German director Werner Herzog makes his novelist debut with the story of a Japanese man trapped in an endless war

For his debut as a novelist, the German filmmaker Werner Herzog (1942) published “The twilight of the world», a text based on the true story of a Japanese soldier who fought for decades, unaware that the Second World War had finished. This first novel, published under the label black bookYes, it works like a diary stopped in time, a scenario trapped between the undergrowth of the jungle and the existence of its protagonist frozen in the slowness of his soul, to cover part of the 20th century.

This is not the first book Werner Herzog, but yes his first step towards the novel. He himself warns: “A lot of details are correct”but, “Many others are not.”. What was important to the author was something else, something fundamental, something he believed he had identified when he met the protagonist of this story, something the filmmaker supposedly considered something imperceptible to his camera.

In “Twilight of the World”the filmmaker tells the story of the japanese Hiroo Onoda, a man whose name doesn’t say much, but his story does and it sounds familiar. Parked in the lubang island, In Filipinosduring the Second World Warreceives the order to defend the territory until the return of the imperial army. entrenched in the jungle, Onoda is cut off from all communication.

In many of these territories, as the war drew to a close, leaflets were dropped and recorded messages broadcast, but he dismissed them as enemy propaganda. He stayed on an island for 29 yearsleading guerrilla attacks on local farmers, waging a war that no longer existed.

The story of Onoda was discovered byr Herzog during an investigation for a documentary. In 1997, the filmmaker was making a film in the city of Tokyo; when asked who he would like to meet, he could only think of one person, one Hiroo Onoda. From there, through flashbacks, he goes back to the years of Onoda into the jungle through a series of compact and vivid frames.

In this novel, Herzog reconstructs everything in a circular way, like a trap; the book’s protagonist ceases to live in linear time to become entertainment, an experience of experience, and the race itself. Herzog present in “Twilight of the World” a character for whom he constructs a perpetual nightmare, a man in whom the role of enemy and soldier intertwine at night, between the desires of someone who wants to be forgotten, and that of another who aspires not to to be forgotten by becoming the hero of an endless war.

About the Author:

Werner Herzog grew up in a remote mountain town bavaria (Germany). As a child, he never went to the cinema, he had no television, let alone a telephone. In 1961, while still in high school, he worked as a night welder to produce his first film. I was nineteen. Since then, he has produced, written and directed more than fifty films, including “Aguire”, “Wrath of God”, “The enigma of Gaspar Hauser” there “The Grizzly Man”.

But he does not only devote himself to the world of the seventh art, he also had the chance to publish some titles that have become cults, among which, “The Conquest of the Useless” (Blackie Books, 2010) shooting diary of his legendary film Fitzcarraldo, is considered one of the most important chronicles of the century. Now with “Twilight of the World” recounts one of the most amazing and craziest episodes in modern history.

Continue reading: