Although I’d like to be that I’ve watched every movie related to the 1990 invasion of Kuwait, I obviously haven’t since I just found out about a film called Lessons of Darkness (thanks to reddit). The movie is directed by the German director Werner Herzog and was released in 1992. The style is similar to Baraka and Samsara where epic footage is combined with beautiful music except in this case, the beautiful footage is mostly of horror and destruction.
At the end of the Gulf War, following the troops’ withdrawal, Herzog travelled to Kuwait in order to explore this conflict in situ, filming a landscape as inhospitable and desolate as it is unnerving and perversely attractive: the devastation of war is exacerbated by the numerous oil wells in flames, towers of fire that appear to emerge from the earth, resulting in a deeply moving spectacle. With this backdrop, Herzog’s camera narrates several stories at once: the complex and extremely dangerous operation of extinguishing these fires, the psychological and emotional scars the war has left on the country’s inhabitants, and the harmful environmental consequences Kuwait must face. The images are often sublime, combining beauty and horror in a single shot. Despite the music used in several sequences, silence is ever-present: a woman and child serve to testify that even the inhabitants themselves have become mute. Ultimately the film affirms that it is impossible to express anything when faced with such horror. And, all we can do, once again, is thank the German director for having gone there to film it.
Trailer LESSONS OF DARKNESS (Werner Herzog, 1992)
You can watch the trailer above and the movie is available to download via torrents or you can watch it online [Here]
Note: If you decide to click the link and watch it online, click on “Proceed to video”, wait a bit and when video starts play press the tiny little x in the bottom left of the screen to close the ad.
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