The White Diamond

In "The White Diamond," famed documentary filmmaker Werner Herzog has fashioned a quirky, visually beautiful tribute to all the risk takers and dreamers who make exploration and discovery possible.

Herzog has chosen for his subject Dr. Graham Dorrington, an aeronautics engineer who has invented a small, helium-powered airship that allows him to fly over and into the canopy of the South American rainforest in order to study the richly varied life forms that inhabit that hitherto unexplored area of the planet's biosphere. Dorrington, who comes across as part humanitarian scientist and part lovable crackpot, is nothing if not eager to share his adventures with Herzog and his crew of brave filmmakers.

Even though there is much of interest in the setting-up stage of the experiment and the short history of aviation Herzog provides at the beginning, the movie itself is almost so lackadaisical in its approach that it often feels unfocused and devoid of passion, but once Dorrington and Herzog himself are airborne, with the camera moving in for unbelievably tight close-ups of the creatures living within the soaring treetops, the movie becomes a treasure trove of rare and wonderful sights that even the least nature-oriented among us will find impossible to forget.

This is one of the least flashy documentary films you will ever see. For despite the very real risks to life and limb involved in the project, this is a work that finds its beauty and drama in the serene majesty of the setting and the elegant simplicity of the airship itself. More mood piece than scientific document, "The White Diamond" should appeal as much to the poet as to the adventurer in all of us.

I like Herzog's films generally, but I think that he is most satisfying as a documentary filmmaker. It seems to me that Herzog is not really interested in "story," the aesthetic feature which dominates the response of probably about 99% of the people who watch films in the United States. Herzog is interested, it seems to me, in visceral experiences, and the documentary form frees him more to explore this kind of experience. I found this film thrilling. What is it "about"? There are lots of false leads for those viewers who want to reduce it to something package-able, but I don't think it's about "obsession," as the Netflix blurb suggests. I also don't think it's simply about Dorrington, the Guyanese rain forest, adventure, or "atonement," which is another Netflix suggestion. I think that, as Herzog would have it, the film is about something ineffable, perhaps whatever is behind that mammoth waterfall where millions of swifts live. Is that cave a metaphor for the world the camera is always trying to connect us to? It doesn't matter. I think Herzog wants us to "experience" this film rather than to analyze it. Herzog seems to me to make films by following his gut instincts and there are times when his cinematic choices are thrilling. I am especially fond of his courage with long takes, holding the camera on Dorrington's confessions long after we have become uncomfortable with them. I think Herzog is forcing us to experience Dorrington as a human being. If we choose to distance ourselves with analysis, that is our choice and I suspect that Herzog would shrug that response off and simply make another movie.

Once again, the most adventurous documentary film maker of our time returns to his most beloved subjects and his most beloved setting. The White Diamond is about an obsessed man who wants to conquer a relatively unexplored frontier in the South American rain forest. Yet this is no sequel or remake of the amazing Herzog film Aguirre. Rather, in The White Diamond, Herzog returns to his beloved rain forest to tell the story of Dr. Graham Dorrington's struggle to build and fly an ultra-light helium airship as a way to explore the resources and ecology of the South American rain forest canopy.

Unlike many of Herzog's recent films, The White Diamond has an irrepressibly upbeat tone, as Herzog seems - as he can seemingly only do in South America - to celebrate the simultaneous absurdity and brilliance of the human spirit. Like Little Dieter, Fitzcarraldo, Rescue Dawn and Kaspar Hauser, The White Diamond is about remarkable people who do remarkable things. And like almost all of Herzog's portfolio, the photography and soundtrack are magnificent.

Herzog appears quite often in this film, and, as he has done frequently in recent times, gives us a bit more of a view of his interior world. Unlike Grizzly Man, however, this is not the dark, constrained hostility of the great director's view of life, but rather the hopeful Herzog who is interested in what makes people tick. And, unlike many of his films, he seems to like what he sees this time.

The White Diamond occasionally tangentializes away from the main story to talk to us about things that inspire the local inhabitants of the rain forest where the story takes place. A mysterious cave is explored, but the mystery is preserved in deference to the wishes of a local tribe. The poet philosopher of Dorrington's team is a local Rastafarian herbalist who finds tranquility and joy in everything, but whose rooster is his major inspiration. And then there are Herzog and Dorrington themselves, who are a whole different story. Some of Dorrington's incessant commentary can be a little annoying, but I believe Herzog left it in the film to give us a clear sense of the man himself - for which I can not fault the director.

Literally and spiritually uplifting, The White Diamond is a truly lovely film which uses setting and story to create a lasting impression. Like most of Herzog's films, it bears intense, wide-awake, and repeated scrutiny, and is worth thinking about afterward.

Herzog loves to explore the nature within. He has been doing this ever since he started out as a filmmaker. Aguirre, Wrath of God is a good example. There nature mirrors what is happening with in the persons. He does that same thing here.

A lesser filmmaker would only have concentrated on the technical marvel and the landscape. He/she would have overlooked the dreams and life of Marc Anthony Yhap (a hired hand) and Graham Dorrington's bleeding heart because of mistakes in the past. Inner landscape which are just as fascinating as the thousands of birds diving under the waterfall or the reflection in the raindrop.

I thought this film was like a meditation on life, past, present, dreams, failures, cultures and harmony with nature. I loved how Herzog would keep the shots longer than most directors would have, like when Graham Dorrington puts on his jet suit and pretend to fly like superman. And the landscape pictures where just breathtaking.

This is one of Herzog's best film, and that's saying a lot.

Herzog's films are often about rulebreakers, visionaries and daredevils, something which he has always been himself. Being a daredevil flirting with death makes one feel alive, which is no small thing, but being a daredevil flirting with something even larger than death, is ecstasy. In this film, Herzog, his film crew and a small band of scientists headed by aeronautical engineer Graham Dorrington, head off to a remote area of Guyana to fly a newfangled zeppelin just a toe's length above the treetops of the jungle. Dorrington has his legitimate reasons for the usefulness of his invention, as does Herzog in documenting what may be an important new discovery in science and technology. But both of these men, as well as us in the audience, see these men's laughably primitive jabs at besting nature shrunken by the grandeur of the nature surrounding them. From the fierce power of the waterfall where they are camped out, to the unfathomable grace and sheer numbers of the birds who dwell behind it, the plight of two little men in a motorized air balloon is almost comical. I say almost because a man died in such an attempt ten years earlier - a scene that is described in chillingly vivid detail by Dorrington. Also, there is a kind of nobility in man's stubborn desire to defy his relatively scrawny limitations against nature. Whether it's Fitzcarraldo dragging a steamship over a mountain, Herzog himself trying to make the steamship climb the mountain for his film, or Dr. Dorrington sailing the skies in a contraption that seems as fragile as a butterfly, the dream is everything. The dreams of Herzog's characters - be they real or fictional - are usually short-lived, but at least the dreams do come alive briefly. If I could sum up everything that is great in Herzog's films, it would be in one awesome scene in this film where Herzog shoots the upside-down reflection of the mighty waterfall in a falling drop of rain. This moment, this reflection, this drop of rain is as temporary as life, but in it is the entire universe in all of its beauty, majesty and fragility. If that's not ecstasy, I don't know what is!