ruby glass”, but the village’s master glassmaker, Muhlbeck, has passed away, taking with him the secret to the rose-colored glass. Despite all their attempts, the villagers are unable to recreate the glass, sending them into a state of despair. Throughout all of this, Hias (Josef Bierbichler), a shepherd and town prophet, portends of what’s to come, seemingly not just the immediate future, but of wars and death to come over the centuries.
One key to all of this is that it’s said all of the actors other than Bierbichler and the professional glass blowers, were performing while under hypnosis, their lines memorized while hypnotized while their gestures entirely spontaneous and in the moment. My only reaction to this is, “If you say so,” or, “Yeah, right, but I’ll roll with it if necessary.”
All this considered, you can attempt to piece thematic elements together. The trancelike state hypnosis brings, the despair of a village unable to adapt to a situation (why not just make another kind of glass?), a prophet able to see the future and townspeople unable to see the desperation their village is in as if looking through “rose-colored glasses”.
“Desperation” is the word I continue to come back to most frequently when thinking about this movie and the seemingly disjointed images that make up its running time. Desperation in a singular focus — the “Ruby glass” — the lack of imagination or intuition to adapt to an impossible scenario and the determination of their desperation. It’s like watching a small child continue to try and fit a square peg into a round hole when there is a square role right next to it.
I don’t really know what else to say. The images are what you’d expect from Herzog and his chosen setting — dark, candle lit and, at times, shrouded in fog. The score from Popul Vol is as haunting as ever and an opening image of clouds sweeping over a forested landscape below the onlooking eyes of Hias are quite striking as they are intercut with a foreboding monologue and what appears to be 16mm images as if projected onto a canvas background as waves from waterfalls crash into oblivion.
What I’m supposed to take away from this I have no idea and I don’t think Herzog ever intends for us to take one thing or another out of his film as much as he’s fascinated by each individual interpretation. While I can piece together a few thoughts of my own on this one I can’t say any of it interests me. I was bored stiff watching this movie and wouldn’t choose to endure it again.
