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Lessons of Darkness
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==Synopsis== The film is a meditation on catastrophe, contextualized through the literary modes of religion and science fiction.<ref name=jhober/> It begins with a quotation, attributed to [[Blaise Pascal]]: "The collapse of the stellar universe will occur β like creation β in grandiose splendor." This attribution is apocryphal, as the text was written by Herzog for the film and chosen, like the music, to give the film a certain mood.<ref name=hh242/> The prologue of the quotation is followed by thirteen sections, denoted by numbered title cards: "A Capital City", "The War", "After the Battle", "Finds from Torture Chambers", "Satan's National Park", "Childhood", "And a Smoke Arose like a Smoke from a Furnace", "A Pilgrimage", "Dinosaurs on the Go", "Protuberances", "The Drying Up of the Source", "Life Without the Fire" and "I am so tired of sighing; Lord, let it be night".<ref name=macdonald/> Mostly devoid of commentary, the imagery concentrates on the aftermath of the first [[Gulf War]] β specifically on the [[Kuwaiti oil fires]], although no relevant political or geographical information is mentioned.<ref name=hh242/> Herzog intended to alienate the audience from images to which they had become inured from saturated news coverage. In his words, Herzog wanted to "penetrate deeper than CNN ever could".<ref name=landscape/> Herzog uses a telephoto lens,<ref name=jhober/> truck-mounted shots as in ''Fata Morgana'', static shots of the workers near the oil fires, and many [[aerial shot|helicopter shots]] of the bleak landscape.<ref name=landscape/> By avoiding establishing shots, Herzog heightens the apocalyptic effect of depicting the devastated landscape.<ref name=jhober/> Herzog remarked that "the film has not a single frame that can be recognised as our planet, and yet we know it must have been shot here".<ref name=hh248/> Herzog's sparse commentary interprets the imagery out of its documentary context, and into a fiction: the opening narration begins "A planet in our solar system/wide mountain ranges, clouds, the land shrouded in mist".<ref name=macdonald/> The narrative stance is detached, bemused; Herzog makes no effort to explain the actual causes of the catastrophic scenes, but interprets them in epic terms with vaunting rhetoric to accompany the Wagnerian score.<ref name=ventura/> The workers are described as "creatures" whose behaviour is motivated by madness and a desire to perpetuate the damage that they are witnessing.<ref name=hh/> A climactic scene involves the workers re-igniting the flow of oil, shortly after succeeding in stopping the fires.<ref name=rigzone/> The narration asks, "Has life without fire become unbearable for them?"<ref name=hh/>
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