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arranged by Ernst Reijseger

Chronology

Maurice and Katia Krafft have dedicated their lives to studying the world’s volcanoes. Their legacy is groundbreaking footage of eruptions and their aftermath, compiled in this visually stunning collage. Sabat MaterTrad. It’s all the kind of thing Wonka would pull out those golden tickets for, touring the chaotic fringe with a certain operatic whimsy. The sheer danger is only surpassed by the innocence, it’s almost childlike to travel the great dangers. From Cave of Forgotten Dreams to Lo and Behold, Herzog aims for a total departure from the natural world towards the mental universe, resulting in complete internal and external distortions.

The Kroffts themselves

He is not interested in normal people. I take this from his Chatwin documentary too, the lost art of the explorer of the mental, those catalog nuggets of culture and history… now everything is available just a click away, everything is outsourced by the masses. A filmmaker can find the few that remain. In fact, the resources of these explorers are so scarce that another director beat Herzog to the punch with the sister documentary Fire of Love. BUT – another documentary beat them both to it.

Herzog will turn nature’s disasters into acts of creation

Like another great director, Terrence Malick, Herzog is in no rush to always give you one thing at a time. He’s that operatic director who inserts movements that build to crescendos at just the right moment, he can paint a whole film and then, boom, hit you with that one point that changes you. Other directors will try to cram as many climaxes into a work as possible. The image of the children playing with the volcanic ash as if it were sand on a beach recalls Herzog’s own biography, when as a child he played in the rubble of buildings destroyed by World War II, still in the absolute safety of childish adventures. This is how a few scattered images can achieve depth in a cinema that is a cross between literature and photography. He is known for considering himself an anti-intellectual artist, but most of Herzog’s big moments seem to be both, like his breakdown in the final passage about the cloud that destroyed them.

Beneath Herzog’s circus facade lies an academic professor

The sheer repertoire of images found here feels like an apocalyptic acid western à la Jodoworsky, a Kurosawa-esque depiction of groups in motion, or 1950s films about flying saucers. Herzog has his formula, but he gets so bold and effortless with his experience that he can do it in his sleep. Opera. He holds back the footage we’re here for until the end, all that lava, as the visual climax of the opera. Directors nine times out of ten just show you lava and fire. In these final scenes, the master is back, bringing you to tears.

That’s why we’re watching these almost surreal parallels, juxtapositions, beauty and discomfort

Ultimately, it’s not just a parallel to his themes, but here it’s a fresh meta-view of Herzog’s love of cinema, filmmaking and the image. That’s the beauty of Herzog: he always seems like the audience on our side.