At age 83, Werner Herzog, legendary filmmaker, seems he has no plans to slow down. Over 80 films in his filmography, he continuously churns up one or two films every year or so, with widest variety of subjects one can imagine. For a moment, please set aside your misgivings about his aggressively grandious and what can be seen as culturally insensitive films he is best known for, from the 70s and 80s. Without much public attention or interests, he's been quietly building his reputation as a documentary filmmaker in parallel with his narrative works, especially from the 90s to present.
Objectively speaking, he is one of the few established filmmakers, who is in a position (well, he has no scrupples taking on a role in Mandalorian to finance his films), can and will choose to make films about what he is interested in.
His documentary work lately though, has been inclined to science and technology. And there, he has been exploring subjects with child-like wonder and curiosity, which he professes are and should be the bases of all filmmaking. In Theater of Thought, he explores technology and human brain and its philosophical and ethical implications by asking neuroscientists, industrialists and medical doctors and using his reputation as a legendary filmmaker, gains extraordinary access to their work.
It is not really possible to objectively critique Herzog's films in its filmmaking merits anymore - especially on his documentary inclined work. What interview technique or his framing or music choices are not the focus of his films. But his unending curiosity to human experience is. Keeping that in mind, here are some of my thoughts on Herzog's Theater of Thought:
At its infant stage, the advancement neuroscience has two big implications to the world we live in- to help disabled individuals to experience human life to more fully, and dangers of government/coporate manipulations of individual rights and freedom.
Human brains are too complex and fickle, it is impossible (for now, and probably not in our lifetime) for AI to replicate it fully.
Herzog never wavers in his curiosity about human existence and experience. That's why he never looks back in his films. Because there are still so much to explore. Nostalgia is not his game.
Theater of thoughts, again, as all of his films, is an invigorating, fascinating and thoughtful inquiry into our existence. I really hope Herzog keeps making these until the end.
