La Soufriere

1977 short

Rating: None--it's a short, and I don't rate those. If you don't like it, take it up with the committee.

Plot: Werner Herzog and a film crew travel to a place where a volcano is about to erupt because they apparently want to die while making a movie.

This is described as a "report on an inevitable catastrophe that did not take place," the Waiting for Godot of volcano movies. For something that is turns out to be a non-event, this is as profound as it gets. There's something haunting about this village Werner Herzog and the small film crew who also want to die while making a movie like Herzog. It's a village devoid of human beings, one overrun by animals that might wonder where all the people went or might not wonder that at all.

Herzog takes his crew to the toxic edge here though you never really know how much of his documentaries are being overdramatized. Even if that's the case, this is clearly a dangerous situation, but it's all worth it because the shots of the poisonous air and smoke-drooling Soufriere are beautiful and I'm not the one whose life is at risk.

Herzog does talk via translator to some dudes who do decide not to flee from their impending destruction, and their reasoning makes them the kind of third-world philosophers that Herzog loves to put on film.