Lessons of Darkness Reviews

The landscape of Iraq after the short-lived Gulf War was torn and alien. The fires set by the Iraqi Republican Guard in the oil fields burned for weeks, thick black smoke billowing across the empty desert. In the middle of this scene, a bipedal creature gestures at Herzog and his camera team. He is unsure what sort of message is being conveyed, perhaps one of danger, perhaps threatening. Such carnage and confusion is seen as normal in the days after Desert Strike, and the enormity of the damage makes you wonder if it could ever be forgotten, ever be truly fixed. The line between beauty and monstrous is unclear, and Herzog masterfully treads through it, bringing images and sounds that penetrate into your subconscious. In the background, the strings and the chants drone on. A crew works diligently, slowly and methodically extinguishing the fires, fixing the broken piping and turns it off--one by one by one--and with all the fires now out, the crews seem to feel something is missing. Perhaps this madness is a trick of the desert, a mirage. Was this all a bad dream? Was there a point, or was this violence for violence’s sake? Oil spews high and blackens the sky and a man smiles as he throws a torch into the heart of it and the whole crew laughs in the heat of their violation.