Werner Herzog shows one of the closest visions of actual insanity that I have seen in a film with Heart of Glass, even if half of that insanity is in the production of the film. Herzog claims that all of the actors, save the lead, performed their roles while being hypnotized. Regardless of whether or not hypnosis is even possible, the idea and effort are both audacious and looney. That said, this film took my breath away several times throughout its short hour and a half running time. The opening of the film could give any of the time lapsed shots from Baraka a run for its money, and made me feel like I was watching heaven and hell simultaneously approach the earth. The film also reminded me of The New World, nothing new for a Herzog picture, notably the opening and middle interludes and the finale for their abstractly assembled and glorified depictions of nature set to ethereal music (this time with some prog rock thrown into the mix). Hias, the protagonist (if there even is one), evoked a Tolkien hobbit (especially Sam from the Peter Jackson films) and spent much of the film preaching apocalyptic premonitions and visions of the future.
The film centers on a small town that is turned upside down when the town’s glassblower, who made a ‘Ruby glass’ (supposedly the town’s main or only export and source of income, and also probably magical and/or the product of Satan) dies. The town’s people become sedated, mad, and borderline goth as they try to find the secret that allowed this glassblower to create Ruby glass. The film condemns this civilization for their reliance on an individual for flourishing. The death of the glassblower seems to not only spell hard economic times for this community, but it has also presumably opened the gates of hell, not so dissimilar to those opened before Dieter’s eyes in Little Dieter Needs to Fly. Hias has even completely lost it by the film’s end as he wrestles a bear that is either not there or completely invisible. The conclusion, which fortunately picks up the pace of the film (it was beginning to drag toward the end), tells a short story of a nearby island and it’s few inhabitants. The finale is absurd and funny and puts emphasis on many of the film’s themes of civilization and inevitable destruction of humans by nature. Herzog has a pretty pessimistic outlook on humanity.