I have recently discovered that Werner Herzog's greatest strength as a director isn't his fictionalized films (such as "Fitzcarraldo", "Aguire: The Wrath of God" and his remake of "Nosferatu") but his documentaries. Early in his career and later after he became a well respected filmmaker he mostly made documentaries--and all of them have been very good. In fact, several I have seen blew me away because of the lengths to which he's gone to make these documentaries--every bit as logistically difficult as his fictional films set in South America (which are legendary for their awfulness due to them being made in the middle of no where--such as well within the Amazon rain forest). So far, I've seen Herzog make films in Antarctica, inside French caves, death row and Siberia! He certainly is willing to go just about anywhere or do anything to make these films! In the case of "The White Diamond", Herzog and his crew trek to the middle of nowhere in Guyana, South America. They are going to one of the largest and most difficult to reach waterfalls in the world. And, what makes this unique is that one of the folks will be using an extremely tiny dirigible to go up to the very edge of the falls and film it in a way no one else could.
Now you'd think that this would be THE focus of the movie, but at times the film took huge deviations and spent a lot of time talking about the deaths of film makers in some very dangerous situations--such as the one killed by a gorilla in Central Africa. These stories were very interesting but would have been best to put in their own film. Instead, very little actual footage of the falls and the jungle are in the film compared to what could have been there. Also, there were LOTS of shots that I am sure Herzog loved (such as closeups of lizards, bugs, people philosophizing, etc.) but combined with the discordant music, it just lost me--as did the guy break dancing near the edge of the falls. As I said, I've really enjoyed other documentaries he's made but this one was difficult to enjoy or complete. I respect what he was trying to do--it's just not among his best work. The best thing about this were the shots of the falls--but there wasn't nearly enough of this nor were there shots FROM the dirigible.
Now you'd think that this would be THE focus of the movie, but at times the film took huge deviations and spent a lot of time talking about the deaths of film makers in some very dangerous situations--such as the one killed by a gorilla in Central Africa. These stories were very interesting but would have been best to put in their own film. Instead, very little actual footage of the falls and the jungle are in the film compared to what could have been there. Also, there were LOTS of shots that I am sure Herzog loved (such as closeups of lizards, bugs, people philosophizing, etc.) but combined with the discordant music, it just lost me--as did the guy break dancing near the edge of the falls. As I said, I've really enjoyed other documentaries he's made but this one was difficult to enjoy or complete. I respect what he was trying to do--it's just not among his best work. The best thing about this were the shots of the falls--but there wasn't nearly enough of this nor were there shots FROM the dirigible.