Onde Sonham as Formigas Verdes

I would classify this movie as being Herzog's most mainstream (which I know isn't saying that much), but still, for a movie that takes place in possibly the most minimalist setting (a stretch of land on the Australian outback littered with the remains of drilling for minerals) I found it absolutely engrossing. This is the movie: A group of aborigines refuse to budge from a small strip of land when a mining company wants to occupy it for drilling purposes; their reason: `This is the land where the green ants dream'. When one of the aborigines is asked why they will not budge even after offered a lucrative settlement, he responds, `How would you like it if someone drove a bulldozer over your church.' Immediately I knew this movie would work. It is a very good film, possibly one of the most finely put together movies I can think of. Rather than being an all and out movie that puts down imperialism, civilization, and national need to exploit resources.it raises some interesting questions about ownership and the present destruction of ancient civilizations. My one fault with the movie is that you know when Herzog is setting things up for an awe-inspired moment, and it does get a little dry toward the end, but still a grand achievement.

This film has been ignored by the mainstream media. It portrays the futile struggle of an Aboriginal tribe against the needs of civilization. From the first confrontation you know how it will end, but you keep hoping that perhaps the mindless and soul-less rush of progress won't wipe out one more culture.

Herzog captures the story in a series of vignettes, each one expressing a fleeting thought or detail.

At one point Bruce Spence is trying to explain his theory of space and time to one of the elders, who rebukes him. His reply to the elder is "I'm trying to understand, really I am." The movie is a predecessor to "Rabbit Proof Fence". It makes you realize that as a society we just don't get it.

I highly recommend it.

Some idiot claims that this movie is horrible but I would argue that this he/she is mistaken. None of the dialog is improvised though the performances are raw which the previous reviewer might be confusing with improvisation. Most fans of Herzog are also aware that Herzog's dialog is highly stylized and often surreal which may, to close minded people, be misconstrued as trite or childish. Perhaps it is something one has to get used to or maybe Herzog films are best left to those who are willing to view something out of the ordinary. Of course, not everyone will like everything, but opinions that are expressed should only come from people who are informed as an uninformed opinion is like showing a dog a card trick.

Where the Green Ants Dream- at the least featuring one of Werner Herzog's best titled films as it's one of those amazing visuals one gets out of the strangest of the director's work- is placed in a somewhat minor cannon of the German maverick's work, and maybe rightfully so. It's about a controversial topic, that of the rights of the Aborigines and the Australian's seeming right via original British Imperial rule, and it features practically all non-professional actors and some shaky transitions between its sturdy plot and non-sequiters and quintessential Herzogian landscapes. If I were recommending Herzog films to a friend this wouldn't be at the top of the crop (unless of course one is fervently into Australian issue movies or love that one song from the 80s "Beds are Burning"). But it's by no means an over-ambitious quagmire like Heart of Glass, and at worst it's occasionally dull or, and I hate to say this for Herzog, too eccentric for its own good.

It's not to say some of Herzog's bits of character eccentricities aren't out of place. There's featured here amid the story of an aboriginal tribe peacefully protesting and standing their ground against construction on a sacred land of the title name various strange bits of business. My favorite was that mid-section involving the Aborigines asking for a plane, assumed on the part of the construction group as part of the negotiations, and features in one of the oddest parts of the movie the one black pilot from the Aussie air force who keeps singing "My baby does the hanky-panky" to himself. And there's some cool visuals of stock tornado footage and those barren wastelands and perplexing dunes and pyramid-hills in the desert plains that provide the director some choice locations to film. It's hard not to see for the Herzog fan some allotment of poetry.

But there are some problems that I couldn't quite ignore. Despite the acting force of Bruce Spence, who displays far more here as a gifted actor (contrary to what another IMDb reviewer said) and as more than just the kooky flier in the Mad Max movies, the acting is in general fairly weak and at best standard and too off-kilter. It's fairly distracting when Herzog can't quite corral his actors as well as with his technical skills; this also despite some real 'presence' with the two aboriginal chiefs. And certain big scenes, like the courtroom, aren't as effective as might have been intended and come off as dry and too naturalistic and stuffy.

And yet, even with these qualms, it's got some real courage and conviction with its message, which is that aside from the typical "respect the native culture" beat is that people need to learn to live together and not have cultures lost and squandered in the face of bigotry and imperialistic attitudes that should have been squashed decades ago. It's a very good, if not great, examination of a meeting of two societies and an identification of "the other" by a filmmaker willing to take it on. 7.5/10

The geologist Lance Hackett is employed by an Australian mining company to map the subsoil of a desert area covered with ant hills prior to a possible uranium extraction. His work is impeded by some aborigines who explain that this is the place where the green ants dream.

Werner Herzog makes great films, and he is quite prolific in what he does. His career sees to be divided between unusual drama and documentaries of different cultures. This film, perhaps more than any other of his work, really blends the two. While not a documentary, it really tries to celebrate aborigine culture.

Of all the films based in Australia, this is one of the better ones. It may not be reality, but it is in some ways better than reality. Herzog creates a world that is completely believable.