Should you watch Lessons of Darkness?
Who it’s good for, who it isn’t, and what’s in it. No ratings, no scores.
Lessons of Darkness
Documentary · 1992
Shortly after the Gulf War, oil fires were raging all through Kuwait. In the week before this sea of fire would be extinguished, Werner Herzog filmed this apocalyptic landscape with its murky skies, scorched earth and capricious flames.
The sides of Lessons of Darkness
- Kuwait's oil fields burning after the Gulf War
- Firefighters capping the wells
- Werner Herzog filming Earth like another planet
Lessons of Darkness is good for you if…
- you like burning oil fields filmed like an alien world.
- you like images carried by Wagner and Verdi.
- you like Werner Herzog's strange, poetic way of seeing.
Lessons of Darkness is bad for you if…
- you need momentum. Long shots of burning wells glide by with barely a word.
- you want things explained. Herzog never lays out the war and narrates it like science fiction.
About: war · apocalypse · landscape
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