nienhuis

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.

Three Kongs With Peter Jackson's KING KONG (2005), we now have three different versions of the King Kong fable in three distinct eras of Hollywood cinema. The 1933 original was a huge commercial success; the 1976 remake was widely criticized; and the 2005 version is another gigantic box-office hit. There is perhaps much to be learned by now looking at all three versions with an objective, well-informed, and analytical mind (something I will leave to those more qualified). I would just like to suggest that it is far too easy to be nostalgic about the original KING KONG, to be overly critical of the 1976 version, and to be overly enthusiastic about the most recent attempt. Objectivity is rare for the human mind, but, setting aside emotional responses as much as possible, what do we see as we compare these three versions? The original KING KONG was a difficult story to make convincing: a beautiful woman kindles some strange, relatively gentle response in a giant ape, and a highly commercialized culture ultimately exploits the ape for its entertainment purposes. This story obviously provides grist for an intelligent and provocative perspective on what it means to be human, but problems of narrative plausibility abound, starting with the problems of scale. How big and powerful is this ape and how can his size and power be represented consistently in narrative detail? For example, how do they get this creature back to New York? The original version took a stab at something remotely plausible, mentioning that the adventurers would build a raft to haul Kong back behind the boat. The 1976 version brought Kong back in a different and enormous boat. Peter Jackson simply ignores this narrative problem and probably expects that his enthusiastic viewers, besotted by contemporary cinematic spectacle, will overlook whatever is convenient for him to avoid. The King Kong story raises a plethora of other narrative problems, and in each version one can find many implausible details. It's a hard story to tell if one is looking for a seamlessly convincing narrative.

It's also a hard story to tell if one is looking for an intelligent point. What does this bizarre relationship between the woman and the ape add up to? The original puts its faith in a cliché about beauty taming the beast, whatever that might mean. The 1976 version seems to offer a number of possibilities, and Peter Jackson may be ignoring the need for a point altogether. Perhaps in an attempt to make a more compelling point, both revisions provide more back story and elaboration, which makes the movie longer. This elaboration, although satisfying in most cases for plausibility, is perhaps unnecessary, especially if KING KONG must ultimately be successful as a fable. For my money and for what it's worth, the 1976 version has been unjustly bashed and is the most intelligent, interesting, and affecting of the three.

Lessons of Darkness (1992) looks and acts like a companion piece to Fata Morgana (1971). As with the earlier film, Lessons either captures viewers or leaves them confused and bored within the first few minutes. Early in Lessons we see an aerial shot of an unusual city. It is obviously a contemporary urban area because we see highways, traffic, stoplights, and large buildings, but it is also obvious that it is not an American city. The narrator (Herzog) announces that this city is about to be destroyed by war and the thought of this strange but vibrant place being destroyed becomes completely repugnant. Thus, Herzog succeeds here with the approach he initially planned and then abandoned in Fata Morgana. Lessons of Darkness triumphs as a mock Science Fiction story of an apocalypse that threatens all of civilization. Luckily, it doesn't take a college education to realize that the footage is shot in Iraq in the aftermath of the First Gulf War. Luckily as well, Herzog's anti-war statement does not need to be explicit to be effective. Early in the film, interviews with two Iraqi women suggest the human price of this military event. In the rest of the film, humans appear to be on the periphery of the "action" but they keep coming back to the center of our consciousness. Those who persist in their viewing will eventually encounter a chilling repetitiveness in this film (the fires are still burning!) However, that repetitiveness can become cumulative and mesmerizing. This is not a film experience for everyone, but for those who have a taste for it the film will be unforgettable.