Fortresses of Solitude

I was reading “Herzog on Herzog” and was surprised by how he reminded me of Sebald. Particularly when the editor asks Herzog about influences and he mentions the painter Grunewald, about whom I had just finished reading about in Sebald’s book of poetry, After Nature, a title which could be from a Herzog film. They are both men who walk long distances as meditation and memory. They are men who bend and warp history and fact in pursuit of truth: that our society is flawed and cruel.

And their characters are often similar. They are men of extreme solitude; men who whether they are in a desert or a crowd are solitary and possessed of a totemic solitudeBut though Herzog’s characters are far more dramatic than Sebald’s, they are similar in that they want to rule their world, but are overwhelmed by it. The unfortunate aspect of these characters, and one that slipped my mind for a while, is that they tend to die in horrible ways – usually suicide brought on by dread and cavernous despair. That’s unpleasant.

I guess in some ways they are reminiscent of other archetypal film men: cowboys, samurai, and detectives. Of course, all three are really the same as the arc of Hammet’s “Red Harvest” to Kurosawa’s “Yojimbo” to Leone’s “A Fistful of Dollars” nicely demonstrates.

These are men I yearn to be. Men who complete in and of themselves, for whom there is no loneliness or dread or any kind of negative emotion aside, perhaps, from a little righteous anger and maybe a little contempt – but usually the receivers are deserving of it. Of course, they aren’t really emotionally demonstrative, either, which I don’t particularly admire, but I may be willing to forego.