Written and Directed by Werner Herzog
Featuring Werner Herzog, Bruce Chatwin and Karin Eberhard
Running time: 1 hour and 37 minutes

by Ian Hrabe

One of the more curious cinematic developments from the last twenty years or so has been watching Werner Herzog transform from one of our most gifted narrative storytellers to one of our most gifted documentarians. As his prowess as a feature filmmaker has waned--with 2006’s Rescue Dawn being his last objectively great film, 2009’s Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call New Orleans being a more subjective bit of business that this critic enjoys but would never in is right mind recommend to an unsuspecting party without serious vetting--his documentaries are consistently phenomenal. Since Herzog’s 2005 documentary breakout hit Grizzly Man, he has given us Encounters at the End of the World, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, Happy People: A Year on the Taiga, Into the Abyss, and Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World. Each subject is more different than the last, but all of them explore humanity at the fringes. 

Herzog is a wildman and adventurer at heart, and his latest documentary is an intimate chronicle of another wildman and adventurer: travel writer and novelist Bruce Chatwin. Chatwin and Herzog became friends in the latter years of Chatwin’s life--he died of AIDS in 1989--and the film finds Herzog retracing the steps of Chatwin’s seminal travelogue In Patagonia. As Herzog follows in Chatwin’s footsteps, you can feel his reverence for Chatwin and the way Chatwin saw the world. Chatwin’s fascination with the origins of humanity and early mankind crosses over with Herzog's own Cave of Forgotten Dreams, but as Herzog is obsessed with humanity in its rawest state he feels like the perfect person to get you inside the head of Bruce Chatwin. 

Nomad: In the Footsteps of Bruce Chatwin is a shaggy and freewheeling piece of work, and that’s what makes it feel so alive. A little more than halfway through, it ceases to be a simple chronicle of Bruce Chatwin as Herzog turns his focus to his and Chatwin’s personal relationship. While the film is engaging throughout, the film’s most memorable moments are tucked in the back half. For instance, as Herzog and Chatwin’s biographer Nicholas Shakespeare are going through a box of Chatwin’s papers and notebooks, they come across a screenplay for Herzog’s film Cobra Verde that Chatwin had annotated but never sent to Herzog. The pure joy on Werner Herzog’s typically platonic-ideal-of-stoic face at the sight of this is electric. He can’t contain his excitement. 

This energy is what makes Herzog’s documentaries so captivating. His passion for his subjects is undeniable and he uses his idiosyncratic storytelling style to get the audience to see things his way. There is a whole section of the film about Chatwin’s exploration of Aboriginal Songlines in the Australian Outback that could easily warrant its own feature, and the way Herzog explains what they are through the lens of Chatwin is a microcosm of what makes him such an excellent documentarian. The film is full of long, beautiful shots of harsh and beautiful landscapes and there is a certain stillness that pervades everything. Like all of Herzog’s documentaries the subject matter is almost secondary to the mood he crafts. No one else on earth makes films like this and it’s why Herzog’s documentaries are always worth a look, even if the subject matter isn’t immediately intriguing. He always finds a way to make it compelling.