CheerupSilver Very Cool!!!

GamerTab That was an excellent one.

Ava-Grace Willis Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

Dana An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

Leofwine_draca HEART OF GLASS is a difficult film to like. Werner Herzog's film is set in a rural village and is a parable of what happens when the village's chief glass-blower dies and takes the secret of the 'ruby glass' with him to the grave. The townsfolk gradually succumb to madness and despair as they realise their livelihoods are forever ruined.Even the most astute viewer will struggle out what's going on in this film, which is almost entirely plot-free. Herzog's trademarks are present and correct: the haunting score, the stunning scenery, and the wonderful composition of shots, but what's going on and what it all means, I haven't a clue. In parts this is an experimental film; Herzog famously hypnotised his cast members before shooting, adding to the surreal nature of the production. A film to remember, then, even if it's tough to like it.

Chad Beattie (bgnish_rv) Being a huge Herzog fan, normally loving all his films for the absurdity, I found this particular film being my least favorite. First of all, the plot is about the sacred ruby glass, in which the only person with the ability to make this infamous ruby glass dies without revealing the secret. You discover the plot within the first ten minutes, and it grows interest in you, but as the movie goes on, you drastically lose interest. As much potential as the plot had, it didn't really expand into all it was worth.To me, the plot didn't play an important role in the film. I was much more fascinated by the cast of the film, being hypnotized by Herzog (I'm still curious as to how Herzog hypnotized them.) It almost became hilarious during points of the movie. I found my mind sometimes wandering off the subtitles to focus on the minor characters in the background.Unlike other Herzog films, I didn't get much out of this one. Although it did have Herzog's favorite Man vs. Nature theme, I just couldn't take it for what it was. Of course, it did have some beautiful shots that could have been perfect if it wasn't for the horrible quality of the 16mm camera used. Not that I'm blaming Herzog for the lack of funds, just making a point.The whole atmosphere of the film was very "lynchian." The dialog, mostly. It was very obvious that David Lynch (Blue Velvet, Eraserhead) got a lot of inspiration from "Heart of Glass." In conclusion, I would ONLY recommend this movie to fans of Herzog (especially his older films: "Aquirre, the Wrath of God", "Even Dwarfs Started Small", etc) for the reason that they will understand it and get more out of it. However, to people who are unfamiliar with Herzog's older films, I would stay away from this one.

Foux_du_Fafa Werner Herzog's "Heart of Glass" is a beautiful film, yet certainly not intended simply for popular audiences, and it aptly deserves the title of "art-house film". Which other film have you seen recently – or ever – in which most of the cast have been hypnotised so as to portray characters haunted and falling into despair (and, I should add, over something as trivial as losing the formula to make ruby-coloured glass)? Herzog also intertwines the film with long scenes that don't truly add much to the narrative yet create a sense of ambiance and mood. One scene shows working scenes of professional glass-blowers (who are some of the only characters not under hypnosis – obviously that would be dangerous!), and several others evoke Casper David Friedrich's "Wanderer Above the Sea of Fog", in which the soothsayer Hias sits and observes the beauty of nature. These long scenes – edited from clips of Bavaria, Yellowstone National Park and Ireland – are certainly beautiful, and I could imagine that they would be incredible when blown up on a proper cinema screen. These quasi-documentary scenes are certainly the best in the film, and overall add to a greater sense of Brechtian Verfremdung (defamiliarisation), encouraging the viewer not to get lost in the story but to think critically on the whole piece.Yet the experimental nature also does disservice to the film. The pace is slow, which is fine for the quasi-documentary scenes, but the hypnotised cast don't really help to speed things up at all in the narrative segments. Their behaviour is interesting to watch, but the defamiliarisation used here is just too experimental for its own good. "Heart of Glass" is very beautiful yet can be somewhat boring in parts, and it would be worth seeing with that in mind.

Steffi_P Werner Herzog has this unique ability in the impact his films have. All his films are a clash between realist presentation and extreme situations. Heart of Glass is Herzog at his most hyper-real. By hypnotising the majority of the cast and provoking them into hypnosis-induced improvisation, he has created an incredibly surreal film which is in itself hypnotic.Heart of Glass contains a lot of personal material for Herzog, given that its setting is the Bavarian countryside where he grew up, and its story and many of its themes are quintessentially Bavarian. But conversely this isn't purely some sentimental homage to the Bavarian way of life – it's actually very pessimistic and doom-laden, as is a lot of Herzog's work to be honest. Still, it is set against this Bavarian backdrop, and Herzog shows us the beauty of its landscapes and its vanishing ways of life with great reverence.The film is incredibly slow and still – there's a kind of serenity to it which is at odds with the confusion and mounting desperation of the characters. Unusually for him, Herzog keeps his camera still for most of the picture – allowing the action to flow in and out of the frame, giving us the feeling that we are passive observers of this chaotic nightmare that is unfolding before us. There's a lot of editing back and forth between events going on simultaneously, a bit like the tension-building cross cutting technique pioneered by D.W. Griffith, only with Herzog it's much, much slower. It still has this powerful effect though of showing the spread of mass hysteria through the village in which the action takes place.Famously Herzog hypnotised all but a few of his actors, and he managed to get some really good results out of them. I really recommend listening to Herzog's DVD commentary – even if you find the film itself boring – for some really fascinating insights into this. The leading professional actor, Josef Bierbichler (who was not hypnotised), also gives a really strong performance as the mythical shepherd and prophet Hias.The music, by regular Herzog collaborator Popol Vuh, is one of my favourite scores by that composer. He has clearly taken inspiration from Bavarian music and created this really warm and tender main theme to score the landscape shots, as well as an eerie melody for darker scenes.At first glance, this seems like a film that is about mood and texture above story, which is something I really despise. It's not though – all good directors use style and method to help convey a story. Herzog's stylisation is so extreme that often it overshadows the plot – but he does have respect for his story. Heart of Glass is a very strange film by a very strange director, and not one that is easy to watch, but it is a very beautiful and rhythmic work and, as I mentioned before, the commentary track alone is worth getting the DVD for.