Filmed on beautiful locations in Germany, Ireland, Switzerland and the USA, "Heart of Glass" (1976) is a poetic reflection on existence.

Containing a little less absurdity than, for example, "Stroszek" (1977) and "Even Dwarfs Started Small" (1970), this work by German auteur Werner Herzog is rather a dramatic and thoughtful consideration of the importance of knowledge.

This is an offbeat and provoking film regarding the notorious craftsman of a small village carrying out glassworks and dying suddenly without revealing the secret to the known "Ruby Glass". This small village is renowned for its "Ruby Glass" glass blowing works but things go wrong when the main foreman dies without transmit his craft wisdom . The little town slides into a deep crisis , and the owner of the glassworks becomes obsessed with the lost secret asking for help a wise man . At the village a mysterious young (Josef Bierbichler) appears telling weird prophecies about a sad future of the people .

Herzog's film is based upon the true and mysterious story of the creators of a brilliant crystal , it stars a rare prophet , a very strange and fantastic character well played by Josef Bierbichler . Concerning the deep distresses happen when the foreman of glassworks dies suddenly without revealing the secret of the Ruby Glass creating a real depression and sadness at the village , then showing up a bizarre chracter named "Hias" -legendary Nostradamus lookalike- who is actually based on a Bavarian prophet called Mühlhias. A movie that shares with ¨Aguirre Wrath of God¨ and ¨Kaspar Hauser¨ a fascination with rare and outlandish roles . Not the same dizzy folly as Aguirre , but Herzog´s similarly long perspective conjures as a brooding and thought-provoking film of man's aimless tracks throughout a society in crisis . Josef Bierbichler provides a decent as well as agreeable acting as the mysterious young with unknown past . Accompanied by ordinary actors from Herzog factory as Clemens Scheitz and Volker Prechtel. However , most actors were really hypnotized by Werner Herzog himself and play under hypnosis on big screen.

It contains hypnotic , colorful and luxurious cinematography by Jörg Schmidt-Reitwein , Herzog's regular , being shot on various location in Monument Valley, Utah, Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, Niagara Falls, New York, Alaska, USA , Skellig Michael, County Kerry, Skellig Rocks, County Kerry, Ireland , Frauenaus bei Zwiesel, Bavarian Forest, Bavaria, Germany , Pischelsdorf bei Arnstorf, Bavaria,Walchsing Castle, Bavaria, and Switzerland . Accompanying a fascinating and riveting musical score by Popol Vuh . The motion picture was competently directed by Werner Herzog . Including some landmarks , as containing long, extended landscape shots . This great German director Herzog has made thoughtful and interesting films , such as : "Fata Morgana" , "Aguirre Wrath of God" , "The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser", "Heart of Glass" , "Stroszek", "Woyzeck" , "Nosferatu the Vampire", "Where the Green Ants Dream" , "Cobra Verde" ,"Lessons in Darkness", "My Dearest Enemy", "Invincible" , "The White Diamond", "Grizzly Man", "Rescue Dawn" , among others . Rating : 6.5/10 , acceptable and passable but extremely slow-moving and a little bit boring . The flick will appeal to Werner Herzog followers.

According to IMDb trivia most of the actors were hypnotized by Herzog and given instructions to carry out while acting. Aware of this many comments mention the hypnotizing quality of the movie. The movie is slow and very weird, indeed. Take one scene: Two men sit at a table, they drink beer and talk about a prophecy that one of them will sleep off his hangover lying on the dead body of the other. In the course of this conversation one tears the other at his hair, who hits back with his beer mug, and so on. Later we see that the prophecy has come true. And later on the living is taking the dead one into the tavern to dance with his corpse.

Heart of glass was written by Herbert Achternbusch, a prolific Bavarian film-maker and author who got some (mostly local) attention during the 1970s/80s because of his ruthless opposition against the Bavarian reactionary catholic government (personated by the late Franz Josef Strauss). The movie bears a lot of resemblance to Achternbusch's other works. Since Herzog is much better known world-wide I will focus on Achternbusch's contribution here.

Achternbusch always mixes his own strange private mythology with regional influences from Northern Bavaria (Niederbayern, Bayrischer Wald) and other (often ancient Greek, but also all kinds of 'native') mythology. The outcome is not very accessible, of course, but there are some threads which help to read his works.

There is the anarchist despise of power and the sympathy with the victims of power. But this sympathy never leads to illusions about the poor and the wretched. They are ugly, because they are made ugly, their emotions are coarse - like in the scene described above, where two friends are only able to express their affection through violence and death. In Achternbusch's works the only place outside a world where power and violence affect everyone and everything is ruled by absurdity. Where he fails to make sense, his journey to freedom begins. Not unlike his fellow countryman Karl Valentin, he explores the limits of his own language because language is reason is the tool of the powerful.

Achternbusch once said that the only genuine national culture which post-war Germany had left after Worldwar II was that it had no national culture, and that it is losing this as well after 1989. "Heart of Glass" follows a similar 'logic': The industrial revolution (represented here by the glass-works) once was carried by a dream, a secret knowledge (the red ruby). This vision of turning the world in a gleaming cold world of glass was terrible in itself yet bore some beauty. Now that this dream is lost, industrialization is running loose turning the world into a burning hell, aka Worldwars I and II.

But here I shall stop trying to make sense of the movie, it refuses to yield to reason and so shall I.

P.S.: Funny to talk about "Spoilers" when it comes to movies like this.