La Soufrière

Wonderful Herzog documentary, not least because it makes fun of his own certainties. The year is 1976, and the island of Guadaloupe is under a rumbling volcano. Herzog hears about how the town completely evacuated except for one man, and, being Herzog, flies out, with two cameramen, to meet him. Herzog has always had a rather tiring obsession with marginals of society, the dumb, the deaf, the wild, the insane, etc., anyone who refuses to live by society's conventions, but adamantly follows his own way, even if it is to destruction. This is tiring because this 'rebellion' is rarely chosen, or even conscious, and one gets the nagging feeling that Herzog is patronising his subjects, interpreting their pain for them, because they don't know any better.

So one's fears about the film are immediately raised as Herzog and friends helicopter into the island. But what he finds there is more like an episode of THE AVENGERS. There is something very frightening and eerie about an empty, abandoned town, prompting all kinds of disturbing fears. The traffic lights still flash, TVs are still on, donkeys roam the streets, on which lie dying, starving dogs. Snakes, fleeing from the imminent eruption, float drowned in the sea. There is not a boat or vehicle in sight in this coastal town. This is magnificent filmmaking, also reminiscent of Resnais' tracks in NUIT ET BROUILLARD through abandoned concentration camps.

Herzog then does typically loopy things, trying to get as far up the volcano as he can, only to be hilariously pushed back by toxic clouds. The man's hubris, usually so grating, is amusingly punctured here. To build up our fears, he relates the tale of nearby Martinique, whose volcano gave out the exact same warnings, and whose principle city was completely reduced to cinders, 20000 dying. Only one man survived, an incorrigible prisoner, locked in isolation. His burns made him a favorite on the freak-show circuit, and Herzog, somewhat suspectly, shows us photographs of him with his injuries, inviting us to join in the gawping.

I won't spoil what happens next, but Herzog's grand narrative of the epic, rebellion, the extremes of experience are give short shrift from Nature and Reality. But there's no denying the power of interviews with men just lying there waiting for 'God's will'. A great film, one of Herzog's best.

A 30-minute documentary film by Werner Herzog in which he and a couple of cameramen visit a remote island in Guadelope, where an active volcano threatens to erupt at any second. They discover a deserted township with starving dogs roaming the streets, as well as at least three homeless men who seem consigned to their eventual fates.

It's a great premise and you can instantly see why Herzog was attracted to this story: the images of the deserted town are haunting in the extreme, and nature plays a big part. Unforgettable shots include snakes evacuating the volcano slopes and dead dogs lying rotting in the lonely streets. The human stories which conclude this brief report are even more devastating, a study of loneliness and the acceptance of fate. All of these are themes commonly explored by Herzog, and they're just as intriguing here.

Soufrière, La (1977)

*** 1/2 (out of 4)

German documentary has Herzog taking his film crew to the island of Guadeloupe when he hears that a volcano is about to erupt and people there aren't wanting to leave even though it might cost them their lives. To be more point on, the entire town has evacuated except for three people who all believe that the volcano is God's will and that when it's their time to go they shouldn't fight it. This is yet another great documentary from the master director. Running just under 30-minutes the film gives us all sorts of great shots of the volcano firing up but in the end, for reason's scientist don't understand, the thing never went off. Herzog narrated the action and at one point he describes the empty and silent city as something you'd see out of a science fiction movie. That's a good way to describe the film because it really does look like something you'd see in a science movie just because of the beauty of the island that is now empty due to a looming threat. We also get a back story of the same volcano erupting in 1903 where 30,000 people were killed. There was only one survivor and how he managed to live is something I won't spoil.

Minor phreatic eruptions of the volcano La Soufriere in 1976 resulted in Basse-Terre,the island's capital city being evacuated as a precaution.Whilst Guadeloupe was almost entirely deserted by its citizens the German filmmaker Werner Herzog traveled to the abandoned town of Basse-Terre to find a peasant who had refused to leave his home on the slopes of the volcano.His journey is recorded "La Soufrière"-eerie and poignant documentary about death and abandonment.The crew of three creatively insane filmmakers treks up to the caldera,where clouds of sulfurous steam and ash emit from within.Pure harbingers of death.Herzog converses with three poor men,who stayed in Basse-Terre:one says he is waiting for death and demonstrates his posture for doing so;another says he has stayed to look after the animals.They are all not afraid of dying.Fortunately paroxysmal eruption never happened,but we have to remember that there is no escape from death and loneliness.8 out of 10.

I love Herzog. I love travel movies, and I love documentaries. Anybody who is into "abandoned porn" would love this. The abandoned city seemed like a dream for a zombie film maker back in the day. Now computers could probably do it, but to see a whole city deserted like that, especially with the volcanic smoke in the background, truly was apocalyptic.

The conversations with the people left behind were a little hard to follow, but still interesting. If a guy has nowhere to go, why should he leave? It's his home and, in the end, the volcano didn't interrupt after all. Vindication if there ever was.

Check it out. It's only 30 minutes anyway.