The truth that Herzog has in mind is more like the truth of poetry than the mere facts and shared understanding that he mocks as “the truth of accountants.” As he put it in a 1999 manifesto, “There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.”
The idea that an artist, even a documentarian, would mix fact with fiction is not quite so radical today as it might have been at the peak of cinema verité. Yet questions of truth and its relation to reality are more pressing and vexed than ever. Getting at deep truths by means of artful lies may seem less appealing or daring in the era of the deepfake. Herzog’s oft-repeated provocation that only the “conman, the liar who knew what he was talking about, would speak the truth” loses some of its countercultural appeal when the conmen move from the margins of society to the centers of power and bullshit becomes de rigueur.