Lessons of Darkness [Widescreen/Pan & Scan]

Lessons in Darkness is the most impressionnate documentary film you ever seen on the War of Oil 1992 in Kuwait/Irak.

Fata Morgana is an absolute masterpiece. It's Werner Herzog's most unconventional film and the most bizzare film I've ever seen. It doesn't have a plot or story. Instead, we're presented with a brilliant collection of images, words and music woven together by a master filmmaker. Fata Morgana is not a documentary either. Most of the people in this film are directed and given lines to read. It has some of the most beautiful and haunting images ever commited to film. Herzog photographs actual mirages and we see cars and people floating around in the middle of the desert who aren't actually there but hundreds of miles away reflected due to the heated strata of air. All of the tracking shots were done with a camera mounted on top of a VW van that Werner Herzog drove himself. The use of music in this movie is amazing; from Leonard Cohen, Mozart, Blind Faith and the Third Ear Band. Imagine Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey taking place in the desert instead of outerspace. Fata Morgana is so hypnotic that it has the ability to make you feel as though your spirit has left your body. This film is a must see and is not recommended for conformists who've been forced fed a steady diet of Hollywood-commercial fast food movies. It will change the way you view films. Rating: 10 out of 10.

This is a sad and eerie film, in some ways similar to those of Godfrey Reggio. Werner Herzog and a camera crew toured Kuwait and environs in the wake of the Gulf War and documented the destruction (both physical and human) wrought by Saddam Hussain's armies in the oil fields and by the bombing of strategic targets. But instead of presenting a straightforward story about a historical event, Herzog created a science-fiction parable. The entire movie has a strange, detached tone; we see horrendous destruction, rooms full of torture equipment, and victims of brutality, but there are no cinematic clues about how the 'aliens' who supposedly made this movie feel about these things; their attitude is implied rather than stated. There is no need to play up the events; seeing them is enough.

"Fata Morgana" is similar in some ways, but it is more disconnected and humorous, portraying another trip-- this time through northern Africa. And, like "Lessons of Darkness", it manages to portray Earth as a particularly weird planet. An especially interesting point is Herzog's commentary about the mirages that he filmed; we can see that there is a bus (for example) in the distance, but Herzog tells us that when they went to the place where the bus should have been, they could see that there was nothing for miles around... "Fata Morgana" is not as cohesive as "Lessons of Darkness", but its tone is much lighter.