I had an interesting experience earlier today of watching God’s Angry Man1 subtitled in English. For those not familiar with it, the movie is a 1981 short documentary from director Werner Herzog about Pastor Gene Scott — a legend in American religious media who, in 1975, started a Pentecostal Christian television station in California and turned it into a broadcasting empire. As someone who grew up in a community that loved televangelists and who, personally, always had real problems with the whole televangelist shtick, it was a documentary that left me deep in my feelings.
But it also left me deep in my thoughts about documentaries in general and Werner Herzog’s documentaries in particular.
See, Pastor Gene Scott is filmed in his home, on the set of his nightly program where he would beg for money to “keep his church alive” (at one point in the documentary, he reads out checks sent in by viewers that wind up totaling over $250,000, only to announce that tonight’s broadcast will run long because he won’t leave the air until they break $300,000), and in the back of his chauffeured limousine. And, naturally, Pastor Gene Scott is speaking in his native tongue, English. But the documentary was originally created for a German audience that speaks Herzog’s native language, y’know, German.
So to break through this language barrier, Herzog helps out his German audience by recording a voiceover in which he breaks in across Scott’s patter to tell his German audience what Scott is currently saying.
And, since Herzog effectively talks over Pastor Greg Scott the entire time, the English-speaking audience needs assistance in knowing what is being said. So — English subtitles. Two layers of translation stacked on top of each other.
The effect for an audience member like me — who speaks Scott’s language but has to rely on subtitles to understand Herzog’s — is mesmerizing. In no small part because it winds up laying out in plain view the simple truth of documentaries: It’s all in the editing.
Herzog approached Pastor Gene Scott with remarkable even-handedness. There’s very little said in the course of the doc that seems to encourage us to feel one way or another about the Pastor. Even though his words are being fed through Herzog’s mouth, Scott’s story is told through his own words. Narration is sparse, editorial commentary even moreso.
But, there are edits. Minor edits.
A sentence here, a segment there. In the scene I mentioned earlier where Pastor Scott sits on-camera and announces the individual amounts of donations, Herzog only voices over about half of what Scott is saying. In another, he leaves out one sentence where Scott admonishes his audience in the name of the Lord for not calling in with money until he got angry with them. A sentence that, ultimately, had no major impact on the audience’s understanding of what was happening, but it was an edit. An audience member who speaks English can tell that it slipped by without being translated.
On another occasion, Herzog leaves out words that might have damned Scott to the audience — taking out some of his harsher language directed at his parishioners because to take the time to translate it would interrupt the flow and make the voice-over too much to handle. And in still other moments, Herzog chooses to translate the lyrics of a gospel song word-for-word, only to later translate another song by simply summarizing the story it tells.
In every documentary — by definition — something will be said that does not make it into the final story. And if you’re an English speaker viewing God’s Angry Man, you can witness that process happening in realtime as Herzog decides what of Scott’s words are important to his German audience. Sometimes those edits are benign, having little to no impact on the reality of the story being told. Other times, even a small edit can influence the audience’s understanding — and it can be argued whether it was for better or worse.
And as for Herzog’s style in particular? That’s fascinatingly illustrated in this early documentary, too — and again by his choice to voiceover Scott’s dialogue.
If there is one aspect of Herzog’s manner and cinematic style that is thoroughly understood and often imitated, it’s his voice. Hypnotic and droning, but endlessly riveting, he speaks in the most fascinating monotone of all time — and he does it no matter what topic he’s speaking on. Whether it’s insanity among penguins, the stupidity of chickens, or the similarities between ancient Greek tragedy and Wrestlemania, it all gets the same hushed, intense narration dripping with gravitas.
It was in viewing God’s Angry Man with Herzog acting as the translator standing at my elbow that I at last realized that Herzog’s signature vocal style is more than a personal mannerism — it’s a specific style of storytelling. As he acts as your guide into whatever world he is investigating, he provides a stable floor; a steady, re-assuring hand on your shoulder, only for you to realize that it’s the false reassurance of the Cheshire Cat telling Alice, “We’re all mad here.”
Nowhere have I seen that juxtaposition more starkly illustrated than in hearing that stately, even voice reciting in German what Pastor Greg Scott has just said in English. As Scott gets worked into a fervor, raging at the camera and declaring how disgusted he is that his audience has fallen $600 short of his goal, Herzog’s gentle monotone translates all of the words for his German audience. It becomes a performance of anger stripped of its passion, stripped of Scott’s rhetorical power, and leaving… just the words. The words and their meaning.
Featured image remixed from: Image by Engin Akyurt from Pixabay; Image by Pexels from Pixabay
1 aka Glaube und Währung – Dr. Gene Scott, Fernsehprediger (1981), dir. Werner Herzog, available as of writing on Tubi TV, Shout! Factory TV, and Roku TV, among others.