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.

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.

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 ..

Werner Herzog's documentary 'La Soufrière' captures the tense anticipation of an impending volcanic eruption on the island of Guadeloupe, as the filmmaker and his crew risk their lives to document the event. Although the eruption never came, the film remains a fascinating meditation on human mortality and ecological disaster, revealing Herzog's unwavering dedication to capturing the elusive cinematic sublime. While the lack of a violent climax adds an element of self-mockery to the final product, 'La Soufrière' remains a must-watch for film enthusiasts seeking a potent exploration of the intersection between human curiosity and natural danger.