Gosh, after Altman and everyone this past month, I read that wrong for a second and thought we'd lost Werner too! Whew.

Nice appreciation, loved it, love Herzog... Wild Blue Yonder, not so much. But still one of my favorite filmmakers.

Not sure what to think of this piece. I think Herzog is, at worst, problematic, and at best, complicated - and Atkinson's piece doesn't address any of that.

Atkinson writes: "Herzog is hesitantly being repositioned in the mainstream as a kind of post-cyber-prophet, answering the upper-middle-class need for secular spiritual guidance that arises every 15 years or so, when Christians get too crazy, global relations get too bloody, or the economy does well enough to compel us to question our materialism."

Where does this notion come from? I don't doubt it, but would appreciate a citation or two... but assuming its true that Herzog is becoming some sort of guru, doesn't it bespeak an issue in Herzog's work itself? Could Herzog's work lend itself to this sort "post-cyber-prophet" reception? His concept of "estatic truth," after all, is fairly New Agey. Which makes the comparison to Noam Chomsky (the rationalist's rationalist) really strained too.

Then Atkinson writes, "The real Herzogians know that the man is inviolate, an anarchist saint."

Who are these "real Herzogians" and what makes them so different from the apparently trendy fake Herzogians? And "anarchist saint" is kind of a contradiction in terms - and that seems to be Atkinson's intent - Atkinson nevers address a single contradiction in the piece.

Maybe I'm just confused why Atkinson shit a brick over James Longley's Iraq in Fragments (which he accused of manipulating its subjects in its editting) but generously overlooks Herzog's Lessons of darkness, a film which almost literally puts words in other's mouths.