Saturday, April 15, 2006

The White Diamond

Werner Herzog, UK / Germany, 2004
4 out of 4 stars

Fantastic! There is such a great wealth of beautiful imagery in this film, yet there is also an amazing, bizarre artistic vision at work. This comes before Grizzly Man, which I saw earlier, in the oeuvre of Werner Herzog, and you can see some of the same motifs at play; a tragic background of a quest for capturing nature that is both admirable and foolish, shameless intrusions by the director/narrator, and uncomfortable, lingering shots that wrench unwanted sentiments out of the subjects Herzog is scrutinizing. The last one is weird because Herzog was working from the amazing treasure trove of found footage that Timothy Treadwell left behind for him, whereas here, he’s always at the helm (I suppose Herzog did the film on Treadwell because Treadwell captured himself in the same way that Herzog would have sought to capture Treadwell).

Of course, Herzog’s perspective on the whole thing is amazingly skewed and there’s no real pretense of objectivity, but this element really works in his films, for some reason. Meanwhile, I find it especially fascinating that there are so many shots in this film that are more beautiful than anything I’ve seen in a narrative, fictional film this year. See it for the swifts, the waterfall, the airship, or the whacked-out maestro himself.

Source: Genius DVD
14 April, 10:04 PM

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