The Great Ecstatsy of Woodcarver Steiner.

A documentary is only as good as its subject and as always, Herzog turns his lens on a character seeking to overcome nature itself

We are in Yugoslavia at the 1974 ski jump competition, where following his 1973 humiliation and wipeout, Walter Steiner flys again.

This film is beautiful in its depiction of both Steiner and the sport itself. The theme of superhuman madmen overcoming or succumbing to the landscape has always followed Herzog. But here, not only do we see a man ahead of all others (he wins with less training time and worse conditions then his competitors) he is never the less more human then anything in Herzogs other work. It paints Steiner as a simple man caught up in the sky jump world were he feels he is mistreated and partakes in the sport less for reward and more for the joy of the seconds he is untethered from the ground. It does this mostly by how it shows him ski. Unlike other sport documentaries it is not glamorised through fast pace and adrenaline but instead through the many slow-motion shots in which we see the beauty of the sport. Herzog clearly wishes to show us the way it must feel to find yourself in the air and even keeps this up for the crashes which allows the film to feel more poetic and dreamlike then they would be. I feel this is to showcase the titular ecstasy which the sport brings Steiner. Where only he exists amongst the clouds. This is also accomplished through a strange etherial soundtrack which heightens both the beauty but also adds a sense of melancholy, emphasised at the very end when Steiner reflects on how much a crow suffers when it can no longer fly. Something he clearly fears happening to him.

my biggest problem with the film is that I am not the biggest fan of when a documentary filmmaker inserts themselves into the film. thankfully this is a much more tasteful example and Herzog does narrate the film beautifully, though it is strange seeing him in a movie where he is not the focus. this may just be because I am a fan and am very familiar with him but I did find the cuts to him in at the event a tad unnecassary.