Sightlines · how to watch
How to watch Even Dwarfs Started Small
1971 · Werner Herzog · Even Dwarfs Started Small on Sightlines
5 things to watch and listen for on a first viewing, without spoilers, and 3 more once you have seen it. Each names something you can see or hear, the pattern it belongs to, and what noticing it gives you. How these keys work.
On a first viewing
Listen for the driverless car circling the courtyard. (sound)
A car with no one in it loops the courtyard on its own mechanical rhythm for long stretches of the film, its engine noise becoming a constant drone.
Payoff: The sound settles into the film's floor, motion completely unhooked from any purpose.
Watch the volcanic landscape surrounding the institution. (setting)
Wide shots keep placing the building and its residents against bare black lava with no vegetation or trace of other human habitation.
Payoff: The terrain looks indifferent to everything happening on it, which makes the institution's rules look temporary and arbitrary.
Notice there is no music, only sound you'd hear on site. (sound)
The soundtrack stays diegetic throughout: animal noises, footsteps, engines, and the sounds of things breaking, with nothing added to tell you how to feel.
Payoff: Without a score to guide you, you are left to react to events on your own.
Watch the warden speak to a locked door he can't open. (staging)
He addresses his hostage from a position of authority while himself unable to reach the room, staging power as something jammed rather than working.
Payoff: Every hierarchy the film shows you turns out to be stuck the same way, from a position that looks strong but isn't.
Notice the camera hold back instead of cutting fast. (camera)
Mauch watches escalating chaos from a slight remove with patient, unhurried framing rather than quick cuts or dramatic angles.
Payoff: The film refuses to tell you how to feel about what you're seeing through the way it's shot.
The 3 rewatch keys open on this page when you choose "Seen it?".
Carry this in: Watch the car keep circling. Motion here has come completely unhooked from purpose.