The Best of All Possible Worlds

Oil. Is it worth the price?

Werner Herzog takes a unique approach to oil, war and their combined impact in his "window into another world," Lektionen in Finsternis / Lessons of Darkness (1992). Set in Kuwait (there's a breathtaking aerial view of Kuwait City before the Iraqi invasion and Coalition counterattack), he interviews Kuwaitis about torture and mayhem, then plunges into the desert and the oil fields, many of the them blazing. There are beautiful shots of what looks like an inland sea, a mirage, a massive oil slick, in fact. Herzog provides some trippy narration in English, but the real audio backdrop is provided, as in most of his films, with music. Here, his classical German and Italian selections fit the on screen images mesmerizingly. We see tire tracks, tank tracks, blackened and burned equipment, burning oil wells, operatic destruction caused by human beings interacting with their environment.

The latter sequences let us observe men, looking otherworldly in fire retardant suits, trying to contain and put out these primal fires.

Herzog the visionary simply wants to share his glimpses of the mysterious, arational world, and in the fifty minutes of Lessons of Darkness set in Kuwait, he succeeds.

2006: Here we are living in what Voltaire satirized darkly as The Best of All Possible Worlds. Over two hundred years ago. The more things change. . . .