Into the Infer­no – first look review

Through­out the years, Wern­er Her­zog has devel­oped both a trade­mark approach to doc­u­men­tary film­mak­ing and a self-aware per­sona beloved by crit­ics and the inter­net. This vol­cano movie finds him once again deploy­ing these skills with ease and effi­cien­cy, mak­ing for an enter­tain­ing, if only mild­ly illu­mi­nat­ing, explo­ration of the sig­nif­i­cance attrib­uted to vol­ca­noes by var­i­ous cultures.

The sci­en­tif­ic expla­na­tion for erup­tions doesn’t inter­est Her­zog as much as the spir­i­tu­al impact they have on the peo­ple liv­ing around them through the cen­turies. While some believe vol­ca­noes con­tain the spir­its of the deceased, oth­ers appro­pri­ate the phenomenon’s men­ac­ing nature for their own polit­i­cal pur­pos­es. To approach these cul­tures, Her­zog choos­es to stay most­ly behind the cam­era and let some­one at least as pas­sion­ate about vol­ca­noes as him do the talking.

This sur­ro­gate is Clive Oppen­heimer, a vol­ca­nol­o­gist Her­zog had met while mak­ing his pre­vi­ous film on the sub­ject, Encoun­ters at the End of the World. Oppen­heimer brings his own knowl­edge to the table, but also func­tions as a com­plic­it stooge to the Ger­man direc­tor. Refer­ring exten­sive­ly to Herzog’s fil­mog­ra­phy and indulging in his myth-mak­ing, Oppen­heimer doesn’t hes­i­tate to tack­le the ques­tion always raised about the direc­tor, name­ly that of his insanity.

In a typ­i­cal­ly goofy scene, the expert finds him­self stand­ing on the brink of a fum­ing vol­cano and talk­ing to Wern­er, but remains non­plussed by both his dan­ger­ous sur­round­ings and the absurd ques­tion, reply­ing that if Wern­er were crazy, he prob­a­bly would have drowned in the Ama­zon or been eat­en by a griz­zly bear years ago.

As fun­ny as Herzog’s pas­sion­ate vision may be, the star­tling poet­ry he recog­nis­es in such moments is unde­ni­able. The meet­ing of nature’s over­whelm­ing force and the vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty of humans can either be strange­ly scary and amus­ing or, as in this scene, pure­ly sub­lime and daunt­ing. The direc­tor delves into the abstract beau­ty of erup­tions and spir­i­tu­al beliefs at strate­gic moments, mak­ing his film flow at an enthralling pace.

Mes­meris­ing shots of mag­ma or sequences show­ing cer­e­monies for the spir­its of vol­ca­noes are joy­ful­ly jux­ta­posed with some more ridicu­lous aspects of the sci­en­tif­ic or spir­i­tu­al fas­ci­na­tions that odd char­ac­ters have for this phe­nom­e­non. In a lucky twist of fate, one such strange find­ings is a church, built for a vol­cano spir­it, that has the shape of a chick­en. This anom­aly – that only Her­zog could have found and decid­ed to keep in his film – is evi­dent­ly hilar­i­ous in itself, but even more so when con­sid­er­ing the impor­tance of chick­ens in his filmography.

Togeth­er with these fas­ci­nat­ing and amus­ing obser­va­tions, Her­zog and Oppen­heimer don’t shy away from the polit­i­cal. In fact, they seem to seek it out for shock val­ue, but their dis­cov­er­ies in North Korea remain unde­ni­ably sober­ing. Just as his visu­al jokes tend to be at once sim­ple and effec­tive, Herzog’s alarm­ing polit­i­cal com­men­tary is hon­est and, in fact, reminds of the tru­ly dis­tress­ing facts at the ori­gin of the toned-down stereo­type of the com­mu­nist state, as it has recent­ly spread in doc­u­men­taries and in pop culture.

It is with this real­is­tic yet pes­simistic tone that Her­zog ends his enter­tain­ing, fair­ly instruc­tive and well-round­ed film. As expect­ed, and for the great plea­sure of all his fans (and for spec­ta­tors dis­cov­er­ing his work!), the direc­tor com­ments in voiceover on the utter dis­re­gard that vol­ca­noes have for the human race. Her­zog, how­ev­er, sure hasn’t stopped car­ing for them.