Preston-10

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 is one of these self-indulgent movies where the main objective is for the artist to draw the audience into his world under the assumption that there's a mutual agreement that what we observe may appear too distant and unreachable to us. It's kind of like if your mother-in-law came back from visiting Europe and she starts showing you all of her pictures for 2 hours. Chris Marker isn't so crude, however, I always felt that when one is experiencing the culture of a distant land the medium of film was never the choice way to experience it. Rather, the exploration of different cultures when traveling must be experienced within the moment, rather than taking the moment with a camera and experiencing it at home. This is where Sans Soleil becomes a success or a failure in the eyes of the audience: do we live in the moment close to the same way the filmmaker does? This is something only you can answer when watching it. Personally, It was all over the map for me (no pun intended), I think the traveler has the gift of reading people and of showing how their culture has become a mirror for their lives.