“And in those days shall men seek death”: The Ecstatic Truth of Spectres in Little Dieter Needs to Fly

Abstract

Documentaries are strongly associated with ideas of truth and fact, so when a documentary has a complicated relationship with truth, the category of “documentary” is challenged. By exploring foundational theoretical writings on documentary from the likes of Bill Nichols alongside Herzog’s beliefs, this paper examines not just Herzog’s position within the documentary canon, but also the existing understanding about what makes a documentary a documentary. As case studies, the paper examines one of Herzog’s films which, on the surface, fits within the category of documentary: Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) utilizes re-enactment and re-telling, which places authority of voice on individual testimonials rather than the director, asking audiences to believe an individual is being truthful in order to accept the narrative as fact. Both re-enactment and re-telling have complicated and well-studied relationships with documentary truth, and so they serve as cogent grounds to explore the theories that Herzog suggests in his Minnesota Declaration, and challenge the relationship between truth and fact.