In short: The White Diamond (2004)

Obviously not to be mixed up with a later documentary film about Kylie Minogue. This one's probably better anyway.

Another documentary film by Werner Herzog. Here, Herzog follows Dr. Graham Dorrington in his plan to explore the rain forest canopy in Guyana in Dorrington's newly developed small airship.

Dorrington is of course one of those obsessive dreamer figures Herzog feels so drawn to, possibly because they are a like a mirror to someone as driven and obsessed as the filmmaker himself seems to be. Dr. Dorrington seems a little more driven than most, haunted as he still is by the death of nature filmer Dieter Plage during a joint film project, yet compelled to fly. And it is the flying itself and not the science that's really important here.

By the wayside, Herzog finds incredible moments of beauty while he himself circles his own obsessions: the divide between humanity and nature, the urge to "gaze into the unknown", and the wisdom and dignity of people who aren't seeing the world as they are supposed to do.

 

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