La Soufrière - Warten auf eine unausweichliche Katastrophe

Wonderful Herzog documentary, not least because it makes fun of his own certainties. The year is 1976, and the island of Guadaloupe is under a rumbling volcano. Herzog hears about how the town completely evacuated except for one man, and, being Herzog, flies out, with two cameramen, to meet him. Herzog has always had a rather tiring obsession with marginals of society, the dumb, the deaf, the wild, the insane, etc., anyone who refuses to live by society's conventions, but adamantly follows his own way, even if it is to destruction. This is tiring because this 'rebellion' is rarely chosen, or even conscious, and one gets the nagging feeling that Herzog is patronising his subjects, interpreting their pain for them, because they don't know any better.

So one's fears about the film are immediately raised as Herzog and friends helicopter into the island. But what he finds there is more like an episode of THE AVENGERS. There is something very frightening and eerie about an empty, abandoned town, prompting all kinds of disturbing fears. The traffic lights still flash, TVs are still on, donkeys roam the streets, on which lie dying, starving dogs. Snakes, fleeing from the imminent eruption, float drowned in the sea. There is not a boat or vehicle in sight in this coastal town. This is magnificent filmmaking, also reminiscent of Resnais' tracks in NUIT ET BROUILLARD through abandoned concentration camps.

Herzog then does typically loopy things, trying to get as far up the volcano as he can, only to be hilariously pushed back by toxic clouds. The man's hubris, usually so grating, is amusingly punctured here. To build up our fears, he relates the tale of nearby Martinique, whose volcano gave out the exact same warnings, and whose principle city was completely reduced to cinders, 20000 dying. Only one man survived, an incorrigible prisoner, locked in isolation. His burns made him a favorite on the freak-show circuit, and Herzog, somewhat suspectly, shows us photographs of him with his injuries, inviting us to join in the gawping.

I won't spoil what happens next, but Herzog's grand narrative of the epic, rebellion, the extremes of experience are give short shrift from Nature and Reality. But there's no denying the power of interviews with men just lying there waiting for 'God's will'. A great film, one of Herzog's best.

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.

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.

Minor phreatic eruptions of the volcano La Soufriere in 1976 resulted in Basse-Terre,the island's capital city being evacuated as a precaution.Whilst Guadeloupe was almost entirely deserted by its citizens the German filmmaker Werner Herzog traveled to the abandoned town of Basse-Terre to find a peasant who had refused to leave his home on the slopes of the volcano.His journey is recorded "La Soufrière"-eerie and poignant documentary about death and abandonment.The crew of three creatively insane filmmakers treks up to the caldera,where clouds of sulfurous steam and ash emit from within.Pure harbingers of death.Herzog converses with three poor men,who stayed in Basse-Terre:one says he is waiting for death and demonstrates his posture for doing so;another says he has stayed to look after the animals.They are all not afraid of dying.Fortunately paroxysmal eruption never happened,but we have to remember that there is no escape from death and loneliness.8 out of 10.

I think Herzog is Great! And I think La Soufriere is REALLY interesting thing to document! But something was Missing! I really wanted him to break into the police station For example explore more streets or spend more times with those who refused to leave! Umm! I am just thinking that he could work on better scripting an plotting with the perfect place and items! Also Music was horribly horrible seriously!.. But I really think i rated it 7 Just because it's soufriere and He is Herzog :). I mean am working on some documentary myself and am not really taking such risks like documenting an active Volcano For Example! but am working about different sort Of Volcanoes include Live Ammunition and Birdshot. anyway, i appreciate his work a lot. but not really this one ..