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.

This made me want to play the Oil Ocean Zone in Sonic 2

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."

Is there any other director that does both great films and documentaries? Astonishingly made documentary by a mad man who doesn’t stop at nothing even if the whole crew have to die.

Herzog's haunting narration and operatic music envelope the awe-inspiring if disastrous images to create a powerfully grim, saddening showcase of visual storytelling.

Herzog's haunting narration and operatic music envelope the awe-inspiring if disastrous images to create a powerfully grim, saddening showcase of visual storytelling.

Watched at home on blu-ray with Ameni.

Ameni bought me the Werner Herzog Collection box set on blu-ray a couple xmases ago, and I'm sorry to report that this is the first disc I've watched (I've seen all but one of the films in the set previous to receiving it).

I thought she would like this, and I haven't seen it in a long time. Apart from a couple moments, it holds up marvelously. Stunning and fascinating footage. Beautiful and meditative and horrifying. I'm no longer wholly convinced that Herzog's fictional flourishes create more of an "ecstatic truth," but I could roll with them this time around.

“The oil is treacherous, because it reflects the sky.”
Kind of a slow start, but goddamn, that sequence of oil fires soundtracked by Wagner’s Götterdämmerung! Herzog, unsurprisingly, turns out to be a great apocalyptic filmmaker, though the whole thing is anchored by some marvelous helicopter shots. It still feels out of this world since we haven’t seen anything similar since.

Transcending.

It's a topic that deserves to be talked about, but I can't seem to get into Herzog's documentaries. They seem almost boring.

It’s fine I guess, not without it’s usual Herzog self eggrandizing. The first oil lake scene was interesting.

That was like an opera of awe-inducing, otherworldly images and impressions. I think Herzog put me through a portal of some sort.

Disturbingly beautiful! 
Towers of fire...lakes of oil....pillars of smoke. I can’t even imagine what kind of health problems the firefighters and the citizens of Kuwait had after breathing in the toxic fumes that filled the sky