Because of the nature of the Marathon, and my own rather hectic schedule, it’s rare that I get to take in a movie by directors like Werner Herzog. I was familiar with his work prior, the infamous documentary Grizzly Man, My Best Fiend, detailing his tumultuous relationship with actor Klaus Kinski, his little moments on Metalocalypse, and so on. As far as actually covering his films on the blog however, the only one that seemed appropriate at the time was Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht, his interpretation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula. Operative words being ‘at the time’. It’s a new time now, and since the tide has turned towards nostalgia and sentimentality, it seemed right to pull out another Herzog.
And no, that’s not sexual innuendo.
Related to us via a flashback at a police station, Even Dwarves Started Small brings us to a remote institution in the German countryside, populated by little people, or ‘dwarves’ in the context of this film. When the head doctor leaves for the day to get groceries, the dwarves, left to their own devices, decide to take over the joint. They destroy private property, steal the doctor’s things, kill and torture animals and the handicapped (a couple of the patients at the facility are blind) and generally lay waste to the place which has been their home and apparently their prison for so long. A lone instructor (also a dwarf) tries desperately to maintain a shred of order in the chaos, even resorting to taking one of them hostage within the administration building, but his demands fall on deaf ears. The inmates are running the asylum now, and they’re going to have the times of their lives.
I’ve read that this film is meant to be an allegory for the dangers of a total liberation of the mind, which sounds Teutonic enough to be Herzog, and I’d say that theory makes sense. The dwarves act more like children and toddlers than the grown adults they are, completely self-centered and with the impulse control to match. No action or thought is considered more than once, moods and whims change at the drop of a hat, and it is done with a glee that borders on the perverse. A never-ending, anarchic quest to feed the id, in any way possible. In practice, it feels less like you’re watching a film and more like you’re suffering through a fever dream: A gaggle of middle-aged little people shouting at each other like 5 year olds, giggling constantly, as they burn trees and look at nudie magazines and tie monkeys to a cross while mariachi and African folk music plays in the background. The exact same thing you expect to see when you take exactly too much acid, or the exact right amount of magic mushrooms.
Therein lies the major issue with this film though; It’s literally an hour and an half of watching a group of little people breaking shit and other random events. There’s not a coherent plot, little to no characters with a strongly defined character (most of the folks you see on screen don’t even have names, far as I can remember), and the soundtrack consists of two that are constantly repeated throughout the film. I’m a guy who has exposed himself to a lot of weird movies over the years so I had no issue, but I imagine this is one of those motion pictures that would be downright insufferable to those who aren’t used to it. Hell, despite my tolerance even I felt a little bit impatient during the seemingly endless variations on the ‘dwarves break stuff/instructor looks on awkwardly/music plays’ structure Herzog has built his movie on, and I’ve sat through Flesh for Frankenstein AND The Amityville Horror, so you know it takes a certain kind of mood to get into it.
If you’re the type of person with relatively tame or modern tastes, or if you’ve tried tried watching movies while high, then you might prefer to skip over Even Dwarves Started Small this Halloween. Those fans of the weird, or 80s music videos, will likely have a better time of things. Just remember to not have too much fun though. And be kind to animals too folks, that’s just the right thing to do.
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