The Wild Blue Yonder

Directed by Werner Herzog

Werner Herzog’s self-proclaimed “science fiction fantasy” is one of his very best films. Essentially a documentary—comprised of mostly factual, almost reportorial footage—it comes at the right time, when the documentary feature is in disarray. The genre has been corrupted into slanted perspectives and deceptive propaganda. But Herzog insists the form can also be art, pushing it into new possibilities—into The Wild Blue Yonder.

Visionary Herzog has the right stuff. He does for documentary what Tom Wolfe did for journalism. Instead of first-hand history, this is ingenious interpretation. Herzog brings together NASA space footage and oceanographic footage to represent mankind’s curiosity about the unknown. It is a confrontation with phenomenological beauty (zero-gravity movement in air and water, astral clusters and undersea landscapes). But instead of a boring chronicle, Herzog looks at these endeavors philosophically. And he’s not goofy. In fact, it’s all tied together by the goofiness of a street ranter (played by Brad Dourif in wild-eyed Klaus Kinski mode) who has gotten wind of secret government research and launches into a private mythology about alien origins and space exploration.

Dourif speaks before a ghost town’s ruins while kicking dust in the street, but Herzog gives it the context of failed cultural progress. It illustrates his belief in the universe’s chaos. While Dourif’s monologues suggest the single-spaced ravings of graphomaniacs (combining mathmatics and sin), Herzog observes the mysteries of patriarchy, colonialism, junkyard dilapidation and industrialization. Explaining that astronauts/aquanauts “would have to dissolve into particles and subsequently into pure light,” Herzog makes the most of cinema’s imagistic qualities. That phrase, describing the ocean expedition we see—but in consciously poetic language—is worthy of John Ruskin. Herzog justifies the beautiful chaos before our eyes.