Lessons of Darkness

{{Use British English|date=September 2017}} {{Use dmy dates|date=September 2017}} {{Infobox film | name = Lessons of Darkness | image = Werner Herzog - Lektionen In Finsternis - Lessons Of Darkness 1992 003023898.jpg | caption = "Has life without fire become unbearable for them?" | director = Werner Herzog | producer = Paul Berriff Werner Herzog Lucki Stipetić | writer = Werner Herzog | narrator = Werner Herzog | music = | cinematography = Simon Werry Paul Berriff Rainer Klausmann | editing = Rainer Standke | studio = Canal+ Première Werner Herzog Filmproduktion | distributor = Werner Herzog Filmproduktion | released = {{Film date|1992}} | runtime = 54 minutes | country = Germany France United Kingdom | language = German English Arabic | budget = }} '''''Lessons of Darkness''''' ({{langx|de|link=no|Lektionen in Finsternis}}) is a 1992 documentary film directed by Werner Herzog. The film is an exploration of the ravaged oil fields of post-Gulf War Kuwait, portrayed in a manner that accentuates the catastrophic and surreal nature of the landscape.<ref name=maslin/> An effective companion to Herzog's earlier film ''Fata Morgana'', the film again perceives the desert as a landscape with its voice.<ref name=landscape/>

A co-production with Paul Berriff, the film was financed by the television studios Canal+ and Première.<ref name=hillman/>

==Synopsis== The film is a meditation on catastrophe, contextualized through the literary modes of religion and science fiction.<ref name=jhober/> It begins with a quotation, attributed to Blaise Pascal: "The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor." This attribution is apocryphal, as the text was written by Herzog for the film and chosen, like the music, to give the film a certain mood.<ref name=hh242/> The prologue of the quotation is followed by thirteen sections, denoted by numbered title cards: "A Capital City", "The War", "After the Battle", "Finds from Torture Chambers", "Satan's National Park", "Childhood", "And a Smoke Arose like a Smoke from a Furnace", "A Pilgrimage", "A Dinosaur's Feast", "Protuberances", "The Drying Up of the Source", "Life Without the Fire" and "I am so tired of sighing; Lord, let it be night".<ref name=macdonald/>

Mostly devoid of commentary, the imagery concentrates on the aftermath of the first Gulf War – specifically on the Kuwaiti oil fires, although no relevant political or geographical information is mentioned.<ref name=hh242/> Herzog intended to alienate the audience from images to which they had become inured from saturated news coverage. In his words, Herzog wanted to "penetrate deeper than CNN ever could".<ref name=landscape/> Herzog uses a telephoto lens,<ref name=jhober/> truck-mounted shots as in ''Fata Morgana'', static shots of the workers near the oil fires, and many helicopter shots of the bleak landscape.<ref name=landscape/> By avoiding establishing shots, Herzog heightens the apocalyptic effect of depicting the devastated landscape.<ref name=jhober/> Herzog remarked that "the film has not a single frame that can be recognised as our planet, and yet we know it must have been shot here".<ref name=hh248/>

Herzog's sparse commentary interprets the imagery out of its documentary context, and into a fiction: the opening narration begins "A planet in our solar system/wide mountain ranges, clouds, the land shrouded in mist".<ref name=macdonald/> The narrative stance is detached, bemused; Herzog makes no effort to explain the actual causes of the catastrophic scenes, but interprets them in epic terms with vaunting rhetoric to accompany the Wagnerian score.<ref name=ventura/> The workers are described as "creatures" whose behaviour is motivated by madness and a desire to perpetuate the damage that they are witnessing.<ref name=hh/> A climactic scene involves the workers re-igniting the flow of oil, shortly after succeeding in stopping the fires.<ref name=rigzone/> The narration asks, "Has life without fire become unbearable for them?"<ref name=hh/>

==Reception== ''Lessons of Darkness'' won "Grand Prix" at the Melbourne International Film Festival. At the close of its screening at the Berlin Film Festival, the audience reacted furiously to the film, rising to castigate Herzog with accusations that he had aestheticised the horror of the war. The director waved his hands fiercely and protested "You're all wrong! You're all wrong!", and later maintained Hieronymous Bosch and Goya had done likewise in their art.<ref name=berlinale/><ref name=torbett/>

The ''Los Angeles Times''{{'}} end of year review for 1992 recognized the film as "the year's most memorable documentary", describing it as "Herzog's apocalyptic, ultimately ironic view of the Gulf War".<ref name=yearinreview/> Critic Janet Maslin remarked that the director "uses his gift for eloquent abstraction to create sobering, obscenely beautiful images of a natural world that has run amok";<ref name=maslin/> her colleague J. Hoberman called it "the culmination of Mr. Herzog's romantic doomsday worldview".<ref name=jhober/> Academic Rachel June Torbett hailed ''Lessons of Darkness'' as both "extraordinarily beautiful" and "deeply ambiguous", interpreting the decontextualization of the geopolitical background as an avoidance which meant that the intent of the work lacked clarity.<ref name=torbett/>

The technique of re-contextualizing documentary footage was also used in Herzog's later film ''The Wild Blue Yonder''.

==Soundtrack== The sources of music used in the film were classical, and predominantly theatrical:<ref name=hillman/> {| class="wikitable" |+ !Scene !Music !Composer |- |(Prelude) |''Das Rheingold'' (Overture) |Richard Wagner |- |A Capital City The War |''Peer Gynt'' Suite No. 1, Op. 46 (Death of Aase) |Edvard Grieg |- |After the Battle |''Parsifal'' (Overture) |Richard Wagner |- |Finds from Torture Chambers |Sonata for Two Violins, op. 56 (Andante cantabile) |Sergei Prokofiev |- |Satan's National Park |''Stabat Mater'' (starts from vocal entrance) |Arvo Pärt |- |And a Smoke Arose like a Smoke from a Furnace |Siegfried's death and Funeral march (''Götterdämmerung)'' |Richard Wagner |- |A Dinosaur's Feast |''Messa da Requiem – Recordare'' |Giuseppe Verdi |- |The Drying Up of the Source |''Notturno'' op. 148 |Franz Schubert |- |Life Without the Fire I am so tired of sighing; Lord, let it be night |Symphony No. 2, (Urlicht) |Gustav Mahler |}

==References== {{Reflist|refs= <ref name=hh>{{Harvnb|Herzog|2002}}{{page needed|date=November 2010}}</ref> <ref name=hh242>{{Harvnb|Herzog|2002|pp=242–243}}</ref> <ref name=hh248>{{Harvnb|Herzog|2002|p=248}}</ref> <ref name=jhober>{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/08/movies/moviesspecial/08hobe.html |work=The New York Times |first=J. |last=Hoberman |editor-link=J. Hoberman |date=8 May 2005 |access-date=31 October 2010 |title=Werner Herzog's New Direction}}</ref> <ref name=maslin>{{cite news|url=https://movies.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9906E4D81E39F936A15753C1A963958260 |title=Werner Herzog's Vision of a World Gone Amok |work=The New York Times |first=Janet |last=Maslin |editor-link=Janet Maslin |date=25 October 1995 |access-date=31 October 2010}}</ref> <ref name=torbett>{{cite book|isbn=978-90-420-2566-0|oclc=319212382|title=Essays on boredom and modernity|editor1-first=Barbara|editor1-last=Dalle Pezze|editor2-first=Carlo|editor2-last=Salzani|location=Amsterdam/New York|publisher=Rodopi|year=2009|page=158|series=Critical studies, v.31|chapter=The quick and the flat : Walter Benjamin, Werner Herzog|first=Rachel June|last=Torbett}}</ref> <ref name=macdonald>{{cite book|title=The garden in the machine : a field guide to independent films about place |url=https://archive.org/details/gardeninmachinef0000macd |url-access=registration |first=Scott |last=MacDonald |author-link=Scott MacDonald (media scholar) |publisher=University of California Press |year=2001 |pages=[https://archive.org/details/gardeninmachinef0000macd/page/324 324–5] |location=Berkeley, California |oclc=46935868 |isbn=0-520-22737-9}}</ref> <ref name=landscape>{{cite book|last=Prager |first=Brad|title=Cinema and landscape|editor1-first=Graeme |editor1-last=Harper |editor2-first=Jonathan |editor2-last=Rayner |isbn=978-1-84150-309-7 |publisher=Intellect |year=2010 |location=Bristol/Chicago |oclc=457149221 |chapter=Landscape of the Mind: The Indifferent Earth in Werner Herzog's Films |page=97}}</ref> <ref name=hillman>{{cite book | last = Hillman | first = Roger | title = Unsettling Scores |chapter=The great eclecticism of the filmmaker Werner Herzog |pages=147–149 | publisher = Indiana University Press | location = Bloomington | year = 2005 | isbn = 0-253-34537-5 |oclc=56324689}}</ref> <ref name=ventura>{{cite web|url=http://www.allmovie.com/work/lektionen-in-finsternis-doc-146633 |title=''Lektionen in Finsternis'' |publisher=allmovie.com (All Media Guide) |first=Elbert |last=Ventura|access-date=4 November 2010}}</ref> <ref name=yearinreview>{{cite news|url=https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1993-01-02-ca-2643-story.html |work=Los Angeles Times |title= '92 Year in Review |first=Robert |last=Koehler |date=2 January 1993 |access-date=4 November 2010}}</ref> <ref name=berlinale>{{cite news|url=http://www.spiegel.de/international/zeitgeist/0,1518,677080,00.html |title=Werner Herzog's German Comeback: Cinema Legend Heads Berlinale Jury |first=Lars-Olav |last=Beier |date=11 February 2010 |publisher=Spiegel Online (SPIEGEL-Verlag) |access-date=4 November 2010}}</ref> <ref name=rigzone>For an explanation of this action, see section "Safety and Environmental Concerns" at {{Cite web|url=http://www.rigzone.com/training/insight.asp?insight_id=300|title=How Does Blowout Control Work?|website=|publisher=Rigzone|access-date=23 September 2016}}</ref>}}

==Bibliography== * {{cite book|editor=Paul Cronin|last=Herzog|first=Werner|title=Herzog on Herzog|publisher=Faber and Faber|year=2002|oclc=50581849|isbn=0571207081|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/herzogonherzog00herz}}

==External links== * {{IMDb title|0104706}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Lessons Of Darkness}} Category:1992 films Category:French documentary films Category:British documentary films Category:Apocalyptic films Category:German avant-garde and experimental films Category:Films shot in Kuwait Category:Films directed by Werner Herzog Category:German documentary films Category:1992 German-language films Category:1990s avant-garde and experimental films Category:French avant-garde and experimental films Category:British avant-garde and experimental films Category:1992 British films Category:1992 French films Category:1992 German films Category:Gulf War films