Werner Herzog, new wild frontiers expanding in every direction and ready for him to delve into them: the human psyche of a grizzly bear enthusiast, the center of a volcanic natural phenomenon, and the deepest man-starved caves on earth and as the man himself frequently puts it, Herzog does know human existence and its essence better than any other human ever lived. With “Theater of Thought,” the all-time grumpy schoolmaster shifts his focus to the matter between our ears: how does it function? What goes into formulating a thought? Is it possible to turn it into a book or read it the same way? How did we know that we were not in a simulation, man? To give Herzog his due, he seeks out these inquiries with his characteristic restlessness; still, Herzog’s answer to them resulted in a rather disjointed documentary.
For Herzog, Yuste’s movie evolves into an exploration of the mind, inspiring him to provoke an apple engineer and cross paths with a mathematical scientist, bioethics, and even ‘the man who walked the World Trade Center’ among many others. Herzog’s unique style is amusing yet baffling, his soothing vocals coated with a German touch allow him to curious around the gray matter as an inquisitor with a camera while being off screen. When getting to know the physical and metaphysical components that comprise a human brain, he interviews them all one by one while being deeply engaged with the sci-fi domain. It’s astonishing to witness how familiar concepts get explained in such an unorthodox manner by Harvard scientists and how culture shifts her start from one point to another on the whiteboard. Cracking the puzzle of these variables is no easy feat to say the least, neither was getting the audience involved. Herzog the filmmaker aims to get everybody to think, he states “I imagine neither do you.”
Theater can surely be made into the greatest blockbuster of all time with all the dramatic elements and facets it has to offer but unfortunately, it still falls short due to missing a sense of fulfillment.
There is something endearing about some technical glitches like the boom mic slipping out during the interviews or transitioning to Times New Roman font, but if you are a perfectionist like Herzog, these can get a tad annoying in “Theater of Thought”. And while I get irritated with the one-interview-at-a-time approach used in the movie, I still think it is a satisfying break for our eighty-something director.
The Neuroscanner, a recent device used by Bryan Johnson to cash in his mid-life crisis, makes an appearance as Herzog rolls into his interview with a professor during this montage that mixes a classic Baby Shark video with intricately detailed cutscenes from Starcraft II. This presumably simulates hastily made science fiction. There isn’t a single cohesive story, which I personally do not mind, however, I also understand why some people may find the disjointedness of the simulation frustrating.
This intersection between Herzog’s profound humanism and the cold science that he practiced is what concerns “Theater” the most. In this case, one can for example assume that Herzog yearns to illustrate or rather translate the words of a scientist into those of a projection: a man gleefully explaining how our brains convert stimuli to perception while standing beside a projection machine during an interview held in a San Francisco theater’s projection room. Together with this moment, there isn’t really much to visualize: It’s quite easy to close your eyes for most of the time and just listen to Herzog talking to those folks without actually loosing out on anything. So much so that there’s not much to tickle the brain visually.
For Those Who Live and Breathe Herzog, “Theater of Thought” Like Herzog in Love Would Say, is a New Territory to Explore. Or Bush, Or Both. But for the vast majority, the questions about the nature of reality and about the ways which our brain can interpret it are possibly not the most charming, except for perhaps how the shift defines Herzog’s “Artistic” definition. It’s not at all brain-dead, but you can watch it on other than fully functional mode.
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