Fata Morgana

I find Herzog's documentary work to be very uneven. Fata Morgana, a companion piece of sorts to Lessons of Darkness, lacks not only the harrowing spectacle but mostly the discerning eye of an author. It is by comparison amateur looking, aimless pans left and right across the desert the kind of which you would expect from any German tourist equipped with a handycam, the camera left running from the window of a car picking up all kinds of meaningless images, wire fences, derelict buildings and patches of dirt going through the lens in haphazard order, intercut with shots of sand dunes. At one point Herzog encounters a group of starved cattle rotting away in the sand, yet the image is presented much like you and me would, perhaps worse, the camera peering hand-held from one cattle to the next. For a documentary that attempts to be a visual feast, a hypnotic, surreal excursion in uncharted landscapes, it lacks the visual orchestration and conviction of a disciplined author. It's all over the place, half-hearted and tedious, Mayan creation myths recited in voice-over, then some other text Herzog fancied for literature. It's not until near the end that Fata Morgana jumps alive through a series of bizarre encounters. First with a man and a woman playing music in a room, the man singing in a distorted voice through a mic, both of them apathetic in their task. A man holding up a turtle. A group of old people trying to get out of some holes in the ground. Other than that, this one seems to have very little of substance to offer or visual splendor to offer.

Fata Morgana is an absolute masterpiece. It's Werner Herzog's most unconventional film. It doesn't have a plot or story. Instead of a story, we're given a collection of images, words and music that work so wonderfully together. It's not a documentary either. Some of the people in this film are directed and given lines to read. It has some of the most beautiful and haunting images. Herzog shoots real mirages and we see cars and people floating around in the middle of the desert who aren't actually there but hundreds of miles away reflected like in a mirror. The use of music in this movie is so brilliant - from Leonard Cohen, Mozart, and the Third Ear Band. Imagine Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey in the desert; that's what this movie is like. This film is so hypnotic that it has the ability to make you feel as though your spirit has left your body. A must see. It will change the way you view films. Rating: 10 out of 10.

--- most of Herzog's films are best watched with the commentary. His overpowering germanesque English always 'pumps' up the importance of the events/images of his films. In the DVD commentary of this film Crispin Glover is invited along to give his thoughts also.

I am very partial to Herzog's films. That said, I find this one toward the top of his heap. There is a certain 'rawness' to the structure and sequences of this film. I believe that most of it was shot during other projects and pieced from footage that was taken in the Sahara. The early parts of the film are the strongest images, the equivalent of moving paintings, showing care in subtle differences in the landscape. There is an erie science fiction quality to the early part of the film that might even be reminiscent of 'Dune'--- mostly for the desert images.

The later part of the film is more about a human interaction with the landscape. These people are not actors but ordinary people that Herzog (i'm sure) told them to stand around acting weird--- or maybe genuinely acting foreign to what we know---- many of the people were being filmed for the first time (he loves sophisticating the natives--- tricking them with his modern equipment---

---one bit of advice--- don't attempt to watch this if you have distractions around--- you have to be in a quiet mood to sustain watching it--- (even I have a hard time sitting through it)---hence my recommend of watching it with the commentary

Successful films on metaphysical subjects are rare, but Fata Morgana is a good case. You can chalk up the large subject to the ambitions of youth, but Herzog does an amazingly good job. The movie's point is to show human beings, and even the world, from a non-human point of view.

The movie is in three parts: Creation, Paradise, and The Golden Age. The imagery of each is in counterpoint to the voice-over. Although the text of `The Creation' (from the Popol Vuh, a Mayan myth) refers to the primordial wasteland, the scene goes no further in illustrating the myth. It dwells on the waste, and on various specimens of destruction (fire, smoke, wrecked vehicles). The images from `Paradise' are anything but that, and `The Golden Age' is darkly comic – the highest culture is the strange roadside musical act.

The Popol Vuh suggests that mankind is the central object of creation, but the movie does everything it can to undo this notion. Its mythological framework has no referent in human historical time. There are no human characters to speak of. When a boy stands with a dog in an extended shot, the initial suggestion is of the boy's point of view; by the end it is much more the dog's. Likewise the lizard is a stronger character than the human who introduces it, and the turtle's partner barely looks human with his big flippers.

Animal stories and nature documentaries always anthropomorphize, but Fata Morgana has none of that. Certainly the dunes look like a female body, but the simile cuts both ways. Presumably only humans can distinguish easily between their creation and nature, and here airplanes and factories are presented alongside mountains, lakes, and waterfalls. People and civilization are all part of a broader natural landscape.

In 1979 Herzog put a new twist on the idea when he remade Nosferatu from the vampire's point of view.

Famed filmmaker Werner Herzog's "Fata Morgana" is breathtakingly unorthodox. Although characters appear in the film from time to time, there is no actual story. The film is also not an educational or historical documentary. It's a film without an accompanying screenplay.

The film consists of curious background music and a somewhat illogical narrative VO, the combination of which overlays a long string of images from mostly, though not exclusively, the Sahara Desert. Some of the images are wonderfully odd, and out of the ordinary. The camera captures ghostly images, or mirages, optical illusions that tantalize and mesmerize.

This general cinematic trend is punctuated by occasional observational asides on serendipitous topics. For example, in one sequence a man wearing goggles gives us a mini-tutorial on lizards. And in what for me was the most captivating and bizarre sequence, a small inset room contains a man with dark goggles who sings in a voice that is totally distorted by the microphone he's using, accompanied by an old lady who plays a punchy tune on an old piano. Neither the man nor the old lady seems to enjoy what they're doing. How baroque.

"Fata Morgana" does have an underlying concept, one that unites the wide assortment of strange images and eclectic sounds. But that concept is so subtle, so opaque that you'll never figure it out without help. From this subtle theme the film does indeed make sense. Without that point of reference, however, the film can seem tedious and unending, a pointless parade of random earthy images and esoteric narrative gibberish.

Unapologetically redundant, thematically baffling, and cinematically heretical, "Fata Morgana" will likely either make you swoon with delight, or cause you to throw up. You'll either latch on to the film's Zen-like qualities or be tempted to smash the DVD into a thousand pieces. One thing that most viewers will agree on: "Fata Morgana" is ... different.