Werner Herzog is a man obsessed with obsession itself. Throughout his illustrious career, the acclaimed German filmmaker has often focused his camera on subjects possessed with singular and extraordinary compulsions.
南极洲是人类谁叫home in 2007’s “Encounters at the End of the World,” the morality of capital punishment in 2011’s “Into the Abyss,” or a sweet man with a dangerous affinity for bears in 2005’s “Grizzly Man,” the connective tissue of Herzog’s output reveals an enduring fascination with the nature of obsession, the people ensnared by it, and the strange places our infatuations can lead.
In his debut novel, “The Twilight World,” Herzog returns once more to this fertile well by immortalizing the surreal saga of real-life Imperial Army Lt. Hiroo Onoda.
Stationed on the Philippine Island of Lubang during World War II, Onoda famously held his post and continued fighting for a mind-boggling three decades. Despite numerous efforts over years to assuage his fears — leaflets dropped from airplanes, the presentation of contemporary newspapers — it wasn’t until 1974 that Onoda was convinced to allow himself to be relieved of his duties.
What fuels a man to maintain such vigilant servitude, for 30 years, with only the harsh offerings of the jungle to sustain him?
Such is the question Herzog attempts to answer in a brief, thoughtful narrative that dwells largely on the mechanisms of Onoda’s fortitude. It also occasionally detours into more poetic, sweeping passages in which Herzog rides his protagonist’s ever-spinning mind to muse on grand concepts like loyalty, time and self.
Herzog’s seasoned eye for a well-framed shot also translates seamlessly to the page as he invokes the perils of a relentless jungle that eventually becomes akin to a fog.
As the days become months and the months become years, the auspices of a conventional narrative fall away. Though much of the novel proceeds in chronological order, the relative meaningless of time to Onoda’s existence quickly overtakes his past reliance on calendars. This is best exemplified by the occasional, inexplicable intrusions of a world that has kept going in his absence. In one example, toward the end of his extraordinary tenure, Herzog depicts Onoda as rightly baffled by the sight of American aircraft en route to Vietnam.
It hearkens indirectly to the alternate realities conjured by sci-fi greats like Philip K. Dick. While Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” invited us to imagine a world in which the Axis powers won WWII, Herzog’s novelette draws on the wonder of recognizing that, for at least one person, there was a different outcome to this war. Until, of course, there wasn’t.
As profound and thought-provoking as the best of his films, Herzog’s “The Twilight World” delivers as a superb yet painful parable on the fleeting nature of purpose.
The Twilight World
By Werner Herzog; translated by Michael Hofmann
(Penguin Press; 144 pages; $25)