How (Not) To Make a Documentary 

I'll be forever amazed by the incredible constrast beetween the beautiful experience of watching films and how dreadful is listening to "cinephiles" speak about them.

Comparing anything to one of the cinema´s greatests is never gonna go well...

One of them is a perfect example why making films was considered an art back in the days.

I hadn't really been able to put my finger on precisely what about Fire of Love left me feeling ambivalent besides Miranda July's awful narration, but this video does a pretty good job of articulating a big issue with the film. Can't wait to finally check out Fire Within; Herzog continues to be the most interesting man alive!

I liked FIRE OF LOVE well enough, but I HATED the voiceover! I am very eager to see Herzog's take.

One is a conventional, digestible, love story accesible spoonfed like what a Hipster who just graduated from film school would dare to make, the other is a mirror into the souls of two human beings and the legacy of the ecstatic images and how they can conjure into our psyche something beyond our understanding, made by one of the GREATS with a very sui generis vision. Thank you for claryfing this!

Nice, honestly I liked both, but Herzog's was my personal favorite. I am huge fan of his. Thanks for this!

Its a bit of an unfair fight. The love women just want to talk about what interests them whereas herzog is a theatrical genius

In full summary, fire of love is a ted ed animated video that distracts the purpose of the lesson its supposed to teach. one would say its a tik tok real of influencers who are trying to make an immitation of wes anderson and once again forgets the purpose of the documentary. Whereas Herzog explains the characters along with their development where they use the footage longer and explains the purpose of why their work matters and why their love is important but so is their passion for volcanoes. Im happy to have watched this, this was a very good review thanks for your take!!

YES. the whispering voiceover could only work for so long...

Im going to watch this video again, but with the sound off, you get me?

Both films set out to accomplish different things, and are both successful in their respective lanes. It’s hard to compare such different pieces, despite a lot of the backbone being the same, they are fundamentally night and day. There is no right or wrong here, just different. If I had to pick of course Herzog triumphs with strides, but this is hydrogen bomb versus coughing baby we’re talking here.

This is such a welcome and fantastic video. Having seen so much Herzog you just can't help to fall for his mirror to life. Reading his recent memoir this storytelling ability shines through even more (not that it needs an explanation). I hate the diluting of life with a fixed stylised narrative. This was handled awfully recently in blockbuster cinema, with David Scarpa's screenplay for Napoleon; which would have been so much better in the hands of someone other than Scott. The Punch comic 1-dimensional interpretation would have been handled so much better with a director like Yorgos Lanthimos as a piece of satire. The Act of Killing is one of my favourite films and you can see why Herzog pushed that film so heavily, and why Joshua Oppenheimer is one of his few and select close friends. The Act of Killing shows humanity in the most incredibly confrontational way. The ability to interpret source material and subject is an art that Herzog is a master, and is proven time and again in his documentaries and films; many of which are based on historic events. Fire of Love is a sad piece of cinema fueled by naivety and the banality of fickle trends. This little video sums it up better than I can. Great work.

i had no context before watching the fire of love as basically popped in front google tv homepage And when i watched it even tho i liked the imagery, the doc itself felt very weird and almost incomplete So i looked it up and found out there was other doc back in the day and watched it and it felt infinitely more mature and i connected with it unlike the other which was actively trying for forced connection

9:31 I’ve never felt so disgusted with a documentary’s biased portrayal of someone dead before.

great video. watched the whole thing after watching another video on the exact same topic so I guess thats how you know it was good

4:22 The inspiration for SpongeBob's French narrator

This was unexpectedly poetic and dope. Well done

They are both good enough. Werner Herzog always will be a great storyteller through documentation, with an emphasis on human condition. Sara Dosa's love story film was cheesy, as are love stories. It showed the footage and had some creative little animated bits. Who cares if the style is trending right now, you are trying to be cool by saying you like the Werner Herzog film better. Katia and Maurice are objectified more in fire of love, but its all about the footage anyway. Don't bash a creator for being fallible. Fire of Love had to deal with disney telling them how to make it marketable.

Thanks for making this so I didn't have to! XD

where can i watch the films ?

Beautiful

This was brilliant!

An insightful, intelligent, but deservedly brutal take-down of Fire of Love.

By chance, I've just watched the Herzog documentary on the bbc Storyville strand. Superb stuff, always love his films. Thank you for the warning... happy to avoid, and I might just rewatch The Fire Within. It definitely left a mark.

You need more subs man. I’m currently creating my first video essay/ short documentary not in the same niche but a geography related project. Super inspiring video.

This was excellent. Thank you.

I started this video thinking some of the claims were unfair, but you made some very good points and I understand the argument being put forward. It makes me wonder how I'd view both these documentaries if I'd watched the Herzog one first.

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

Fire of Love's voiceover narration feels so cringe to me, the cracking, fry vocal feels so pretentious. Herzog, with his clear foreign accent, just goes straight into the action and speaks the truth of what he sees in the footage he curated. A difference between projecting an image, as if on Instagram (Fire of Love reminds me of the godawful instapoetry), and showing an image (the truth of what one sees and grasps). Herzog is obviously also paying homage to the very craft of cinema, as he shows the pair becoming filmmakers themselves, their acting, and so on. This self-conscious diegesis adds an essential depth layer to the film.

can’t agree more

100% right

Style over Substance vs Substance as Style

If you break it down its kinda obvious that one of the movies is done by someone who actually observes people and the other is done by someone who cant stand looking at real humans.

Very solid analysis. Enjoyed this comparison

I don't think they wanted to be "influencers", they just used cinematic narratives to document, and I think that's a great creative move. And Fire of love it's about love and it shouldn't be underestimated for that, for having a different narrative, It's the same as Christine chubbuck's films released in the same year with different narratives. People complaining in the narration because we know people hate women's voices, unless it's to serve as an Alexa robot

Style is style, art is art, filmmakers are filmmakers - it’s ok to have two artists, make two different stories based on their own interpretation of these peoples stories. I love Werner but wouldn’t say his is better, but maybe for a certain audience it is

Herzog is superior

I have never watched a video essay I agree with less, they are both gonna age well they tell 2 different stories they can both exist

this guy is just cynical

Werner is the funniest guy. Few Germans have a sense of humor, but when they do it's just so honestly funny. He's just so honest and real Fire of Love reminds me of an episode of Monk, where his boss's wife made a terrible boring movie about an old man.

very misleading video on your part, both are decent/watchable movies. you're pushing folks away from one movie & toward the other instead of watching both & coming to their own conclusion(s). dwelling on & highlighting two negatives about the kraffts that herzog says early on in the film. both in the first 20-25 mins in fact & never mentioning how much werner says he admired their work, would have loved to meet the kraffts & gone on adventures with them if given the chance/able. he basically says they were better documentary filmmakers the more organic their work was & as he said later on, their work improved as they became more focused. those two negatives he said toward the first half of the movie were really the only negative things he said about the kraftts but you highlight & focus in on them like the entire documentary is a salty herzog shitting on them & their hipster ass work. you're right, I would have preferred the two filmmakers to use the existing footage & make the exact same documentary twice. two completely different takes on their story & thank christ for that. yeah, fire of love is a pretentious hipster film (what festival film isn't?) but herzog & his work has never not been anything but pretentious hipster film work & I love the dude. fire of love is about katia & maurice's love & passion for each other on top of loving their work. more of a biography/documentary. fire within mentions them early on but the last 2/3's of the movie is just herzog very, very occasionally narrating. showing off their footage with annoying ass overdone stock singing in the background taking away focus from the actual footage. it became very, very repetitive & my eyes were fucking rolling. fire of love is basically all volcano footage, that is the focus. fire within is pretty much the entirety of the things they've shot over time, the last half is almost no volcanos. aftermath, nature, poverty, etc. both are good films & I believe you should watch both if you're at all interested in their work. your video kind of seemed to lean more along the line of a personal hit job against sara & a brown nosing of herzog. I am extremely dumb & uneducated, I bleed ignorance. you shouldn't take my word for it or this guys. can't allow others to think for you, enjoy yourself & try to gravitate toward your own gut/instinct in any aspect, not just movie watching cause fuck me right?

Wow, what such shallow, misinformed click-bait masquerading as analysis! I couldn't disagree more with this video. If you knew anything about film, you'd know that "Fire of Love" locates its aesthetic and storytelling in the French New Wave and existentialist philosophy, not in some trendy vintage trope. Do your homework next time, don't denigrate a masterful work of art by a woman director. This review smacks of sexism -- there is a worrying trend of male faux critics dismissing women's creative work only as style.

This is bourgeois hipster culture in a nutshell: the commodification of an aesthetic by people completely divorced from the skill, craftsmanship, philosophy, and unconventionality of its roots.

'Fire of Love' could have benefitted from professional narration. The ASMR whispering was distracting and made the film unwatchable to me.

very cute criticizing melodrama and then put a sad piano to wrap up the video, this was pointless

Fire of love was so cringe