1992 ‘Lektionen in Finsternis’ Directed by Werner Herzog
This film shows the disaster of the Kuwaitian oil fields in flames. In contrast to the common documentary film there are no comments and few interviews. What must have been the hell itself is presented to the viewer in such beautiful sights and beautiful music that one has to be fascinated by it.
Werner Herzog is the only living person who could say things like "the oil is treacherous because it reflects the sky; the oil is trying to disguise itself as water" and not seem like an utterly ridiculous weirdo.
the man-made machinery of hellfire; beautiful, surreal, destructive and self-perpetuating. feels beamed in from another planet.
The introductory Pascal quote regarding the "grandiose splendor" of humanity’s collapse is counterfeit, but the visions Werner Herzog finds to illustrate it are absolute. The apocalypse is unmistakable even if the disbanding Gulf War goes unnamed, the 13-part structure posits Ecclesiastes in the desert from the vantage of the most sublime helicopter shots ever captured. Kuwait City at dawn, "The War" (CNN views in grainy night vision), "afterwards everything was different." Space-engulfing camera sprawls contemplate, mourn, and exalt the ensuing wreckage: Craters, bones, gnarled pipelines stretched by the lenses. And oil. "The oil is treacherous, because it reflects the sky. The oil is trying to disguise itself as water." Other appearances are no less deceiving—abandoned, flat-roofed hangars resemble Aztec pyramids,…
I want my life to be narrated by Werner Herzog. Can you imagine just walking down the street?
"Kent, Ohio. A desolate wasteland of forgotten industries. The smell of burning tires runs across the city like a deer running from gunfire. A rumble of feet mirroring the great quakes of yesteryear as bodies pour into chipotle to get a buy one get one free deal."
☆"The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor."☆
I didn't have a lot of time tonight to log my usual film. But I realized I had this Werner (Google Docs autocorrect suggestion: "Weezer") Herzog collection just attracting dust on my shelf, and it happened to have one of the all-time great documentaries inside, which also was under an hour. Perfect. So, a big Herzog fan already and eager to see more from this one-in-a-kind filmmaker, featured on the Official Top 100 Documentary Films list on letterboxd (which was my idea!), Lektionen in Finsternis ["Lessons of Darkness"] was a fantastic choice.
Herzog's 1992 work details the First Gulf War's impacts on the capital of…
painting with destruction
the picture painted here is a surreal trip through the shapes and Storys mostly shown without any narration needed.
It‘s history being filmed and presented in such a pure and aesthetic way that you can interpret your own storys into it.
grande
Werner Herzog and Paul Beriff casually filming hell on earth. Terryfing and mesmerizing at the same time.
Originally posted on my old blog, Celluloid Breakfast: celluloidbreakfast.blogspot.com/
Stylistically equidistant from both 2001: A Space Odyssey and Koyaanisqatsi, Werner Herzog’s hypnotic visual poem about how the hunger for oil has changed the Kuwaiti landscape succeeds in freeing the locations of their political context, thus creating a new story from the fantastical images. With scant commentary, Herzog’s lens drives vigilantly over the urban and rural spaces hit worst by the Gulf War, transforming these deserted areas into extraterrestrial vistas. Sheet metal litters the ground, dust fills the sky, neon signs flicker like weakened flames. In this interpretation, an untranslated female interviewee’s inability to articulate her grief becomes a new language, the battered objects around her like ancient artefacts.
Essentially, the…
It’s possible that Herzog tried to cover slightly too much ground in this but the footage and the addition of his commentary are fantastic
To Herzog, we are aliens. He does not understand, or even pretend to understand what makes humanity tick, and he uses his documentaries as brutally honest and unflinching mirrors into the darkest depths of evil that we as a species are not only willing to, but will gladly go. Here, he strips back the traditional talking heads style that he often employs. Instead, he does the impossible, showing one of the most honest depictions of human evil ever put to film with nothing more than a series of images, classical compositions, and a little bit of voice over. Devastating and pulverizing from start to finish.
"The oil is trying to disguise itself as water."
Werner Herzog's video essay is, to wildly understate, a mesmerizing, gorgeous film that looks at the horrifying desolation following war with a poetic lens. Herzog has a gift for being able to turn a camera to a subject and, seemingly from happenstance, allow a documentary to be born out of the chaos and randomness that presents itself.
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