Au fin fond de la fournaise

Werner Herzog proves again he is a monster of a documentarian. Into the Inferno is filled with stunning imagery and sounds that truly left me awestruck. The substance of the film itself was not quite what I was expecting, but it turned out that that was a good thing. This film goes places you would never really think of, and sheds light on many different cultural connections to volcanoes around the world. It more about people, societies, and culture than it is about science and geology, although there is some of that too. If you are at all interested in volcanoes and how people react and interact with them around the world, this film will pleasantly surprise you.

Whilst this film does contain some outstanding images of volcanoes, eruptions and lava, these parts are few and far between. I was hoping for an exploration of the power and activity of volcanoes around the world, but was only given a glimpse of a few sites, with very little in terms of information about how volcanic action actually arises. This doc focuses more on worldwide spiritual views around volcanoes, with some superficial information about the effects of eruptions on our planet.

This documentary does not try to scientifically explore volcanoes, it's about the emotional impact volcanoes have on human beings.

On a subjective level, looking into the red bubbling abyss was pleasant and terrifying at the same time.

I enjoyed the volcano parts. The right turns into cultural ideologies made no sense. Pick a topic already.

Into the Inferno (2016)

*** (out of 4)

Werner Herzog narrates and directs this documentary, which takes a look at various volcanoes throughout the world.

I should probably start off by saying Herzog is one of my favorite filmmakers and he might be my favorite documentary filmmaker. INTO THE INFERNO was a rather interesting idea but I'm not quite sure how well the end product turned out. If you're expecting a straight documentary from the maverick filmmaker then I'm going to guess that you're unfamiliar with his work. He's created some true masterpieces but none of them play like you'd expect them to.

That's certainly true for this picture, which makes you believe that it's about volcanoes but you soon realize that the director is up to his bag of tricks and delivers more but I'll get into that in a bit. As far as the volcano stuff goes, it's extremely interesting to say the least. We're pretty much given a tour of the globe as we see various volcanoes as well as get to learn about their history and get to hear some stories about previous explosions. All of this stuff is brilliantly captured as the cinematography is downright terrific and the visual images of the lave are so beautiful that I could have easily watched them for hours.

With that said, the film is also about various thoughts on life and other issues. I freely admit that I didn't think this segment of the film worked and sadly there's a lot of this stuff and I think it really brought the film down. The sequences in North Korea are a prime example as we get to hear stories of how the people there are basically hostages to their leader. What does this stuff have to do with volcanoes? All of it really seems like it should have been left for a different documentary but, as I said, Herzog likes to mix things up but I just don't think it was a success here.