I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

The first must-see film of the year.

Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Yes, absolutely, there is fun to be had, as well as many, many things to go boom, all amid an atmospheric urban jungle.

In 18th century rural Bavaria, a renowned glassblower dies, taking the secret of his popular ruby glass to his grave. The young master of the glass works is the de facto ruler of the village on account of the work his factory provides the locals, he obsessively seeks the answer to the mystery of the ruby glass.When I first saw this movie, I had literally no idea that the vast majority of the cast had been hypnotised by director Werner Herzog before shooting their scenes. It's one of these situations which is common with Herzog, where knowing about what he was doing behind the scenes is instrumental in appreciating the film itself. The dazed performances of the cast are put into some kind of perspective with foresight that is for sure. I think one of the ideas behind the hypnosis was to illustrate that these characters are mindlessly following an impossible dream; one they can surely never achieve and one solely based on nothing beyond economics. Whatever the reason it is a wilfully bizarre idea and the results are, to say the least, peculiar. The film has a somewhat deliberate pace and it mixes in Herzog's distinctive mixture of documentary realism with stylised weirdness. Like some of his other oddball efforts such as Fata Morgana (1971), this one falls pretty clearly in avant-garde territory on account of the very strange acting performances. It is essentially a story about a community gone mad, with a shepherd prophet in the periphery predicting many things to come. As is the way though, like many other Herzog's there are moments of visual splendour like fantastic views of the mountains which are like scenes from 19th century romantic paintings come to life, while there are also some customary smaller scale moments of fascination such as the scene showing a glassblower make a small ornamental horse in a seemingly effortless fashion.Ultimately, this is another of those films which is clearly only going to appeal to a few people. Its sheers oddness will alienate a few and it is true that it does take a bit of effort to watch at times. But it is another that highlights the highly original mind of Herzog and the way he has furrowed his own distinct path, this is probably one of his most unusual.

I like the director Werner Herzog and have watched several of his movies. But I must confess that I totally did not like "Herz aus Glas" (Heart of Glass). I do speak German, but I learned it in the North, so I totally did not understand the Bavarian dialect people were speaking. That was not only my problem, the person I was watching it with grew up in Bavaria and didn't understand the plot or some of the dialog either. I don't know why Herzog decided to make it so hard to understand, was it intentional? I did not like the editing, I thought it was confusing. The actors were incredibly ugly, which was interesting in a paradox way... Where did they find these people? They look like they walked out of a picture of a peasant tavern from 17th century Holland! Because the film was so confusing and so darn boring, I would not recommend it. Visually it was beautiful, but that is not enough to make it a good film.

Hypnotized actors, in this story of how something as fragile as glass can bring on the apocalypse for a small German community. There's a character who predicts the future, and narrates in some of Herzog's most poetic dialog yet. The scenes at the end overlooking the cliffs above the Atlantic and their dream of "worlds to come", keep this from being your usual end of all things story. For Herzog there aren't ends, just junctures where one thing dies and another begins. Cycles in history (reflected in the mysterious prophets discussion of greater apocalypses to come in the future world wars 1 and 2).The man who can see the future (and who is of course blamed for all the towns ills), at one point wishes he was out of his cell, and in the next scene he's walking in the woods talking to himself, giving the film a strange tinge of magic realism(though realism and this film don't exactly mix). Strange, difficult, but unforgettable, and a must for Herzog fans. (also it's where the Blondie song comes from)

Heart of Glass is a period piece, not merely because of its probable 19th century time period, but because of when it was filmed, what footage was used, the music, the "acting" (appropriate in quotes), and the experimental attitude. Werner Herzog has always been one of the most unconventional and challenging of filmmakers- of himself and for his audience- but in this case his challenge almost becomes more of a gimmick. I wonder if my reaction to these non-professionals Herzog has here would be any different if I was not aware before that all of the actors were hypnotized, save for Hias (who, to be honest, could've fooled me with how his 'performance' goes). Maybe not by much; like Jean-Luc Godard, whom Herzog once said is like intellectual counterfeit money, Herzog used his cast as much as gets them to be their unnatural selves by having them almost as mouthpieces to say his dialog, more leaning to being stylized poetry, as much as their sort of physical presence being controlled to the note. Also like Godard, he attempts to combine this with a technique in composition that merges documentary with a sensibility that is as well closer to a form of poetic, personal expression. Unfortunately like Godard (I mean later Godard though), it doesn't really fly.It may for some, and in fact it's up there on lists of Herzog fans as one of the best. But the problem is that Herzog is so wrapped up in how everything should try to be in evocation and, in his own usually warped way, provocation, that its a style that can shut out the viewer from what should be a rewardingly hypnotic experience. But even if there was no knowledge of the hypnosis of the cast, things still feel off; at times I almost felt like I was watching some demented hippie filmmaker from the period waxing and waning in 19th century garb about random intonations in nature or what the 'ruby glass' has in significance, with stares and glazed looks and demented laughter. It's not un-merited for a man of such immense talent and artistry of Herzogs's to experiment and push the envelope of how a story can be told and how to get characters on screen in a way that is totally his own. The problem though, which is usually not the case particularly with his prime work in the 1970s, is to experiment without much of a real story to work with, or for that matter any characters to really give a s*** about. The main character, Hias (Bierbichler), is the one who gets the town into its sort of madness, but I didn't even really get this sense until more than halfway into the film. By the end, even as Herzog's reached something of a quasi-resolution with the factory burning down, his message (which does lie somewhere in the film) about the beauty and dangers of a 'cult' mentality lays in a muck of flat scenes of symbolism.Needless to say, however, Herzog tripping over himself, in my opinion, contains moments of wicked absurdity that are quintessential, and moments where the documentary style works strongest, as well as his ever strong eye for 'adequate images'. Maybe the funniest scene, amid two cartoonish looking fellows sitting at a table, has these guys in a daze working out their issues with glasses of beer: one throws a glass at the other's head, without any response, as well as the other just dumping the beer on his head. A moment like this, or the scattered laughter during a botched glass-making attempt, rises to Herzog as a subtle master of weird comedy. It was also worthwhile to actually see how the glass-making process actually worked, as Herzog's eye for men in a physical act like this was pretty interesting. I even dug the whole fast-speed shot of the clouds running over the valley. But even in getting his footage of landscapes, some of it seems like it's aged, put to Popol Vuh music that accentuates its 'trippiness' where it doesn't need it. And it's sad to admit that by having characters that give off a totally empty aura in exquisitely framed and lit compositions aren't a good match.For me, which it won't be for everyone seeing the film as some may be even more turned off by as being totally boring, which is sort of isn't despite its pretensions and for those who find in it great and moving art which is understandable, it's not a success. But as with directors like Lynch and Woody Allen and even Godard to a degree I'd rather watch a moment of stumbling than a complacent work by a hack Hollywood director. In the midst of the muddle, at the least, there are some bright spots of artistic expression.