Herzog, in his mid-70s, continues to make excellent new work at an absurd pace. These two are ostensibly documentaries about volcanoes and the internet, respectively, but they work more like essays or poems which begin with the idea of something (e.g., volcanoes, the internet) and then spiral out associations from there. Into the Inferno has talking head scientists explaining how magma works and all that, but Herzog is perfectly happy, when visiting a volcano in North Korea, to spend a good chunk of time on North Korean politics and culture. So you’re watching along, enjoying the insights, and suddenly you ask yourself, wait, why am I learning about North Korean history in the middle of a volcano documentary? And then you’re like, whoa, hold on, is there some metaphor at work here? And by right about then, Herzog’s back to talking about magma, and the moment passes. Then all of a sudden he’s talking about cargo cults, and you’re like, wait a minute . . .
Lo and Behold is even looser in its organization and freer in its range of attention. We see the dingy UCLA office where a computer called up another computer for the first time, and we hear Elon Musk talk about connectivity, but Herzog also visits the National Radio Quiet Zone to talk with people suffering from electromagnetic sensitivity, conducts an absolutely devastating interview with the family of a girl whose gruesome death was photographed and shared on the internet by a couple of assholes in the employ of the California Highway Patrol, and — a favorite moment of mine — asks a young Carnegie Mellon student if he in fact loves the robot he and his team have designed. “Yes,” the student answers. “We do love Robot 8.”
There are certainly critiques available for Herzog’s documentaries. He prefers grandeur to details, poetry to prose, and so sometimes you get the sense that inconvenient data is being elided. He’ll let a MOOC proponent enthuse about the phenomenon’s potential, but won’t talk about the problems, for example. And some will be annoyed when he inevitably comes around to his portentous voice-over moments, which are so easily parodied. Ever since seeing Into the Inferno, I’ve taken to loudly announcing in a strong German accent that “Zee depthless abyss of molten lava reminds us zat all human endeavor iss futile.” Personally, I’ve for decades considered these Herzogian pronouncements a feature, not a bug.
As is the case with Herzog’s other late-period documentaries, one’s interest is divided between information and atmosphere; you watch this a little bit because you’re interested in the astounding paintings inside the Chauvet Cave, and a lot because you want to hear That Voice talking about steam and the abyss of time and mutant alligators reclaiming the earth. I am a sucker even for the interminably slow tracking shots scored with lugubrious arias. If you ever start to feel like your individual existence matters in some way, watch this for a swift corrective.