Lessons of Darkness

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Lessons of Darkness
"Has life without fire become unbearable for them?"
Directed by	Werner Herzog
Produced by	Paul Berriff Werner Herzog
Written by	Werner Herzog
Starring	Werner Herzog
Cinematography	Simon Werry Paul Berriff Rainer Klausmann
Editing by	Rainer Standke
Distributed by	Hemispheric Pictures LLC
Release date(s)	1992
Running time	50 min
Language	German English Arabic
IMDb profile

Lessons of Darkness (German: Lektionen in Finsternis) is a 1992 film by German director Werner Herzog.

An effective companion to his earlier film Fata Morgana, Herzog again perceives the desert as a landscape with its own voice. Virtually devoid of commentary, the imagery concentrates on the aftermath of the first Gulf War - specifically on the Kuwaiti oil fires.

Herzog uses truck-mounted shots as in Fata Morgana, static shots of the workers near the oil fires, and many helicopter shots of the bleak landscape. Herzog's sparse narration interprets the imagery out of its documentary context, and into a poetic fiction: the workers are described as "creatures" whose behavior is motivated by madness and a desire to perpetuate the damage that they are witnessing. A crucial "plot point" involves the workers, shortly after succeeding in stopping the fires, re-igniting the flow of oil. The narration asks, "Has life without fire become unbearable for them?" The film begins with a quotation, attributed to Blaise Pascal: "The collapse of the stellar universe will occur-- like creation-- in grandiose splendor." The text in fact was written by Herzog for the film, and attributed to Pascal to give the film's opening a certain mood.^[1]

This technique of re-contextualizing documentary footage was reused in Herzog's later film The Wild Blue Yonder.

[edit] Soundtrack Listing

• Edvard Grieg - Peer Gynt
• Gustav Mahler - Symphony No. 2
• Arvo Pärt - Stabat Mater
• Sergei Prokofiev - Sonata No. 2 Op.56
• Franz Schubert - Notturno op. 148
• Giuseppe Verdi - Requiem
• Richard Wagner - Das Rheingold
• Richard Wagner - Parsifal
• Richard Wagner - Gotterdammerung

[edit] References

1. ^ Herzog, Werner (2001). Herzog on Herzog. Faber and Faber. ISBN 0-571-20708-1. 

[edit] External links

• Lessons of Darkness at the Internet Movie Database

v • d • e Films directed by Werner Herzog 1960s Herakles (1962) • Game in the Sand (1964) • The Unprecedented Defence of the Fortress Deutschkreuz (1967) • Last Words (1967) • Signs of Life (1968) • The Flying Doctors of East Africa (1969) Precautions Against Fanatics (1969) 1970s Even Dwarfs Started Small (1970) • Handicapped Future (1971) • Land of Silence and Darkness (1971) • Fata Morgana (1971) • Aguirre, the Wrath of God (1972) • The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner (1974) • The Enigma of Kaspar Hauser (1974) • Heart of Glass (1976) • No One Will Play With Me (1976) • How Much Wood Would a Woodchuck Chuck (1976) • Stroszek (1977) • La Soufrière (1977) • Nosferatu the Vampyre (1978) • Woyzeck (1978) 1980s Huie's Sermon (1981) • God's Angry Man (1981) • Fitzcarraldo (1982) • Ballad of the Little Soldier (1984) • The Dark Glow of the Mountains (1984) • Where the Green Ants Dream (1984) • Portrait Werner Herzog (1986) • Cobra Verde (1987) • The French as seen by... (1988) • Wodaabe - Herdsmen of the Sun (1989) 1990s Film Lesson 1-4 (1990) • Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990) • Jag Mandir (1991) • Scream of Stone (1991) • Lessons of Darkness (1992) • Bells from the Deep (1993) • The Transformation of the World Into Music (1994) • Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices (1995) • Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1997) • The Lord and the Laden (1999) • My Best Fiend (1999) 2000s Wings of Hope (2000) • Invincible (2001) • Pilgrimage (2001) • Ten Minutes Older (2002) • Wheel of Time (2003) • The White Diamond (2004) • Grizzly Man (2005) • The Wild Blue Yonder (2005) • Rescue Dawn (2007) • Encounters at the End of the World (2007) • The Cheese and the Worms (2008)