As strongly as I lauded Herzog’s other 2005 documentary, The White Diamond is undoubtedly the better film. Grizzly Man’s Timothy Treadwell is the madder madman, and Graham Dorrington — the designer of the titular airship — isn’t as ill-fated as Herzog’s others. But this is to compare The White Diamond to Herzog’s fictional protagonists, which under-services this film as it more clearly embodies Herzog’s lifelong search for ecstatic truth, one more poetically embodied in his nonfiction films.
Dorrington’s airship is made to explore the canopy of the South American rainforest (the setting obviously recalls that of Aguirre and Fitzcarraldo, so perhaps a comparison to those films is necessary). After some testing and a near disastrous trial run, it’s in fine working order, and it’s here where the film begins to stray in a few different directions (it even includes a dance sequence; no, really), maintaining (one of) its central theme(s) of man’s futility to fully control nature. Dorrington and co. set up camp near the Kaieteur Falls, and intermittently Herzog follows one of the crew to observe it. Each evening, it seems, an enormous flock of Swifts dart into a cave behind the waterfall—it is an extraordinary image that is captured in the film’s final shot. The locals scoff at the attempt of one of Dorrington’s crew to belay down toward the crevasse, in an effort to film its interior. In respect, Herzog opts not to show the footage, nature remaining free of man’s exploitation.
by Rumsey Taylor | Source: Wellspring DVD
16 Oct 2006 10:44 AM | Comments (1)
Watching this movie – particularly the extended shot of the birds flying into the cave behind the falls – was like a religious experience (one thinks of Frank Lloyd Wright’s statements: “I believe in God, I just call it nature”). Yet another oversight by the Academy (as cute as the little penguins were).
rob
17 October 2006
7:15 AM
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