Here's an honorable director going extremely bad with something painfully terrible, and it's the first time that I ever see something truly worrying from an outstanding director. Person in question is Werner Herzog ("Aguirre, the Wrath of God" and "Stroszek"). He was very young when he made it, one of his earliest experiences and it could be a good film if his head was in the game, by that I mean if he managed to mix surrealism with a concrete text, including his political criticisms and a bit of fantasy and allegory. Buñuel could do it perfectly. But this isn't Buñuel doing an allegedly political allegory on Nazism or Fascism disguised as an empty story involving revolted dwarfs. This is Herzog going completely nuts with something that leads to nothing.
"Even Dwarfs Started Small" revolves a strange dwarf revolution that goes erratically bad when angry dwarfs take control of a little island controlled by one police officer (also a midget) who arrested one of the revolution leaders, leaving him tied to a chair. The latter isn't worried, always laughing and never speaking with his captor while his friends are vandalizing in the streets, driving cars, hurting animals and placing a strange hierarchy between themselves. The riot drags on and on as the movie, without a single worthy dialog, scenes played on randomly and with a theme song (played like four or five times during the whole thing) working as a violation of our patience and senses, and no ways of being translated whatever that language was.
It lacks in coherence time and time again. Where's the drive to make us going? Where's the ambition and the social commentary? If this was a comedy, I didn't laugh once. An horror film? Well, it was so horrific I couldn't believe in my eyes. Empty images that goes nowhere, they're just there because it can scripted, it can be directed, it can be filmed but it can't cause anything other than boredom, repulse, strangeness. Being bizarre for its own sake is useless (unless if you're creating a powerful imagery like Malle did like "Black Moon") and Herzog isn't a director of such ideals. At least that's what I thought.
One of those movies you feel completely exhausted, emptied and imagining the worst of yourself (Why am I still watching this mess? Where are you going with this, Werner? Those kind of thoughts), "Even Dwarfs..." is simply not worthy of anyone's time. Wanna discover Werner, go everywhere else but here. The symbolic rating is a formality related with traces of originality, good scenes, or parts when I thought this could be saved and be a fine movie. But that song will haunt me for life. 3/10
"Even Dwarfs Started Small" revolves a strange dwarf revolution that goes erratically bad when angry dwarfs take control of a little island controlled by one police officer (also a midget) who arrested one of the revolution leaders, leaving him tied to a chair. The latter isn't worried, always laughing and never speaking with his captor while his friends are vandalizing in the streets, driving cars, hurting animals and placing a strange hierarchy between themselves. The riot drags on and on as the movie, without a single worthy dialog, scenes played on randomly and with a theme song (played like four or five times during the whole thing) working as a violation of our patience and senses, and no ways of being translated whatever that language was.
It lacks in coherence time and time again. Where's the drive to make us going? Where's the ambition and the social commentary? If this was a comedy, I didn't laugh once. An horror film? Well, it was so horrific I couldn't believe in my eyes. Empty images that goes nowhere, they're just there because it can scripted, it can be directed, it can be filmed but it can't cause anything other than boredom, repulse, strangeness. Being bizarre for its own sake is useless (unless if you're creating a powerful imagery like Malle did like "Black Moon") and Herzog isn't a director of such ideals. At least that's what I thought.
One of those movies you feel completely exhausted, emptied and imagining the worst of yourself (Why am I still watching this mess? Where are you going with this, Werner? Those kind of thoughts), "Even Dwarfs..." is simply not worthy of anyone's time. Wanna discover Werner, go everywhere else but here. The symbolic rating is a formality related with traces of originality, good scenes, or parts when I thought this could be saved and be a fine movie. But that song will haunt me for life. 3/10