Werner Herzog is perhaps the only cinéaste from the epoch sometimes referred to as the ‘golden age of art cinema’ whose reputation as a pop cultural figure eclipses that of his films. One of the key members of the New German Cinema movement, and the director of celebrated feature films such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) and The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974), Herzog has come to be known among internet users for his drawling Bavarian accent and his existential musings about solitude, despair, and the brutality of nature. However, as Herzog’s new memoir, Every Man for Himself and God Against All (translated by Michael Hofmann) reveals, behind this ironically morose façade lies a sentimental and deeply thoughtful man who is endlessly fascinated by the human soul and the superhuman drive to transcend what we thought possible.

This fixation with the extraordinary, the unthinkable, can be found everywhere in Herzog’s films. In 1973, he shot The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, a documentary which follows Walter Steiner’s attempt to break the world record for ski jumping. As recounted in Every Man for Himself and God Against All, what captivates Herzog about Steiner is not simply that Steiner succeeded in bettering the record by almost ten metres, but that, in the process of doing so, ‘several times he almost flew to his death because the ramp was not built for a flyer like him’. Captured in slow motion by Herzog’s telephoto lens, Steiner glides gracefully like an animal whose natural habitat is the sky, disregarding his own mortality in pursuit of humankind’s most ancient dream. Above all, it is this blind ambition, this temptation to fly too close to the sun, notwithstanding the consequences, which preoccupies Herzog as a filmmaker.