From Aguirre, The Wrath of God to
Fitzcarraldo, the
passion, blood, sweat and tears that Werner Herzog puts in his films
has always been an undeniable fact. Armed with only a car, a
camera, and
a small crew, Herzog trekked across the Sahara Desert to create his
1971 film Fata Morgana (or
"mirage"). Less a documentary than a self admitted "science
fiction elegy of demented colonialism", Herzog searches for images of
truth in the vast, seemingly endless landscape and comes up with a
frightening, fascinating, and awe-inspiring result. I watched the
film along with the commentary track by Herzog and Crispin Glover, one
his biggest admirers, and while this forced me to miss most of the
Mayan verses that occasionally dominate the soundtrack, listening to
Herzog ramble on about cinema and his personal philosophies more than
makes up for what I may have missed.
Primarily a visual
experience, Fata Morgana
begins with a shot of a mirage which Herzog explains can be captured on
film and was only a vision created by the extreme heat. Not
content to simply sit back and let the Sahara dictate the final cut, he
edited the film to not only stress the bizarre mix of natural beauty
and disposable remnants left there by modernized nations, but to
capture the shape and feel of the landscape. About halfway
through, there is an exceptional shot of desert hills taken from a
moving car that suggests the strange allure and erotic femininity of
the desert. The natives shown are not interviewed or interfered
with, but shot with a sense of awe and wonder. Herzog's interest
is how they fit into the context of this greater picture rather than
understanding their culture or way of life. They are filmed the
same as the mirages and sand - an equal part of this strange land which
he has brought to us in a film so strange and audacious that only one
man could have filmed it.
Noted by some as a
companion piece to Fata Morgana,
Lessons of Darkness
is Herzog's return to unfamiliar desert land, this time following the
Gulf War. The elegant tracking shots taken from helicopter view
that normally bring us breathtaking overviews of the beauty of
untouched nature now show a wasteland of destruction and human
greed. The science fiction description of Fata Morgana is even more fitting
here as the oil-drenched, fire-ridden landscape of Kuwait resemble a
war zone on some far away planet. Herzog patiently presents us
with the bizarre images of seemingly endless fires and miles and miles
of land covered so deep in oil that, due to the sun's reflection,
appear to be beautiful lakes amongst the waste.
Herzog has always
been interested in the darker side of humanity and how we are led to
seek out destruction and knowingly commit acts against nature.
After giving us ample
footage of the aftermath of war, he once again presents us with the
human
factor involved. Men working amongst the flames who continue to
drill
for oil have an eerily alien quality to them. Their actions are
shown in slow motion creating the feeling of a surreal nightmare, a
world gone mad and barely hanging on in a post-apocalyptic time.
The men smile and work diligently, almost
oblivious to the destruction that surrounds them, sometimes throwing
flames into the spouting oil for their own amusement. The film
documents the damage done by, what Herzog would see as, a useless war
caused by the base desires and evil fascinations of mankind. The
images of
smoke, fire and depravity are the consequences of our
unquenchable thirst for violence and destruction. He is not
crying out
against the Gulf War, or war in general, but the madness of human
nature and unpretentious as always, places himself in the mix of
mankind, not
out of blame's reach. Lessons
of Darkness, unlike it's title may suggest, is anything but
didactic or inflammatory, yet hits the core of what drives humanity to
such disturbing extremes and how quickly we turn a blind eye to our
ignorant, short-sighted actions.
Cinematic
Reflections
