Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen (Even Dwarves Start Small)

Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen {Even Dwarves Start Small} - (Herzog, 1969)

For once, the 48 inch height regulation at most commercial theme-parks instituted as a cut off for who is able to ride the most extreme rides, is thrown fervently to the wayside by director Werner Herzog. This charismatic giant in film history chooses to stand no taller or more prominent than the shortest of human dwarves, in his influential film Auch Zwerge Haben Kleine Angefangen (Even Dwarves Start Small.)

Herzog is famous for creating allegories for the broad human condition in his films manifested by figures or groups that are commonly rejected or disregarded as progressive to modern human development. In this film, however, instead of having to peruse the subtext of Herzog using a conspicuous category of non-human subjects, like those native cultures seen as "savage," varied social outcasts (artists) or examples of monstrous, blinded misanthropes (conquerors), Herzog hits the viewer right on the head with the "human handicap" he uses in his allegory. He uses, in fact, on of the very few groupings in society where a filmmaker can be solely reliant on the pure physical image of this group to establish both a sympathetic regard or perceptual discomfort, as well as an immediate dissociation from our understood standards of human evolution and progress.



Herzog makes high art out of our bad taste. He uses experience to make invisible the technical mastery of his work, enabling us first to capitalize on our well-learned judgmental nature and the human compulsion towards mockery at any and all forms of deformity, only to later shame us with the strength of his drawn parallels to the absurdities of human nature, overpowering our superficial instincts to laugh and taunt what is essentially only a physically miniaturized (not sociologically or mentally) diorama of our problematic human condition.

The dwarves create an empowered rebellion as is common in a layered society, but its effectiveness seems to falter under the lures of human nature's tendency towards acts of depravity and destruction.

If you treat them (the dwarves) as Herzogian allegorical representations of "us" (the larger dudes,) then sitting and watching the lot of them still unabashedly abusing and slaughtering animals (the poultry and livestock), tormenting the handicapped (the blind dwarves), striving to compete amongst one another (the bug comparisons, arranged marriages, and porn collections) and finally protesting and violently revolting against any form of control (firebombing Pepe and the assumed administrator of the compound) seems to be just your average study of human behaviour.