Lessons of Darkness (1992), Werner Herzog, A
The most successful of Herzog’s documentary-as-science-fiction films. Images of Kuwait before, during and (mostly) after the 1991 Gulf War are presented with no historical context. Just as images with dreamlike, slightly whacked-out narration. If you’ve heard Werner Herzog speak before, you know what kind of voice he’s got. We dwell mostly on oil spills and fires, and the men trying to tame them. We see the violence against the planet, then huge parabolas oil, as if the black liquid is an arterial death spurt. Bubbling oil, melted infrastructure, dynamite detonation in slo-motion film footage shot from a helicopter to the music of Rachmaninoff and Wagner and Mahler. I can’t think of anything not to like. I’m ordering the DVD off of Amazon, but I am so glad I got to see this in a theater.