Lessons of Darkness (Lektionen in Finsternis)

Werner Herzog’s chilling fifty-minute film uses real footage of the burning oil fields in Kuwait combined with sparse interviews and an uncomfortably detached voice-over to create a post-apocalyptic world out of reality. He splits the footage up into thirteen chapters that suggest a war on a cataclysmic scale. The film teeters off the cliff of documentary and falls into morose science fiction. When the first Gulf war ended, Herzog travelled twice to Kuwait with a small crew in order to film the wounds, traces and scars of what happened. He juxtaposes dramatic images of burning oil wells with the watchful eyes of an alien on his first visit to Earth, a place that hardly resembles the planet as we know it. An off-screen voice tells us of the noise of civilization, the silence of the desert and the glow of the burning oil wells. In this dreadful journey, we meet several witnesses of tragedy. The film is a requiem on the destiny of our planet, taking the consequences of the Gulf War as a point of departure. Most parts of the film include Wagner’s music as a background, which gives the stunning pictures an even stronger impact.

Director: Werner Herzog
Writer: Werner Herzog
Runtime: 52 min
Genre: Documentary
Language: German
Subtitles: English
Production Year: 1992