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Wild Blue Yonder, The (2005)

** (out of 4)

An alien planet starts to die so their inhabitants head off to find life in another universe. Their ships eventually land on Earth and years later one of the surviving aliens (Brad Dourif) recalls their journey. This is an extremely bizarre science-fiction film but would you really expect anything less from Herzog? I wouldn't call this a bad film but at the same time I couldn't call it a good film either so I'm somewhere down the middle on it. I think it has a brilliant idea and for the most part the idea is created very well but in the end I couldn't help but feel this would have worked better as a forty-minute film instead of a feature length (even though it still only runs 75-minutes). The visual look of the film is quite impressive with various stock footage used to tell the story. The Antarctica footage, which Herzog would later use in his documentary Encounters of the End of the World, makes for a unique "frozen sky" of outer space. The underwater scenes are going to be alien just about to everyone watching the film so to use this as another alien outpost (outer space) was a very good idea. Dourif has gathered some heat for his performance but I'm sure it's exactly what the director wanted and overall I thought it was fine. It's certainly out there but any alien encounter would probably fit the term out there.

When their planet started to die, an alien race set out to evacuate the Andromeda system to other places within the universe that were inhabitable. Several of their ships reached Earth several generations later but by then the founding fathers had died off and left behind a lesser generation. On arrival on Earth things did not go as well as they had planned – attempts to build themselves a capital city to rival Washington DC end with a crumbling, desert collection of ruins. Looking at the journey itself and the problems they encountered, a surviving alien recalls the whole thing.

It would take a real talent to do it but if you were to take all the elements in the plot here you could easily produce an effects-heavy sci-fi epic that stretches over several films or books. So how much talent does it take to do just that using one actor, some expert contributors, underwater footage from under the ice flow and lots of stock footage? I'm not sure of the answer but the second way seems harder because it does deliver the goods in this fascinating film that dances along the line between interesting and pretentious. I found the story worked really well and the overall effect was to produce a sci-fi film as poetry, full of ideas and emotions. It is hard to describe but I found it effortlessly engaging and enjoyed it a great deal.

Of course the delivery was always going to be challenging and I can understand why it has got such a low rating on this very site. It is not a Hollywood sci-fi film, in fact it is not an easy film to put into a box and sell in such a marketplace because it is so unique. The direction is very daring and mostly works because the writing is there to do it. The dialogue is the story and it is very well delivered by Dourif to the point where he is never less than fascinating due to his words but also his convincing delivery of those words. The use of stock footage and locations that are very non-sci-fi are carried by Dourif's story telling but the problems come when he is absent for longer than a few minutes. Extended footage of diving below the ice sheet is interesting but it is the same thing over and over so, without a narrator to move us on and keep us interested, I felt that the film got close to boring. Fortunately this only happens a handful of times. The musical score is again very unusual for sci-fi but it does capture a strange sort of otherworldy sombre air.

Overall then this will probably put most viewers off very quickly. It is as much a piece of poetry as it is a piece of cinema and it is certainly not what you expect from a "sci-fi epic" although that is unquestionably what the story is. At times boring, the film is generally very engaging and interesting and it is well worth checking out to experience it as much as anything else.

I respect Herzog and like how he goes in strange directions, but with that sometimes he wanders down the wrong path, or maybe wrong isn't the word. He sometimes wanders down a boring path. Somehow Herzog got his hands on some space footage and some antarctic underwater footage and thought he could compose that into a sci fi movie.

This is of course a visually distinctive journey and a must for all die hard Herzog fans, but I felt it was a bit too strange and far out. Brad Dourif plays an alien on earth who says he sucks at what he does or something along those lines, which is kind of funny.

Maybe you have to be in the right atmosphere to enjoy this journey, but if you are only going to see one Herzog film, don't make it this one.

Most of the reviews of this movie on here are negative. I can TOTALLY see where they are coming from, but it seems that everyone else's LEAST favorite parts are what transfixed me. Yes, some of the astronauts-in-space shots went on a bit long, but the music is so beautiful. The opera, tribal music, and string instruments used throughout the film, to me anyway, illustrated the beauty contained in the unknown and unknowable. The shots under the "frozen sky" really DO look like an alien landscape. They are beautifully shot, and bring with them a feeling of both freedom and claustrophobia. And Brad Dourif's voice, his eyes, they make him a more convincing alien that ANY million-dollar sci-fi blockbuster. Just a man kicking dirt at the side of the road, so upset as his (and OUR) failings. If you have PATIENCE, try this movie.

Everything in The Wild Blue Yonder is intentional.

The use of stock footage from NASA in place of special effects and the inescapable tedium of this footage; the implausible concepts from physics which are neither explained nor clearly connected to the vaguely coherent "plot"; the fact that alien space traveler Brad Dourif and his alleged (but never seen) extraterrestrial colleagues do not appear to be in any way different from somewhat neurotic Americans with bad business sense; The stark beauty of the underwater scenes and the immediate disruption of this beauty by the arrival of humanity; the accuracy of the alien narrators comments regarding the impossibility of intergalactic travel and the continuity problems which stem from this jarring set of facts.

I am not sure Herzog planned all of this, but I do believe that once he has identified the film he is making, he's pretty meticulous and consistent about putting it together.

This film has two texts:

1 the plot - which is a bit of silliness about aliens coming to earth because their planet is undergoing environmental catastrophes and earthlings going to their planet for the same reason. This story is so absurd that it is difficult to understand why some reviewers seem to believe it is really most of what is going on in the film.

2. the joke - which is the meta-text, and a contribution to Herzog's seemingly endless commentary on human nature and human affairs, though definitely one of his less clear and forceful critiques. The film parodies the Star Trek concept of space travel and the future as a panacea for human problems, and does so on many levels: including patent ridiculousness of the plot; the tedious stock footage which is so painfully unrelated to the narrative; the alien who looks so much like us it is unnerving and who admits, halfway through the film, that he and his fellow aliens "suck".

What Herzog ends up with here is possibly the lowest budget space movie ever shot. Assuming he got his usual fee, Brad Dourif probably challenged the post-production budget for the most costly element of this film. What the more receptive members of his audience get is a film that is strangely difficult to forget, despite the fact that its plot is utterly forgettable.

As a space adventure, Blue Yonder fails utterly and miserably - and that is part of Herzog's point! As a smart sci-fi film - not as challenging or stilted as Tarkovsky's work, but in some ways, as profound - it succeeds, but does not really excel.

Recommended for fans of philosophical sci fi and fans of Herzog. Not recommended for anybody else.