Werner Herzog once referred to “Lessons of Darkness” as a science fiction film, and I can see why. The hellish landscapes of pitch-black oil fields interrupted by fountains of fire look like something straight out of a post-apocalyptic future where man orchestrated his own demise. Strangely enough, the subject matter is not that far off; the film documents the death of a city in a world where humanity ceases to exist.
It starts with an aerial shot of a city in Kuwait; the words that Herzog chooses to say over his footage sets up the rest of the film masterfully. “Something is looming over this city, the city that will soon be laid waste by war. Now it is still alive, biting its time; nobody has yet begun to suspect the impending doom.” What a way to start a documentary, it instantly puts you at a time and place. At first, it felt like I was looking at a city not unlike the one I live in, but after that opening statement, I realized the significance of what I was seeing. I was looking at the rare footage of city that is no more, a city that got wiped off the face of the Earth.
What follows cannot be described, it has to be seen to be believed. The visuals here pack the grandiosity of anything we’ve seen in Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey”. The only difference is, this is real, and it’s not outer space, it’s the tip of the Persian Gulf. “Lessons of Darkness” is a symphony of light and shadow, an operatic vision filled with nightmarish visuals that look like paintings of another distant planet. This is the most well-photographed anti-war film I have ever seen; nothing else compares.
The Cinephile Fix 