This starts out looking like a more or less standard TV documentary about a ski-jumper. Over time, however, it somehow gets stranger and stranger, until the ending, that somehow, incomprehensibly, left me totally out of breath.The film works on so many levels: It's a fascinating portrayal of the celebrated ski-jumper Steiner, but it's also an amazing look at the plain aesthetics of ski-jumping, with extreme slow-motion pictures showing the jumpers' fears and ecstasy at a very profound level. In addition, there is also something in this film that's simply very hard or impossible to define, something about man itself, something about longing and - perhaps the most advanced of human emotions - pity.How much of this portrayal that actually reflects Steiner's personality, and how much of it that reflects Herzog's, is hard to tell. But that's the only catch. Those looking for Herzog classics should not think that this movie can be missed because it's a 45-minute TV documentary. Apart from pictures of some nasty ski-jumping falls, it's not really disturbing to the extent that put me slightly off when watching for example Aguirre and Even Dwarfs Started Small - so it could from my point of view overall be the best of the many Herzog movies I've seen so far.

Werner Herzog's The Great Ecstacy of Woodcarver Steiner is a glimpse of a man who is quite amazing at his gift of ski-jumping- he's the world record holder at the time of filming (and a record he actually tops over himself more than once)- and how he's all the more impressive because of his humble attitude towards the activity. He's a woodcarver as his other profession, but has it as his primary obsession to fly, to get whisked away someplace that is of his design but not entirely of his control. And he's affected by the pressure of his own skills, skills he acknowledges but doesn't flaunt; like some comic-book hero, he has to deal with the responsibilities he has at his disposal, of not going down for his audience (who might want to see that happen), or for himself, and at the same time staying true to his gifts. He's often by his own, seen through Herzog's long lens contemplating or trying to stay on his own two feet well enough when not ski-jumping. But he knows that he can't be brought down, as his touching story about his pet raven as a kid, who got pecked away by other birds, and in order to stop it, as an act of compassion, he shot it down. At the end of the day, however, the thrill of flight is all that counts, high scores be damned.Herzog takes this man's obsession, albeit with modest feelings about his own worth as a mega-star in Switzerland, and transforms it into a beautiful spectacle of simple facts- of the moment by moment updates of Steiner's conditions or what has to be done to the slope or what rules have to be changed to accommodate Steiner alongside the other contenders- with some of the most beautiful shots in any Herzog film. It's not anything alien to see someone in a typical sports documentary to see the athlete in slow-motion speed, but somehow Herzog transforms the familiar into something akin to the theme, of Steiner's own thrill and 'ecstacy' as what the audience feels as well. It's very interesting as well to see Steiner in slow-motion when he skids, when he or another ski-jumper gets injured (and almost everyone seen ski-jumping in the film, and there aren't many shown other than Steiner, get injured in tumbles in rough ways), as it's something one usually wouldn't see in the glorious montages of sports figures. I also really enjoyed seeing Herzog combine voice-over taken after the event, with Steiner slightly rambling on, over the footage of his jumps.Just seeing a ski-jumper in and of itself is a fascinating sight, as one curls up and has to anticipate what's to come in mere mili-seconds. And Herzog adds his visual poetry of motion with some usual-yet-compelling behind the scenes footage to make it an exceptional work. Steiner isn't a simple hero, but one who's got complexities even Herzog can only see so much into, as he's an otherwise everyman who goes to fantastic lengths for greatness, yet is very aware of the fragility of such power in a sport so reliant on deadly competition and spectator unrest. Very well done.

Herzog can dazzle, challenge. He's one of only two German filmmakers I think are worth watching. Yes, that goes all the way back.Even now, his formula of conflating fiction and truth, documentary and stylized narrative, risk and art still works, even when he's mostly just referencing himself. But he can still do some crazy stuff that doesn't work, at least for this viewer.What we have here is a celebration of an athlete. Herzog tries to make him a warrior of life. There's a supposedly poetic metaphor of his pet bird who had to be shot because he couldn't fly, and that was because its peers picked on it. Get it? There's the bit of him being a sculptor of merit, but when this man speaks of his art and what we dissolves that. And gee, he's German, and we hear a long diatribe about bad judges, not because they are bad, but because they are Yugoslav!No, he's the center of attention here simply because he takes risks. His art is in how far he is willing to go beyond safety. I would have liked a film (or even a sculpture) that this jumper did of Herzog. But this way, this thing we have, is a miss of huge proportions. We need Herzog as a risktaker, not as an admirer of one.Ted's Evaluation -- 1 of 3: You can find something better to do with this part of your life.

After seeing this documentary "the great ecstasy of the sculptor Steiner" by Werner Herzog in 1974, I think this is a good story, but a little tricky "documentary". This 45 minutes long documentary basically recorded champion ski-jumper in a competition. I think the story basically is like other sports-related feature movies, no matter the commercial movies or not, and it gives confidence to audiences and encourages people to try their best and not to lose their hopes. Like most commercial Hollywood movies, like boxing, baseball, basketball and so on, this movie did make audiences moving. The happy ending - the protagonist broke the world record - made the movie more positive. However, I wonder if the whole story had been scripted in advanced? Firstly, it did not record other competition when the protagonist failed and the whole documentary only recorded this competition - the summit of his career. Second, the happy ending dramatized a little much for this film. The extremely slow motion with the background music portrayed the brave of the main character. Then when the reporter was worried about the main character and did not know what had happened to him, this documentary became too dramatic. After he finally got the championship, the story became too coincident. All these elements made this documentary a touching story but also a feature-like "documentary". By and large, the director dramatized the whole story to make this short film like a feature film (fiction film), and people may deeply get moved. Interestingly, the director used "documentary" this form to make the story more realistic and believable.