mstomaso "I sense a structure inside my heart, but it's not the same as yours" ~ Director Werner Herzog on Fata MorganaOne should not enter into the world presented by Fata Morgana without some sense of what to expect. However, beyond stating that this is a film by Werner Herzog, it is almost impossible to discuss the film using categories that are typically applied in discussions of film. Some say that this is the masterpiece of Herzog's early films. I can agree with this but only for two implicitly connected reasons. The first reason is my love for Herzog and his art. The second is that this is easily the most HERZOG film of his early films. Herzog himself has said that the film makes sense and has coherence only if you forget about logic and anything academic that you may have learned about film. So let's discuss the narratives. There is no real story unless you interpret the film as an impressionistic telling of the Popul Vuh (one of the few surviving Mayan origin myths), which is updated into the modern age in three parts. The narrative starts with numerous very beautiful and entrancing images of barren, alien-looking landscapes and extremely illusory and vivid mirages. It then becomes increasingly concerned with people and built environments as we move from the amorphous, sensual and primordial world of the creation into the allegedly civilized, and clearly ridiculous, "Golden Age" presumably something like what we have today. Some people see this transition as irony, cynicism, darkness, etc. While it is important that each viewer intepret the film in their own way, i can see nothing in Herzog that is not pure celebrative and eye-opening exuberance concerning a full range of experience - death, love, myth, beauty and all of the illusions that drive so much of human life. There are numerous other narratives that can be found upon repeated examinations of the film, especially if you review the Herzog collection's version with Herzog's deeply personal, journalistic commentary.Now, on to the film itself. Like many of Herzog's film, Fata Morgana is breathtakingly beautiful,. Like almost all of Herzog's films, Fata Morgana expresses something about Herzog's view of life, of people and of the earth - all of which are subjects that Herzog loves very deeply. Herzog shot the film in some of the most extraterrestrial landscapes on earth, with his very unique sense of the surreality of everyday life, and, as usual, no special effects whatsoever. The film utilizes illusion and mesmerizing images and sound to loosen the viewer's interest in narrative itself and then proceeds to deconstruct narratives explicitly while showing the utter lunacy of more familiar imagery. The film's soundtrack also defies even Herzog's own tendencies and the trope of avant garde cinema, juxtaposing opera, Asian folk music and (of all things) Leonard Cohen. This film is a must-see for Herzog fans and those interested in history of film as a pure art form all its own. The film is much more subtle than Koyaanisqatsi and its sequels, but these later films clearly owe Fata Morgana an enormous debt.

dbiguns I read a review before entering the theater, and it said that the film made the reviewer wonder if he were losing his mind. The movie started, and the more I watched, the more I agreed, but maybe not for the same reasons. I found myself doubled up in giggling laughter many times, actually falling off my seat! There were minutes of footage of sand dunes and sand dunes and more sand dunes...and then, for no reason I could tell, a Leonard Cohen song would start up. Then more footage of the desert, maybe some verses out of the Koran..."In paradise, roasted pigeons fly into your open mouth"...more bleak footage, then another damn Leonard Cohen song that doesn't relate, then an interview with some German lizard collector wearing welding goggles, more footage with verses from the Koran, then yet another God damned Leonard Cohen song. I laughed myself breathless! The best thing that can be said is: The director got better with later movies.

chaos-rampant I find Herzog's documentary work to be very uneven. Fata Morgana, a companion piece of sorts to Lessons of Darkness, lacks not only the harrowing spectacle but mostly the discerning eye of an author. It is by comparison amateur looking, aimless pans left and right across the desert the kind of which you would expect from any German tourist equipped with a handycam, the camera left running from the window of a car picking up all kinds of meaningless images, wire fences, derelict buildings and patches of dirt going through the lens in haphazard order, intercut with shots of sand dunes. At one point Herzog encounters a group of starved cattle rotting away in the sand, yet the image is presented much like you and me would, perhaps worse, the camera peering hand-held from one cattle to the next. For a documentary that attempts to be a visual feast, a hypnotic, surreal excursion in uncharted landscapes, it lacks the visual orchestration and conviction of a disciplined author. It's all over the place, half-hearted and tedious, Mayan creation myths recited in voice-over, then some other text Herzog fancied for literature. It's not until near the end that Fata Morgana jumps alive through a series of bizarre encounters. First with a man and a woman playing music in a room, the man singing in a distorted voice through a mic, both of them apathetic in their task. A man holding up a turtle. A group of old people trying to get out of some holes in the ground. Other than that, this one seems to have very little of substance to offer or visual splendor to offer.

DRG This is not a movie. This is a collection of random shots taken in a fascinating part of the world, dubbed over with some random text. The footage is not that great and the text is not that great either. The end product is excruciatingly dull.On the DVD, turning the commentary on can provide some entertainment value, as the director makes a rather deranged argument that this is a sci-fi movie. It's also fascinating to read about the extraordinary risks and hardship that the crew endured to collect this footage. Too bad it's rubbish. But I think "The Making of Fata Morgana" would be a fascinating film, sort-of like 'Ed Wood" was.