Werner Herzog, as seen in Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer (Shout! Studios)

Most Americans are familiar with Werner Herzog from that voice. Whether from The Simpsons or the narration of his documentaries, his inimitable, heavily accented English is instantly recognizable. (More recently, The Mandalorian has brought him further recognition.) Thomas von Steinaecker’s brisk, probing documentary about Herzog begins with that caricature to present a far more complex man and artist.

For nearly 60 years, Herzog has been committed to making singular films—and at times seems like he should also be committed. (We hear him say so himself, half-jokingly, on the set of one of his legendarily difficult shoots, 1982’s Fitzcarraldo.) Although part of what became known as the New German Cinema, along with such disparate directors as Alexander Kluge, Volker Schlöndorff, and Wim Wenders, Herzog always went his own way, throwing himself obsessively into making films about equally obsessive characters: Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Stroszek, and The Mystery of Kasper Hauser. In the aforementioned Fitzcarraldo, a half-mad Peruvian entrepreneur oversees the pulling of a 300-ton steamship over a foreboding hill, as Herzog also did while making the movie.

Despite his reputation, Herzog doesn’t come across as self-serious or narcissistic. In fact—as he has shown in interviews over the years—he’s quite an engaging and amusing subject. Of course, we are treated to a heavy dose of film clips throughout. Herzog’s career is populated by the features films with which he made his name in the late ’60s and ’70s and the documentaries peppering his oeuvre that became more daringly eccentric than his infamous earlier films. Lessons of Darkness, Little Dieter Needs to Fly, and Grizzly Man, for example, are remarkably poignant, crammed with unforgettably haunting images.

Von Steinaecker takes Herzog to visit the Canary Islands locale of his absurdist 1970 film Even Dwarfs Started Small, which the director hadn’t seen in a half-century. Despite this lengthy absence, the return prods Herzog to vividly recall a memorably offbeat shoot. Herzog also touches on his predilection to, in his words, “stage” reality, in his documentaries. In a scene from 1993’s Bells from the Deep, pilgrims crawl across an icy lake, hopeful they can glimpse a fabled lost city beneath, all while others (placed there by the director) skate around them. Herzog dismisses any criticism of his approach by explaining, “When I stylize, I’m not lying but giving a different perspective.”

Herzog animatedly remembers his past muse/bête noire, the outrageous actor Klaus Kinski. Although many of their alternately hilarious and violent on-set interactions are recounted in Herzog’s wonderfully outlandish documentary, 1999’s My Best Fiend, it’s still fascinating to hear Herzog recall their bifurcated relationship. He admits that after finishing their last film together, 1987’s Cobra Verde, he was burnt out and took time off before returning with personal essay films that began with the remarkable Lessons of Darkness, about the Middle East oil fields perpetually burning following the 1991 Gulf War.

For a more personal perspective on his on- and off-screen obsessions, von Steinaecker sits down with Herzog’s wife Lena; first ex-wife Martja (the second ex isn’t heard from); his brothers Tilbert and Lucki; cinematographer Thomas Mauch; actors Robert Pattinson, Nicole Kidman (both from Herzog’s 2015 bomb Queen of the Desert), Christian Bale, and Carl Weathers; and even Patti Smith, who sings her song “Wing” over the end credits.

Several have enlightening things to say, while others give mainly platitudes (Pattinson: “There’s no one like Herzog”). Wenders, who has known Herzog for most of their lives, calls him “a truly mythological character,” who has shaped Americans’ perception of Germans thanks to his “likable but somewhat fanatical” personality and a memorable accent that Herzog has cultivated “for publicity.”

Which brings us back to that voice. Is he a German caricature or a complicated, messy, but original filmmaker? In Werner Herzog: Radical Dreamer, he obviously enjoys having it both ways.