Werner Herzog & Steve Boyes Talk New Disney+ Movie Ghost Elephants | Interview
Werner Herzog’s latest documentary, Ghost Elephants, is now streaming on Disney+. ComingSoon’s Tyler Treese spoke with the legendary filmmaker and his subject of the documentary, Dr. Steve Boyes, about their National Geographic documentary, Herzog’s narration choices, and more.
“For over a decade, Dr. Steve Boyes, conservation biologist and National Geographic Explorer, has been in search of a mysterious, elusive herd of Ghost Elephants in the highlands of Angola, deep within its forests. From acclaimed director Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man), Ghost Elephants follows Boyes on an epic journey as he sets out with some of the best master trackers in the world, in pursuit of an animal long believed to be a myth,” says the synopsis.
Tyler Treese: Werner, I love how you present the ghost elephants as a myth. There’s a wonderful sense of mystery here, and I mean this in the best of ways, but it almost feels like a very poetic and elevated Bigfoot hunting documentary at points since we don’t know if they actually exist. What aspects of this journey and this search for something that could just be false really fascinated you?
Werner Herzog: Well, it was always clear, I am not gonna do a report on an expedition. Actually, the film fell into my lap unexpectedly from one day to the next. So I stepped in. But it was always clear to me it had to do with the ghosts of elephants. It’s not a wildlife film. Don’t expect that. It’s a film about the ghosts, the spirits and visions of elephants, and maybe all wildlife in short time from now will be only like vision-like dreams. I showed dream elephants underwater, for example. It was always the underlying theme of the film. It’s a film about dreams, about ghosts.
Steve, what did it mean for you, for this exploration in this expedition to be captured in such a wonderful way that’s unique, unlike a lot of wildlife docs, and working with Werner?
Steve Boyes: In Namibia, when Werner joined us, we were preparing. The master trackers were living in the homesteads to leave, to go to Angola for several months to do the final search. Just before that, the year before that, we had secured the first photographs, those black and white photographs of the shining eyes and the darkness. And within two days then had become completely activated around the story.
In this almost indirect way, it began preparing the main participants. Asking questions like, “What would a world be like without the elephants?” And we all answered it differently, obviously, and privately away from each other. “Do you dream? What do you dream of?” Set us into a mode of thought and being that was congruent with what he wanted, what you see in the film, and allowed us to live in the story.
That was taken to Angola with us from Namibia over those months that followed. But an extraordinary experience. The intensity that arrived in the interviews, especially the one that you see in the film, is the second interview or the third, actually. I haven’t experienced something like that before.
Werner Herzog: It’s actually not interviews. I never do interviews. It’s conversations. Conversations. Steve knew I’m not coming with a written-down catalog of questions. I’m not that kind of guy. He knew he has to face a poet.
I love that you mentioned that, because I wanted to ask you about your narration style, because there’s this great moment in the film where this man is fixing his musical instrument, and you say, “I know I shouldn’t be romanticizing this, but surrounded by chickens, how could it get any better?” Your narration is so true to your emotion, and it’s devoid of ego. Can you speak to your narration choices? Because it just feels so pure rather than written out in thought.
Werner Herzog: Narration always comes out of the footage of the material. You see, I do not write narration beforehand, and I try to squeeze the material into a structure that is prefabricated. What, for example, would’ve happened if Steve had never encountered one of the ghost elephants.
Of course, I would have, according to what we have in the footage, I would have shaped the narration in a different way. It would be, and it would be as equally valid story. So it’s my advice to young filmmakers, always, do not force a documentary into the shape that you have constructed in your mind before. Let it emerge from the beauty of the footage.
That is incredible.
Werner Herzog: I see this old man, and of course, there’s no schedule for him for the day, all day long. He sits on the ground and fixes his musical instrument and chickens around it. And I thought, oh man, it can’t get any better. I immediately recorded it, and everybody enjoys this. Everybody in the audience enjoys this moment. It’s also something very warm-hearted humor, and it pervades the entire film.
Steve, you just have a remarkable drive that’s shown in the film, in your search for these ghost elephants. Can you speak to that dedication in your exploration and your conviction to put all this effort into years of research, searching for something that you weren’t completely sure you’d find?
Steve Boyes: Well, underlying that is, you know, the privilege of exploration and discovery. We are discovering hundreds of new species to science and finding new populations of lions, cheetahs, and wild dogs. We discover and describe the largest source of fresh water in Africa, upstream from two-thirds of the remaining elephants on earth. So that’s what’s driving you.I don’t think very much in the activity of what I do. The people that surround these programs and projects expeditions now across Africa are the magic of it. The magic of what I’m talking about, river guardians, hunters, fishermen, kings, traditional leaders that show us these what are really sacred places, the sources, the sacred forests, mythical creatures. I could talk to you for hours about these explorations and adventures across Africa.
Werner, there are some gorgeous underwater shots of elephants in this film. It might be the most striking footage I’ve ever seen in one of your movies. It’s just really beautiful. It’s almost a little pause in the documentary, but it’s poetic and it’s impactful. Can you speak to capturing that scene and its use in the film?
Werner Herzog: Well, it’s fairly simple. Imagine a GoPro. Of course, it was a more sophisticated camera on a broomstick, and you put it underwater, and elephants in the water do not feel threatened by a cinematographer. If you are there, they sniff you out. They see you, they come closer, and you can even approach them almost at a distance where you can touch them.
It requires an amazing, amazing patience [and] expertise. Actually, the cinematographer who did this underwater footage has a separate credit. He deserves it. It’s not only when you speak about the beauty of the footage, but it also depends on how it is embedded in the story, that Steve just before that says that all wildlife may be in the future is only a dream, remains like a dream, a memory of a dream. Then I start a music that is unspeakably beautiful and embedded in all this, all of a sudden, the images are elevated into an area that somehow illuminates us. It’s so illuminating.
Steve, I was curious, what was it about these elephants that really captured your attention and made you want to dedicate years to try and finally find them? What captivated you?
Boyes: I’ve spent my life with elephants, walking with them, knowing them in different places where they behave differently. It was the loneliness of the first signs of elephant that I found in 2015. We were a month in the landscape exploring the Cuito River source of the Okavango, and I would run away each day from camp after [being] finished on the river. Sometimes, 10 miles away, look screaming, whistling, looking for people. There was just no people in this vast landscape that we had entered.
I found a clearing, and it was just elephant dung. An old bull elephant had cleared it, an elephant garden prepared the trees for young ones to feed. So he’d broken the tops and allowed it to grow from the bottom ’cause he wanted the breeding herds when they do come there to pause in this wonderful place that he had created and interact with him. There was this feeling of loneliness where he wasn’t there. He hadn’t been there for two weeks based on the tracks and the dung.
Then I started asking the traditional leaders, the kings, about elephants. They said, “They’re ghost elephants.” But they, for years, would not share information around them. They would say they’re in those valleys, but not specifically the rivers. We put out hundreds of camera traps and microphones to listen for them. Nothing for seven years. We found everything else except for the great elephants. We continued to find we would go on mountain bikes and go for weeks and months exploring, and you would smell them. You just never heard or saw. You could feel that they were there. But never… [they] were ghosts for all of those years.
Werner, I love that you still have this curiosity that is throughout all your documentaries and films. It’s really wonderful to see.
Herzog: It’s not just curiosity — it’s awe. The awe that you sense in all of my films. This world is awesome!
Thank you to Werner Herzog and Steve Boyes for taking the time to talk about Ghost Elephants.
Source: Comingsoon.net