Fata Morgana

You will be able to tell within the first 30 seconds of this film whether you want to finish watching it. The film opens with images of planes landing at an airport, one plane after another diving into a mirage-filled runway. You will be able to accurately guess that this movie is not about a "story." At first viewing, it's even easy to think the opening images are repetitive shots of the same plane. The initial drama is in the acuteness of your perception, which is built on your willingness to experience the film simply as a series of images. If after this opening, you want to see the movie, you will not be bored. You may even be mesmerized. The movie may be an emotional experience; it may be an intellectual experience; it may be both. Judging from the DVD commentary, which is essential, it was primarily an emotional experience for Herzog, and, at one point, he talks explicitly about how the film is a collaboration between filmmaker and viewer. There's plenty of room for the viewer to make of this film exactly what he or she wants to make of it. Take a gamble?

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.

I saw FATA MORGANA at its US premiere in 1972 and again in 1975. The film remained in my (inexact) memory as possible model or prototype of the "surreal documentary", and I think I had recollections of Herzog's long pans and tracking shots in a back chamber of my mind while filming material in the Dolomites that I later combined with manipulated WWI footage in my own audio-visual work GEBIRGSKRIEGSPROJEKT. Having lived in Austria for 17 years and now being fluent in the language of FATA MORGANA's narration, I was eagerly looking forward to re-encountering the film on DVD.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that I was rather disappointed. The terms of my reaction are largely defined by Werner Herzog's own commentary on the German DVD. That he wanted to make a documentary as if from the point of view of visitors from another galaxy is a good idea and a commendable ambition, but I think the hypothetical visitors from Andromeda would have arrived with a far more anthropologically organized structure of viewing than what Herzog here presents. It would however be unfair to call the film pretentious: it's just not that well thought out. There are indeed some strong images (not only those of the desert mirages ...) that could have been used effectively as expanding material in a more narratively oriented film, or served as basis for a more "experimental" work, such as those of Stan Brakhage (who Herzog professes to admire), but these images are too often weakened by sloppy camera movement or flaccid editing.

I found the use of heterogeneous music (Blind Faith, Leonard Cohen, the Kyrie from one of Mozart's masses) arbitrary and unconvincing. Chance-derived juxtapositions are stimulating now and then, but this is no well-thought-out dialectically surreal counterpoint of image and sound that could really cut into the eye and ear.

Some sequences in the later part of the film (a foreign aid worker having African children recite "der Blitzkrieg ist Wahnsinn", or a scene where German tourists hop up and down in little volcanic craters on Lanzarote) lapse into the ridiculous and unfortunately retrospectively lower the level of what came before.

BUT Werner Herzog is a great filmmaker who has in other works made immense contributions to his art. FATA MORGANA may be one of his weaker films, but I suspect it was essential to his development. I'ts a pleasure and a challenge to view and to think about this film.

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