La Soufrière

Soufrière, La (1977)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

German documentary has Herzog taking his film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that a volcano is about to erupt and people there aren't wanting to leave even though it might cost them their lives. To be more point on, the entire town has evacuated except for three people who all believe that the volcano is God's will and that when it's their time to go they shouldn't fight it. This is yet another great documentary from the master director. Running just under 30-minutes the film gives us all sorts of great shots of the volcano firing up but in the end, for reason's scientist don't understand, the thing never went off. Herzog narrated the action and at one point he describes the empty and silent city as something you'd see out of a science fiction movie. That's a good way to describe the film because it really does look like something you'd see in a science movie just because of the beauty of the island that is now empty due to a looming threat. We also get a back story of the same volcano erupting in 1903 where 30,000 people were killed. There was only one survivor and how he managed to live is something I won't spoil.

When word that La Soufriere, a volcano, was about to explode Werner Herzog dropped everything and ran off to try and find the one inhabitant of the small island that didn't leave. Scientists were expecting an explosion of catastrophic proportions and fled themselves. When Herzog and his camera men arrived on the island they were greeted by a eerily silent landscape and a sense of impending doom. The film that resulted from Herzog's trip is strange viewing experience. As Herzog remarks its as if he were dropped into a science fiction movie where everyone in the world has disappeared but the electric, phones and TVs still worked. Its a place where thousands of snakes fled the rumbling mountain by going into the ocean while the only humans around spend time getting closer to the danger. Its an odd experience as we watch and wait for what we are told is inevitable....

Herzog has made a film of stark beauty that is also deeply disturbing. There is something about it that is not quite right. Of course it has to do with the fact that the film is like real life Waiting for Godot, we are waiting for the end that never comes, despite all the signs. Its an unnerving proposition that messes with your head, but in a good way. Its 30 minutes well spent.

La Soufriere is with the appendage-title "Waiting for the Inevitable Catastrophe", and it's crucial that the word 'waiting' is in there. I'd imagine much of the film would be the same if the volcano had erupted, albeit at the risk of Herzog and his two cameramen's lives. But what remains of what didn't happen, of the volcano's eruption, holds its own fascination for Herzog, wherein seeing the sights of the mountain, of the smoke rising and every present around the area of the Guadaloupe island, and showing the history of a nearby volcano and a sudden appearance of the hanger-ons to the island at the time, is just as fulfilling as if it actually happened, if not more-so in a perverse way. Herzog is taken for granted as being a filmmaker who looks for people with obsessions, of the dangers of nature and livelihood, of the madness that environment brings out, but unlike a film like Lessons of Darkness or Wild Blue Yonder Herzog isn't able here to manipulate- as far as how it might fit a different context in his unique form of "non-fiction" film-making, La Soufriere is a bit more objective, to a degree he allows at any rate.

It's this collision of Herzog's own subjective fascination and fear of the volcano, and the simple 'here's what's happening' facts of the deserted village, that makes La Sofriere a work that almost comments on Herzog's own obsessions as a filmmaker, though not quite. It would work totally for someone who's never seen a Herzog film, I think, as in essence its the telling of a basic story where nature is on the verge of chaos, which is not something that is hard to find on a National Geographic special (although they, most likely, would have the volcano exploding at the end). But for fans, or just those who know the director's methods with his real-life subjects, one sees him perhaps going too far, which is part of the fun: at one point he bypasses the government-set road blocks and then is out of the car in a panic as the volcano rumbles, waving the car to get out of the shot as he has a truly petrified look on his face. And the shots of the mountainside itself are vintage Herzog, maybe a given due to the subject matter, set to somber classical music and more contemplative than anything on the nature of, well, nature.

The latter of this extends to the interviews with the people who've decided to stay on the island even if it means certain death. The subjects, maybe to a more clear and personally accepting reason, don't mind, and are not afraid of death (the poor one, who has nothing and can't even get off the island anyway, is fine with it as it is "God's will"). Herzog tends to stick with these guys for a good chunk of the film, which leads to a little distracting side-note with one of the villagers singing(?), but it's a captivating chunk all the same as we see men who are possibly as crazy as Herzog, though with many more years of experience (and other natural weather disasters like typhoons) that they've lived through anyway. Herzog mentions that the social situation, of the disenfranchised left on the island, are what he still thinks about after the threat has ended and things go back to normal and the volcano is forgotten. But I wonder if he might think about himself in what is supposed to be inevitable chaos, and how the alleviation of it only leads him to seek other ventures (ala the making of Fitzcarraldo) that spell just as much peril, if not more on his own psychological state.

It's a stark statement that is mostly underlying in the film, and aside from that aspect La Soufriere is a worthwhile story to tell about the nature of a society near a volcano (i.e. the town on the Martinique island in 1902), and what it looks like no-holds-barred.

A 30-minute documentary film by Werner Herzog in which he and a couple of cameramen visit a remote island in Guadelope, where an active volcano threatens to erupt at any second. They discover a deserted township with starving dogs roaming the streets, as well as at least three homeless men who seem consigned to their eventual fates.

It's a great premise and you can instantly see why Herzog was attracted to this story: the images of the deserted town are haunting in the extreme, and nature plays a big part. Unforgettable shots include snakes evacuating the volcano slopes and dead dogs lying rotting in the lonely streets. The human stories which conclude this brief report are even more devastating, a study of loneliness and the acceptance of fate. All of these are themes commonly explored by Herzog, and they're just as intriguing here.

I love Herzog. I love travel movies, and I love documentaries. Anybody who is into "abandoned porn" would love this. The abandoned city seemed like a dream for a zombie film maker back in the day. Now computers could probably do it, but to see a whole city deserted like that, especially with the volcanic smoke in the background, truly was apocalyptic.

The conversations with the people left behind were a little hard to follow, but still interesting. If a guy has nowhere to go, why should he leave? It's his home and, in the end, the volcano didn't interrupt after all. Vindication if there ever was.

Check it out. It's only 30 minutes anyway.