Even Dwarfs Started Small: Herzog’s Mad, Miniature Masterpiece
Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) is the sort of film that, once seen, cannot be unseen. It burrows into your subconscious like an unsettling dream, one in which a group of anarchic little people revolt against authority in a surreal, lawless landscape. It’s a film about chaos, about power and its inherent absurdity, about laughing at the void even as it swallows you whole.
Set in an unnamed, bleak, volcanic wasteland (actually Lanzarote, but let’s call it the edge of the world), the film follows a group of institutionalised dwarfs who rebel against their unseen rulers. They smash windows, burn flowers, mock authority figures, and cackle—constantly. If there is one sound that haunts Even Dwarfs Started Small, it is laughter. Not the pleasant kind, but the high-pitched, relentless, borderline-hysterical kind that makes you wonder if you, too, are losing your grip on reality.
Herzog and the Theatre of the Absurd
For Herzog, this wasn’t just a film; it was a statement, a primal scream. The 1960s and ’70s were fertile ground for radical cinema, but while others tackled revolution with slogans and manifestos, Herzog distilled it into pure, unfiltered madness. He conjured an image of rebellion where authority is both arbitrary and ridiculous—portrayed by a “director” character who is just as powerless as those he seeks to control. The dwarfs don’t overthrow a regime to instate a new order; they just break things, light fires, and watch the world burn with uncontainable glee.
Everything is Hysterical, Nothing is Funny
What makes Even Dwarfs Started Small so disturbing is its tonal schizophrenia. The film teeters between slapstick and horror, often in the same scene. A chimpanzee is tied to a chair as if standing trial. A pig eats a dead animal while its comrades squeal. A blind man is taunted, and a car—driverless, spinning in circles—becomes a nightmarish metaphor for the futility of rebellion. All of this unfolds with manic laughter, turning the film into a relentless, hallucinatory experience.
There is no hero. No moral lesson. No resolution. Just chaos, anarchy, and the creeping suspicion that civilisation itself is a thin, trembling illusion.
Herzog’s Unhinged Dedication
Behind the scenes, the film was just as wild. Herzog, never one to make things easy, insisted on real stunts with real consequences. One of the actors was genuinely injured by a truck. Another fell into a cactus patch (as you do when working with Herzog). The director, in a display of mad solidarity, promised his cast that if they made it through the film, he would hurl himself into a patch of cacti too—an act of absurdist commitment befitting the film’s entire ethos. And, true to his word, he did.
What Does It All Mean?
Herzog has always been obsessed with existential absurdity—man’s futile struggle against nature, society, and himself. Even Dwarfs Started Small is a microcosm of this struggle, compressed into a surreal, nightmarish carnival. It doesn’t ask for understanding; it dares you to make sense of it and then laughs in your face when you try.
The film isn’t easy to watch, but it’s impossible to forget. It is the cinematic equivalent of a fever dream, a twisted fairytale where nothing makes sense but everything feels uncomfortably true. Watching it, you might find yourself laughing along, but be warned: you might not know why you’re laughing.
And that, perhaps, is the point.