Paese del silenzio e dell'oscurità

This Herzog film is unorthodox, as usual. It is approximately an hour and a half long, and somewhere in the middle it might seem like the film is not going anywhere. However, those who permit themselves to feel the power of this harrowing documentary will discover in the ending of the film a moment well worth their persistence. What is the purpose of mature film making? I like to think it is the sincere attempt to help us understand what it means to be human. If this generalization is accurate, Herzog's LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS is mature film making. It is literally investigating what it means to be human without the sense of sight and speech. It has a heroic figure in 56-year old Fini Straubinger and a number of other characters who are compellingly mystifying. We wonder what is happening inside the minds of these human beings who are partially cut off from the world around them.

What a beautiful film this is.

I saw it many years ago and it holds up on a re-watch. What makes this different from other documentarians making a film on this subject is that Werner does not pity and patronize these people. Instead he is fascinated by them, he reveres and admires them and the unique perspective they have on life.

Their experience of consciousness itself is completely different from ours and in this wonderful humane film the great man shows the utmost respect for his subjects.

My only complaint is that Herzog doesn't narrate the film himself.

Only the great Werner Herzog could've made this film.

Story of Fini Straubinger who is "trapped" in her own body being both deaf and blind. Since the condition came on later in life she is able to speak and tells us what its like. We also watch as she goes around helping those like her. Communication is done via touching or writing on the hands. It becomes clear that the people in the film with this condition are trying to live full lives. An amazing film that shows us what its like not to be able to hear or see. Hopeful and yet unnerving-its not a state one really wants to contemplate having-its an important film since we see the world with a different set of eyes. Taking the matter even further Herzog and his crew also show us what its like for people born deaf and blind and how hard it is for them to even learn the basic things we take for granted. Moving. Haunting. Worth a look since it will make you reflect on how we get along.

Land of Silence is a really great documentary, one of Herzog's best I must say. His other documentaries are a bit uneven, which his movies are not. But this one, as well as his recent "Little Dieter Needs to Fly", are amongst the most moving documentaries I've ever seen. And they are still unique, Werner Herzog's personal traits can be seen everywhere. The transcendent landscapes, pure human beings, humour, it's all there.

The text on the back cover explains the movie very well:

"Some who live in this land have learned to speak, though they communicate with each other by touch language: what they say comes from the most profound depths of human experience, and is often startingly beautiful and exiting. This is not a depressing movie at all. Neither is it a movie for voyeurs of the grotesque. As Anita Earle writes, 'It is, rather, a testament from another plane of existence'"

At some points in this movie I laughed. The camera often stays very long on lonely, depressing people who spend their days either sitting or lying down. But it wasn't meant to be comedy, it is a way for me to step back. It is a very 'close' picture, it really gets to you. You're thinking "Jesus", and you want to react. And still, it is an artwork.

Herzog's documentary is a stunning revelation of what it means to be human. When we first see the profoundly disabled people on the screen, we shy away from them, disturbed to consider that these creatures might be people like ourselves. But through the love of the woman whose work Herzog captures here, we discover them as precisely what they -- and we -- are: human brothers and sisters endowed by God with both the need for love and an unimpaired (despite physical handicaps) capacity to love. Watching this movie some 20 years ago, I found this remarkable film one of the most exhilarating cinematic experiences of my life (and I'm now 55 and a veteran of many, many movies, and this film retains its wondrous place in my memory), a testament to the unity of the universal human family told with the artist's -- Herzog's -- aesthetic objectivity, yet clearly giving voice to a passionate embrace and advocacy of life, no matter how physically disabled.