The Wild Blue Yonder (2005 - USA)

[trevor826]

Directed by Werner Herzog

Starring Brad Dourif


This is a strange amalgam of styles, the majority of the footage is from Nasa, inside the Space Shuttle and from an Antarctic diving expedition along with plenty of stock footage. There is very little filmed specifically for the film and what there is is pretty basic.

The soundtrack is pretty remarkable though, similar in style to another of his documentaries, “The White Diamond” featuring cellist Ernst Reijseger with Senegalese singer Mola Sylla also a Sardinian choir, a very eclectic mix which adds a genuine mystique to the proceedings.

The one constant is Brad Dourif, who although seen rarely, narrates throughout the film and is the nameless alien from the Andromeda system. Basically the whole story As told from an alien perspective concerns humanities over population and abuse of Earth forcing us to look to the stars for a new home. The aliens originally landed here from Andromeda, they looked to the Earth with envious eyes as their planet became a frozen wasteland and built a city with shopping malls (now a crumbling ruin) for their people, it failed miserably. The paradox is, the crew sent into space to find a new world have found one, a world encased in ice but suitable for human habitation, the planet Andromeda.

Done with a touch of humour, this is a warning against the mass consumerism that is decimating the resources of Earth, Brad Dourif makes a good alien and his narration holds all the collective images together. As already said, the soundtrack is something else, very diverse and strange. Overall the project just about hangs together and works but has a very low budget rushed feel to it.

This was shown recently on BBC4, (the film was partly funded by the BBC) but to be honest, I would think it would be a totally different (far more inspirational and immersive) experience on the big screen.

My recommendation, if this has piqued your interest, try and catch it in the cinema where the images and sound will be far more potent.

Cheers Trev.

[oscar jubis]

Herzog is one of the great living filmmakers, in my opinion. I hope to eventually watch everything this highly prolific director made over the past forty years. There are recurrent themes throughout his career and a willingness to experiment with form. The Wild Blue Yonder belongs to a thread in his work in which he marries disparate elements, some of which are existing documentary materials, to create a unique type of poetic fiction. The method is, to put it simply, to separate the visuals from their specific, original context and create a new one for them. (The only other filmmaker I know who has attempted something similar in feature length is Jean Rouch. He called these films "ethno-fictions", a blending of ethnography and fiction. One example is Moi, Un Noir. It's a road film about three men from Sierra Leone migrating from the rural interior to a coastal city in search of a better life. Rouch flew the men to France where he allowed them complete freedom to narrate and add sound and music to the film. They gave themselves fictional names and re-interpreted the visuals.)

In Fata Morgana, images of desert landscapes and dwellers shot in Northern Africa are used to illustrate the Maya creation myth as described in their sacred book Popol Vuh. The myth is narrated in voice-over, in English, by Lotte Eisner, the legendary german film critic who was a curator at the French Cinematheque for years. An additional and important element is the Leonard Cohen songs in the soundtrack.
Lessons of Darkness brings the horror of the 1991 Gulf War to a more surreal level – awesome images of burning oil fields and massive destruction are treated as if from any war throughout history. Herzog's narration gives them a certain unearthly detachment, as if alien eyes contemplate the “embarrassed landscapes” of a planet and the strange creatures (heavy-suited firefighters and a boy who has lost the ability to talk) that inhabit it. It's a masterpiece.
The Wild Blue Yonder is perhaps the most daring and experimental of the three works because the images come from several distinct sources. The music score by itself is uncharted territory.

The three films abovementioned are available on dvd with informative and amusing commentary by Mr. Herzog. He promises another film like them in the near future. His latest is a fiction feature starring Christian Bale, based on his documentary Little Dieter Needs to Fly.