"Lessons of Darkness" (Lektionen in Finsternis, 1992) is almost a taunt of a title. Not only does Werner Herzog explicate no lessons, most (all?) of the documentary of the ravages of Saddam Hussein's invasion of and retreat from Kuwait was shot by day.

Herzog wheeled out the Big Guns of music to accompany oddly beautiful shots of oil spilled and oil wells burning (for seven months after Saddam Hussein retreated): a lot of Wagner, some Prokofiev, some "Peer Gynt," some of the Verdi Requiem, and (rather astonishingly) some of the most exalted Mahler music from his "Resurrection" (2nd) Symphony for the last scene and through the closing credit. Plus Gothic chapter intertitles and an epigram from Blaise Pascal and chunks of Revelations. H-e-a-v-y!

But the images are apocalyptic, including panning through a torture cell, bubbling crude, sun-eclipsing smoke, seeming extraterrestrials fighting oil-well fires. The discussion of the movie on the DVD (text not Herzog explaining himself, alas) says that it has "diabolically beautiful images." Should ecological catastrophe look so good, so aestheticized?

I am quite sure that Herzog did not make the film as an indictment of Saddam Hussein. There is no mention of who invaded, had the inhabitants tortured, and set the oil wells alight, and the opening aerial shots of Kuwait City blend into CNN footage of the "light show" of bombing Baghdad. The claim that the war "lasted only an hour" and that "all that is left of the city" from the opening shot (which I presume was Kuwait City after Saddam's troops were pushed out) is the burning oil fields goes beyond poetic license (IMO) to constitute disinformation (though, I think, to emulate science fiction, simulating being from another planet and only partially understanding what is going on more than to condemn or exonerate the destroyer who was responsible for many deaths as well as ecological catastrophe).

Whatever Herzog's intent for a more cosmic indictment of assaulting the planet, watching the movie reminded me of the crimes of Saddam Hussein that are too great and too numerous for hanging to be remotely adequate a punishment (suffocating in a tank of oil seems more appropriate to me...). This judgment of mine stands apart from my views of W's arrogant and incompetent invasion and occupation. We can criticize that and still recognize that even among the many despots with whom our government has done business and aided, this was one vicious and abominable character!

Getting back to what is on screen, there is testimony from two Kuwaitis. The first is a woman trying to speak but who has not been able to make recognizable sounds since the slaughter of her family. The second one has a young child who she says ceased speaking after witnessing his father being killed and whose head was trampled by soldiers (not identified, but clearly Iraqi). Perhaps Herzog found instances to fit his long-running fascination with muteness ("The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser," etc.), but I suspect this is acting rather than reporting what happened.

And if Kuwait in 1992 was a prevision of apocalypse, it was not one set off by general human greed or obliviousness of nature, but by one individual. Moreover, the fires were extinguished. Indeed much of the movie shows this being done by what we know are men in protective gear, but which Herzog exoticizes by recording nothing they say and inviting viewers to see space aliens coming to undo the destructive follies that within the framework of the movie are mysterious.

Herzog has no commitment to drawing a line between fact and fiction in his films ("documentaries" or "fiction" ones). He has a fascination with extreme situations (of which trying to put out the oil well fires is the one here) and an eye for beauties in/of desolation, disturbing beauties, whether barren rocks, incinerated bones, or oil lakes reflecting the sky.

One thing "Lessons of Darkness" clearly is not is a narrative. Whatever in it may have been staged (regarded by some as an affront in a "documentary" since at least the days of "Nanook of the North"), Herzog documented a catastrophe caused by one human being.

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The more frustrating (to viewers looking for sense along with images and music) 1971 "Fata Morgana" is on the other side of the disc. Apparently, there was a science fiction plot, but he cut everything of it  and left scenes shot crossing the rockier (less sandy) parts of the Sahara Desert. The scifi story involved aliens landing in the Sahara and looking around, so the unpeopled landscapes that we see and what they saw are the same.

There is no dialogue. The first third has the aged German film scholar Lotte Eisner (author of The Haunted Screen) reading from the Popol Vuhl, a Mayan creation story. There is pretty much no relationship between the text and the images. I don't recognize the music, but it is from masses from the times of Mozart and Haydn.

In the latter two thirds there are portentous texts devised by Herzog and music from Blind Faith (Sea of Joy) repeated several times and three songs by Leonard Cohen (Suzanne, So Long Marianne, Hey— That's No Way to Say Goodbye).

From a commentary track interview by Norman Hill. (most of which I listened to), I learned that the mirage of water and of a truck driving through or in front of the water mirage were found not staged. That is, it was not a special effect and Herzog says he has no idea from where the truck's image was reflected.

Is someone who does not distinguish documentaries from fiction films an entirely reliable narrator? Is someone who says he does not court danger who has courted so many dangers in so many film projects reliable? I'm surprised that I mostly tend to believe him, but I know that sincerity can be artificed!

At the start, an airplane landing is repeated and repeated and repeated. The middle part is obsessed with a monitor (an omnivorous Sahara lizard that can move very fast) captured by a naturalist and the last part returns several times to a sea turtle in a pool in the Canary Islands. There is also a Canary Island bordello madame pounding the piano and a pimp pounding a drum set and singing through a very distorting sound system. (Herzog says he included it  because it is the saddest he’s ever heard.)

Herzog sounds compassionate (on all his commentary tracks) and bemused by what he saw/found/photographed. His commentary tracks are entertaining and filled with good stories even (especially) for his movies that lack narrative drive and intended humor. The commentary track supplies meaning for those who crave it. The movie itself is a hallucinatory series of images that by itself drives those seeking meaning mad or (more likely) away.

© 2006, 2009  Stephen O. Murray




Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD