‘Theater Of Thought’ Review: Werner Herzog’s Latest Is A Brainy But Plodding Affair [Telluride]

Werner Herzog’s “Theater of Thought” may be the most egg-headed documentary to ever open with a quote “ascribed to Chuck Berry.” To wit: “In my Theater of Thought I am rocking. / In the Dance of my Mind, I am swinging. / C’mon, babe, roll over to me.” A quick Google search finds no such quote ascribed to Berry, or, for that matter, anyone else. That’s Herzog for you.

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The director’s films – narrative and documentary – tend to ask the big questions. His latest asks one of the biggest: How does thought (and pain and love and hate and everything else) emerge from the tissue of the brain? He’s joined on this journey by Rafael Yuste, neurobiologist at Columbia University, who gives him a “crash course” in the basics of the human brain, and then they hit the road together to talk to the experts: doctors, scientists, researchers, tech entrepreneurs (which is a bit worrisome, considering the bad aftertaste left by his previous exploration of technology, “Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World”), and even a philosopher. He visits IBM, where they’re building the first quantum computers in the world. He chats with the head of research for Facebook, and one of the creators of Siri. He talks to more university professors than you can shake a tablet at. 

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“Theater of Thought” finds Herzog at a strange point in his career, where he’s better known as an actor (and a meme) than a filmmaker, and far more prolific as a documentarian than as a narrative storyteller. Those who enjoy his semi-non-sequiturs, and how they sound when wrapped in his distinctive accent, will find fleeting moments of pleasure here, in questions like “Could we encrypt our thoughts so that rogue elements couldn’t read our minds?” and “Would you like to communicate with a hummingbird?” or voice-over narration musings such as “Where is the prairie? Where did the buffalo go? What kind of trees are these, to the left and right?” And there is, it must be noted, one all-out funny moment, when IBM’s head of research, Dario Gil, is explaining his work via a series of complex equations on a whiteboard, and Herzog lets him talk for a minute or so before sneaking in his voice-over under Gil’s explainer: “I admit that I literally understand nothing of this.”

But those highlights are fleeting, and Herzog’s latest is one of his weakest. Part of the problem, shockingly, is in the filmmaking; there are basic, unfortunate amateur missteps throughout, in edits, in music, in pacing (there’s even a boom mic sighting). His exploratory documentaries frequently adopt a stream of stream of consciousness approach, but here it seems halting and borderline disconnected – a series of interview vignettes, but often with tenuous connections, or even none at all. At one point, he takes an odd detour to visit famed high wire artist Philippe Petit, who tells the story of his walk between the World Trade Center towers, a tale already told in “Man on Wire” and “The Walk.” When their chat ends, Herzog proclaims in voice-over, with something of a shrug, “Back to science.”

More distressingly, the creator of some of the most striking images in modern movies (the last thing anyone needs is to hear about the boat-pulling scene in “Fitzcarraldo” again, but hey, how about that boat-pulling scene in “Fitzcarraldo”) shares little of visual interest beyond flatly lit, talking head interviews. When his subjects are compelling enough, this minimalism is effective (see, immediately if you haven’t, “Into the Abyss”). But with material this dense and potentially alienating, that kind of YouTube documentary style is downright deadly. 

The purity of Herzog’s intentions is not in doubt; few filmmakers would even try to make a movie about how the brain works, and even at its dullest, “Theater of Thought” is an inquisitive and complex exercise, with individual moments of insight and fascination. But they don’t add up in a cohesive, coherent, or particularly cinematic way. [C]

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