GHOST ELEPHANTS Interview: Werner Herzog and Dr. Steve Boyes Speak of Dreams, Ritual, and the Vast Mondo Wilderness
Werner Herzog needs no introduction. He has been one of cinema's most fascinating and deliberate risk-takers for over five decades of extraordinary cinema. The enlightenments he discovers through his pursuit of the "ecstatic truth" are often intense and absurd in varying measure.
Well into his 80s at this point, he has not slowed down in his filmmaking, and seemed to have no reservations traipsing around the "terra incognito" of the rugged and uninhabited Angolan wilderness along with his current documentary subject, South African biological conservationist Dr. Steve Boyes.
Boyes has been an advocate and activist for the preservation of the lakes and flora and fauna of the Bié Plateau in Central Angola. Since 2015, Boyes has led the National Geographic Okavango Wilderness Project, a collection of government and private organizations and local researchers from Namibia, Angola, and Botswana, to survey and help preserve the vast stretches of water-rich lands, the so called "Water Tower of Africa" which feeds most of the continent's major rivers.
His team has discovered over 100 new and unique species (mainly plants, insects and spiders) in the last decade, but the big prize is the Ghost Elephant. A highland species of the worlds largest mammal, its existence has only been hinted at with the shooting of the largest animal on record in 1955, which now resides at the Smithsoinan Museum in Washington D.C., in the United States.
Herzog chronicles the sizeable expedition (with a delightful number of tangents and hanging out with the interesting locals) to film and photograph the Ghost Elephants, as well as trying to get a sample of their DNA with the help of Namibian and Luchazi master trackers, and a custom made arrow-head, across the difficult landscape of steep valleys, dense forests, and peat wetlands via Toyota off-road vehicles and small motorcycles, until eventually walking dozens of miles on foot.
Both men, adventurers, documentarians and to a great degree, poets, took time to sit down via Zoom from different parts of the globe to discuss their film and their discoveries in Ghost Elephants.
The below transcript of our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity and flow.
Kurt Halfyard: Hello, and good morning. Thanks for offering your time. I will jump right in. Mr. Herzog, how do you select your projects these days? I read once that your film GRIZZLY MAN came about because you lost your car keys. What is the amount of serendipity, versus your own network and people, in bringing things to you?
Werner Herzog: Sometimes a film is just stumbling into me. Not that I'm stumbling into a project. The films stumble into me. Grizzly Man was one of those examples.
Ghost Elephants was triggered by a meeting with Steve Boyes. And I immediately had the feeling. This is a big story. This is big. Originally, I was just invited to come to Namibia as an advisor. There was filming already. It had been going on for quite a time. But the South African team that was on it didn't really know how to form it into a story.
I showed up in Namibia, and after a day or two, it was clear I had to do it. Everybody, including the team from South Africa, asked me, Oh, please take over. I didn't want to take the job from anyone. And so, overnight, I had a film in my lap. But I had to function immediately. It was not problematic at all. It was with great ease that I adopted the film right away.
Dr. Boyes, how did the project evolve from your perspective?
Dr. Steve Boyes: It was a wonderful dinner, that first dinner. I think the restaurant closed on us as we spoke about life. And it was at that time where, just then, the first photographs [arrived]. I was driving into Cape Town, I had to pull off the road. Kerllen [Costa, an Angolan born Environmental Scientist] was sending the first ghostly images of elephants from our camera traps. He had just come back off the motorbikes with the SD cards from those trail camps.
So it was really it.
I think, when I saw this, it was just, okay, now they're going to go. We were integrating ourselves with the Ju/'hoansi, with the master trackers, going to the homesteads and living with them. And it got to the point where Werner camped in Namibia, when they're preparing to leave. To go to Angola. To spend several months up there with the best trackers in the world. Not to finish this but to get the genetic samples they need. And hopefully interact with one or two of these elephants. So it was that. And Werner arrived in Namibia, the first interviews with, him and myself, were, “What would the world be like without telephones?”
Herzog: That doesn't make it into the film. But [the question] “Do you dream?” does. And it switched us into a different frame of thought. A frame of reflection on what and how we're doing. Because otherwise, we're just packing vehicles, talking to families, saying goodbyes, preparing for a very big expedition. But to be activated in that way was extraordinary.
When I was watching the film, the structure immediately felt like a heist movie. You have to gather the team, build the trust of the various team members, go into forbidden areas, and then capture the prize, in this case, photography plus DNA. Even the segments in the United States, it is almost like you are fencing the "goods" to the genetic scientists. I do not know if anyone consciously thought of this during the structure of the film. So I just wanted to put that out there, and maybe you could comment if that is an offensive (or overly simple) read of the film?
Herzog: We are always out for the heist. To get away with the loot!
It's a good film. I should point out It would be a misunderstanding to believe that this is a wildlife film. It is not. It's a film, although National Geographic acquired it, and it will stream through Hulu and Disney Plus. It's about the dreams. The ghosts of elephants. We cover this in a very beautiful way, for example, underwater footage.
It's pure beauty and ghost-like images that illuminate you as an audience. So it's not a report on an expedition either. So there's something much deeper going on, much more fascinating going on.
Well, there's the corollary of the MONDO Italian footage included, which is the nightmare. It seems to be a mirrored light/dark reflection with the elephant frolicking in the yellowish muddy, blooming water versus the horror of that lengthy shot of big game carcasses. You are definitely the first National Geographic film to have MONDO footage in it.
Herzog: Yeah. The Africa Addio. Correct. It was released in 1966 was and already there. It was a very controversial film. But controversial, mostly for its racist content. But these people got away with shots of big game hunting that is shocking and appalling. It is so shocking that we agreed that in the streaming release, there will be a warning at the beginning: This film contains footage of big game hunting that may be distressful for some of the audience. It's distressful for everyone.
[Pauses.]
It's so incredible. And of course, it shows how far have we have moved, in the meanwhile, and how much distance we still have to go to guarantee the survival of these elephants. And what is good, is that the film, the hardship of this voyage, on foot, on motor cycles, no planes, no roads, no bridges, nothing will ease the way of any poacher.
There is no way for them to get in. They know now the local king and his hunters are much better than any armed rangers in the national parks. They will find you, and they have poison arrows, silent, and you will be stone dead as fast as it gets.
[A long pause, and a deep breath from this interviewer, as Herzog stares penetratingly through the screen as he says that last sentence.]
[A long pause, and a deep breath from this interviewer, as Herzog stares penetratingly through the screen as he says that last sentence.]
Could you talk about the Angolan king? The sequence is both majestic and mundane at the same time. It draws in a lot of the themes [of the film, and] of him explaining the Elephant mythology of his people. The actual surroundings are fairly practical and sparse, even though the king is surrounded by leopard skins. You had to ask permission both to go into the lands and witness the elephants, but you also had to ask permission to film the asking of permission. Was there more there than what made it into the film? Beyond the two shots with the king.
Boyes: It is a long-standing relationship with him. The first time we meet Pacheco [The King of Bailundo in Angola], it is just after sunset. We're meeting in Django, which is this wooden structure where he meets with the larger groups of people. It is pretty much pitch dark, you can just glimpse of his eyes.
And he chastises us for three hours about the fact that we are dressed incorrectly, that we are there at the wrong time. And just drills into us. The second audience is neither typical. It is about an hour and half to get into the royal compound. To go through the clapping ceremony, the updates, the singing, and eventually the audience. It is a big thing to meet in that context.
Herzog: All ritualized. For example, when Steve hands over two photos to the king, he has to clap his hands, he approaches with reverence, and puts it on the ground. One of the men in the court picks it up from the ground, and then hands it over to the king. And Steve has to walk backwards from the king. So that he does not turn his back towards him. So it is very, very ritualized, and very beautiful and very natural. It is much more natural than lets say, the British throne.
Are you saying the [Angolan] pomp and circumstance is more honest?
Herzog: Not honest, no. Formalities. It is performative. But, performative in a way that has a certain beauty.
Many years ago, I saw you present BAD LIEUTENANT: PORT OF CALL NEW ORLEANS at the Toronto International Film Festival. One of the things that stood out, weirdly, to me, was that unprompted on stage you told the audience that you brought the film, I believe it was to Millennium Film’s Avi Lerner, ahead of time and under budget. That level of gleeful pragmatism was interesting to me at the time.
When I see the scene in GHOST ELEPHANTS when you film the gentleman fixing his musical instrument, and there are chickens scurrying around him in the frame -- you have this very verbal acknowledgment, “I do not mean to romanticise this, but…”. At this stage in your filmmaking career, what is the current the tension between the pragmatic and the mythic?
Herzog: I do not feel any tension between being pragmatic and let’s say, being visionary. [Laughs]. It comes with ease. I do what I do. I love what I do. And I do not have to struggle with myself. It comes with great ease. And you can see how relaxed I am. And I am saying, “working on your musical instrument without a schedule for the day, surrounded by chickens. It cannot get better than this!” The humour comes across. Everyone in the theatre laughs out. Everywhere. In Venice. In New York City. Everywhere.
You have worked on all seven continents. I believe you are the only filmmaker to make a film on every continent on earth (although I believe Micheal Winterbottom is also close to that mark). After shooting GHOST ELEPHANTS in the depths of the Angola wilderness, do you feel the world is getting bigger or smaller, in the more we look. All the discoveries of species [in the past decade] that are mentioned, almost in passing, in Dr. Boyes' work, and then you seem to find amazing places to illuminate.
Herzog: The world stays as big and as awesome as it ever has been.
Boyes: I think the film celebrates the unknown. And that makes the world’s forests, and remote places even more interesting. What will we find there?
Thank you both so much for your time. I appreciate the work that both of you did to deliver this film to audiences, and open eyes to unknown parts of our world. But Mr. Herzog, If I may ask one very brief last question on the recent of passing of Frederick Wiseman. I know your careers are very different and your styles are very very different, but you had to have swum in the same circles over the decades at the same film festivals. Is there an anecdote, or a comment on his incredible oeuvre, and life?
Herzog: Yes. A truly great filmmaker. But whenever we met in public we would lock horns. And do combat!
Herzog: I do not feel any tension between being pragmatic and let’s say, being visionary. [Laughs]. It comes with ease. I do what I do. I love what I do. And I do not have to struggle with myself. It comes with great ease. And you can see how relaxed I am. And I am saying, “working on your musical instrument without a schedule for the day, surrounded by chickens. It cannot get better than this!” The humour comes across. Everyone in the theatre laughs out. Everywhere. In Venice. In New York City. Everywhere.
You have worked on all seven continents. I believe you are the only filmmaker to make a film on every continent on earth (although I believe Micheal Winterbottom is also close to that mark). After shooting GHOST ELEPHANTS in the depths of the Angola wilderness, do you feel the world is getting bigger or smaller, in the more we look. All the discoveries of species [in the past decade] that are mentioned, almost in passing, in Dr. Boyes' work, and then you seem to find amazing places to illuminate.
Herzog: The world stays as big and as awesome as it ever has been.
Boyes: I think the film celebrates the unknown. And that makes the world’s forests, and remote places even more interesting. What will we find there?
Thank you both so much for your time. I appreciate the work that both of you did to deliver this film to audiences, and open eyes to unknown parts of our world. But Mr. Herzog, If I may ask one very brief last question on the recent of passing of Frederick Wiseman. I know your careers are very different and your styles are very very different, but you had to have swum in the same circles over the decades at the same film festivals. Is there an anecdote, or a comment on his incredible oeuvre, and life?
Herzog: Yes. A truly great filmmaker. But whenever we met in public we would lock horns. And do combat!
But with great respect. Because we come from different positions. He is cinema vérité. Over emphasis, in my opinion, on facts. Facts that will not give you truth. Facts create norms, but not illumination. So, we would do combat in a wonderful way, and I loved him for that. And of course he is one of the great monuments of twentieth century filmmaking. No doubt! We will miss him. I will miss him for combat. I sharpened my own perspectives from meeting him.
Ghost Elephants opened in select North American theaters on February 27, and will air on National Geographic on March 7 followed by streaming on Disney+ and Hulu on March 8. It will also release in select international territories, including Benelux, France, Mexico, and Lithuania.
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