Lessons of Darkness Movie Edit

A 10-minute edit of Werner Herzog’s 1992 movie Lessons of Darkness set to Boards of Canada, Gemini, and Canis Arboris, Kilburn Park.
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Lessons of Darkness deals with the aftermath of the first Gulf War. Shot in documentary style on 16-millimetre film from the perspective of an almost alien observer, the film is an exploration of the catastrophic oil well fires ignited across Kuwait by retreating Iraqi forces. Unlike news footage at the time, however, Herzog’s film is completely devoid of political or geographic explanatory notes. What little commentary that is provided is more akin to poetic fiction. The opening narration begins: ‘A planet in our solar system; wide mountain ranges, clouds, the land shrouded in mist’. Heightening the sense that we are alien visitors exploring the ruins of a dead world.
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Lessons of Darkness is a meditation on catastrophe, contextualised through the literary modes of religious thought and science fiction. It begins with a quotation, attributed to Blaise Pascal: ‘The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor.’ This attribution is apocryphal as it was in fact written by Herzog for the purposes of the film. Lessons of Darkness is divided into thirteen sections, each denoted by a numbered title card:
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‘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’, ‘I am so tired of sighing; Lord, let it be night’.
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The narrative stance is detached, almost bemused. Herzog makes no effort to explain the actual causes of the catastrophic scenes being witnessed, interpreting them instead with epic terms and vaunting rhetoric to an operatic score. A telephoto lens, truck-mounted shots, static shots of workers near oil fires, and aerial shots from helicopters are used to help convey the bleakness of the devastated landscape. Towards the end of the film, the ‘creatures’ fighting the blaze are shown reigniting oil wells seemingly driven mad by the insanity that surrounds them.
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At the close of its screening at the Berlin Film Festival, the audience reacted furiously to the film, rising to castigate Herzog with accusations that he had aestheticised the horror of the war. Herzog waved his hands and protested "You're all wrong! You're all wrong!" maintaining that both Hieronymous Bosch and Goya had done likewise in their art. Lessons of Darkness is in the tradition of anti-war art forms such as Picasso’s ‘Guernica’, a cubist apocalypse that attempts to convey the true horror of war.
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Lessons of Darkness was distributed by Werner Herzog Filmproduktion. Release date 1992. Running time 50 minutes. Countries: Germany, France, United Kingdom. Languages: German, English, Arabic.
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