Heart of Glass (1976)
A German community relies on the unique glass it produces for its income and identity. When the old man who knows how to create the glass dies, the leader of the town tries to replicate his process with little success.
Hias, a local fortune-teller (based on Bavarian prophet Mühlhiasl), predicts the glass factory will be destroyed in a fire.
The end of the film is a digressive, symbolic poem which I think morphs Hias’s prediction into a universal warning, but I’m not sure what the warning is about.
From the mysterious Bruno S. in The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) and Stroszek (1977) to the despicable Klaus Kinski in Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu the Vampyre (1979), and Fitzcarraldo (1982), it’s obvious director Werner Herzog likes odd, distinctive characters played by odd, distinctive men. Even his documentary work focuses on unusual men, such as Timothy Treadwell.
In this film, he gives us an entire village full of outcasts and oddities, and hypnotized his cast and gave them their lines in a hypnotic state.
I liked this odd, entrancing film, but I cannot articulate why. It’s a languid portrait of a foreign, yet recognizable world; it’s a beautiful, loving vision of a people and a past I’m not sure existed; and it’s one of the most accessible of Herzog’s enigmatic films.