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.

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 oil is treacherous because it reflects the sky" -Werner Herzog,
AND
"Has life without fire become unbearable for them?" -Werner Herzog

- Werner Herzog Ranked: boxd.it/3MAT6
- 5x5 Directors Challenge 3 (Herzog 5/5): boxd.it/7ALXq

Ostensibly this is about a fire in an oil field in Kuwait but it's really also about the culture and hardship of the neighboring environment. Herzog is at his most dramatic, laying bold and pretty music and deep soliloquies over the beautiful but terrifying footage of the massive oil fire. The sheer destruction and its impact on the surrounding environment is an amazing thing to behold.

"The oil is trying to disguise itself as water."

With his soaring camera shots and sweeping musical score, Werner does what he does best, making the ugly seem beautiful, then horrible, and back to ugly again all within a single shot. A magician as much as a filmmaker, Werner will saw the woman in half right in front of you, but he can't make his images disappear.

"Two figures are approaching an oil well. One of them holds a lighted torch. What are they up to? Has life without fire become unbearable for them? Others, seized by madness, follow suit. Now, they are content. Now, there is something to extinguish, again."

Wait...except for that bear footage. That he made disappear...C'mon, Werner...who are you, George Lucas or something?

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

“Now there is something to extinguish again.”

“This was once a forest before it was covered with oil. Everything that looks like water is in actuality oil. Ponds and lakes are spread out all over the land. The oil is treacherous because it reflects the sky. The oil is trying to disguise itself as water.”

I honestly don’t know if Herzog can get better than this. A part of me hopes I’m wrong but this feels just too extraordinary to be beat. I believe it was Pasolini who said that anyone studying civics must watch Night and Fog and Salò. If he were alive when this film came out I feel that list would gain a third entry.

Madness conveyed primarily visually documentary, scored to the bombastic likes of Mahler, Wagner, Verdi and more. One successive shot after another of Kuwait in the Gulf War aftermath would be tedious, not unless you were in the hands of a masterful director like Werner Herzog. Aerial shots in slow-mo, hovering around massive wreckages, lakes of not water but black oil that requires one to squint the eyes to make out the color. It’s a dazzling hell, in a way. There are only a few interviews of inconsolable mothers who have survived attacks, and there’s a nonchalant browse through a torture chamber that nearly looks like the worst place on Earth, your common slaughterhouse notwithstanding. Herzog also films a team of firemen putting out the fires on the oil fields; a big plus is an incredible sight of using dynamite beneath the ground to squelch the fire. At 54 minutes, Lessons of Darkness singes the mind’s eye.

I honestly don't know a lot about the Gulf War, but the beauty - or really horror - of Herzog's work here is that the destruction on display is indicative of a larger problem. Yes, the images are of the devastation in Kuwait in the early 90s, but Herzog reminds us that mankind's ability to inflict pain on others, our world, and ourselves is as old as time.

This was probably an odd pick for my first Herzog film, but I'll definitely be back.

#117 Fabrizio
“It changed my life: I saw this film and I understood a lot of things about how the world works. It’s a documentary realized in 1992, by the way, I was born in the same year. It was shot in Kuwait where Herzog, after the bombardment, go to see what was still remained in the desert. There are destroyed oil wells and there is that line, saying that the oil is treacherous because it reflects the sky. This movie made me understand a lot of things about life, about how the human being is, born to destroy. Obviously there is also love in it, but basically there is also a lot of cruelty. For me Herzog is the greatest human being ever existed, he’s my God”

Earth's bloodletting, never-ending cycles of wounding and cauterization, an apocalyptical doomscape, Herzog's voice a monotone relay from a distant god: thus the real is fictionalized, and so becomes more real than before.

C’est terrifiant, beau et terrifiant à la fois, on assiste impuissant à la destruction d’un monde, une apocalypse bien plus cruel que toutes celles que nous avons pu fantasmer car celle ci est réelle et nous n’y pouvons rien.

“This was once a forest before it was covered with oil. Everything that looks like water is in actuality oil. Ponds and lakes are spread out all over the land. The oil is treacherous because it reflects the sky. The oil is trying to disguise itself as water.”

I honestly don’t know if Herzog can get better than this. A part of me hopes I’m wrong but this feels just too extraordinary to be beat. I believe it was Pasolini who said that anyone studying civics must watch Night and Fog and Salò. If he were alive when this film came out I feel that list would gain a third entry.

Like Fata Morgana, I also watched this on mute (with subtitles) with a metal album playing over it. ["Atma" by Yob]

Stunning imagery and use of helicopter shots to evoke the alien-ness of the viewpoint and the lack of context. Lovely grain from the 16mm film. The pounding, despairing music of Yob went really well with it.

Mesmerizing in every way. The cinematography blows my mind, and it's ridiculous how much movie Werner Herzog is able to cram into a mere 54 minutes. I haven't explored much of his work at all, and Lessons of Darkness definitely makes me want to prioritize the documentaries. Is there a better narrator around? I'd listen to Herzog talk about anything.

Uno de los desastres ecológicos mas grandes del mundo se produjo tras la retirada de las tropas iraquíes de Kuwait: incontables pozos de petróleo eran pasto de las llamas y millones de litros de petróleo iban a parar al mar. Pero lo que parece el fin es tan solo el comienzo: Paisajes y ciudades devastados, campos de batalla como desiertos lunares. Ese paisaje desolado y desolador parece el hábitat natural de bacterias y escorpiones: los hombres, en cambio, condenados a un silencio infinito, fruto de todos los horrores de la guerra, parecen estar fuera de lugar.

Puede que su narrativa te parezca insufrible, pero tiene unas imágenes hipnóticas.

وثائقي عن حرق آبار النفط الكويتية من قبل الجيش العراقي، وعن الدمار الذي خلّفته تلك الحرائق. صاحبت اغلب المشاهد موسيقى كلاسيكية جعلت مناظر النيران والدخان والسحب السوداء سريالية واخذتني بعيد عن مشاعر الأسى التي بالعادة ترافق اي وثائقي من هذا النوع. بالرغم من حجم الكارثة، الا ان الشعور الطاغي كان مزيج بين التفكر والانبهار. ذكرني بوثائقيات ron fricke عن الكون 

انصح به وبشدة، لكن ارشح ان تسبقه بمشاهدة اي وثائقي عن حرب العراق مثل homeland: iraq year zero

Smart of Herzog to leave his poetically mad observations sparse since if he had done with anymore consistency, I might have started finding him funny instead of being unfazed due to the power of the terror on screen and the haunting score playing over it. Not completely sure what I'm supposed to come away thinking from this doc, but it sure as shit was a powerful film when it came to image and sound.