I made the mistake of thinking I was about to watch the Herzog documentary Rescue Dawn was based on, but i soon found out I was wrong...very wrong. Instead, I spent 81 minutes watching "a science fiction fantasy" titled Wild Blue Yonder. In WBY Brad Dourif play an alien who narrates his way through NASA and arctic diving footage that Herzog interestingly uses completely out of context. The context is entrusted to Dourif's character who spins an elaborate yarn of human space exploration to his former home, the exploration of this distant planet and the astronaut's return to a future, pre-historic earth almost 200 years later.
WBY is essentially a found footage film, albeit an imaginative and interesting one. The highlight is the diving footage which truly feels like exploration of a alien world. The footage is hypnotic, perfectly accompanied by the equally hypnotic score by composer Ernst Reijsiger along with a song thrown indy rock genius Jim O'Rourke.
Herzog sandwiches interviews with real-life mathematicians between the found footage segments, adding credibility to Dourif's yarn. Yet overall there is a sense of tongue-in-cheek behind WBY -- Herzog obviously doesn't want us to take things too seriously. But if he doesn't, then what does he want? By taking these images out of context he forces us to shift our perspective and see them with new eyes. He succeeds and by doing so, he begs the question: why don't we always change our perspective when looking at the world around us? If we did there's a good chance we would be less likely to take things for granted and instead we would see the world with the amazement of a child's eyes.
http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/
WBY is essentially a found footage film, albeit an imaginative and interesting one. The highlight is the diving footage which truly feels like exploration of a alien world. The footage is hypnotic, perfectly accompanied by the equally hypnotic score by composer Ernst Reijsiger along with a song thrown indy rock genius Jim O'Rourke.
Herzog sandwiches interviews with real-life mathematicians between the found footage segments, adding credibility to Dourif's yarn. Yet overall there is a sense of tongue-in-cheek behind WBY -- Herzog obviously doesn't want us to take things too seriously. But if he doesn't, then what does he want? By taking these images out of context he forces us to shift our perspective and see them with new eyes. He succeeds and by doing so, he begs the question: why don't we always change our perspective when looking at the world around us? If we did there's a good chance we would be less likely to take things for granted and instead we would see the world with the amazement of a child's eyes.
http://eattheblinds.blogspot.com/