Draft 2 PhD Introduction - ResearchSpace@Auckland

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the ability of the artist to create objects which will shake up his/her audience
through their very uniqueness, allowing the audience to see beyond the vista of
the ordinary and commonplace. Like the romantic artist, Herzog adheres to the
notion that ‘never before seen images’, that art, can only be created through
sacrifice and suffering. And finally, in keeping with romantic ideals, Herzog
seems consciously to cultivate the presupposition that the artist and his/her work
can be readily identified with the person creating those forms. 584
As Corrigan points out, however, the production of each of Herzog’s films seems to
generate “at least one story of suffering and anguish, which may or may not be true”,
but which serves to mythologise the director. 585 The above description implies a more
extreme and confident approach than one would expect to hear Ward expressing, but
clearly there are similarities. Herzog’s documentaries are as relevant to the comparison
as his dramas. Ward’s autobiographical account of the making of In Spring with its
stories of the film almost being destroyed by fire, the director’s ill-health and the huge
challenges involved in making the film might be seen by a sceptical reader as serving a
similar purpose in the myth-making process. 586 At their best, however, both Ward and
Herzog achieve the ambitious goal of linking everyday and spiritual realities. We may
turn once again to Bazin for a vivid formulation of this project. The context was the
fact that artists had always been torn between two opposing impulses:
one, primarily aesthetic, namely the expression of spiritual reality wherein the
symbol transcended its mode; the other, purely psychological, namely the
duplication of the world outside […]. The great artists, or course, have always
been able to combine the two tendencies. They have allotted to each its proper
place in the hierarchy of things, holding reality at their command and moulding
it at will into the fabric of their art. 587
In Spring is one of the most successful New Zealand attempts to combine these two
tendencies, and what ultimately shines through is not only, as Parekowhai fears, the
“personal mythology” of the film-maker, but equally the aroha and faith of an old
584
Timothy Corrigan, ed., The Films of Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History (New York:
Methuen, 1986) 29.
585
Corrigan, ed., The Films of Werner Herzog: Between Mirage and History 30.
586
Ward, Edge of the Earth: Stories and Images from the Antipodes 22.
587
Bazin, What Is Cinema? 11.