It is trite to say something is merely 'an experience', but that's all that one can truly say of Lessons Of Darkness. In a sense it is the sequel to Herzog's earlier mood film, Fata Morgana, from 1971, and even appears on the same DVD package with that film. Is Lessons Of Darkness profound? No. But that presumes it has an intellectual content. It has very little. Poetry abounds, especially the unconscious sort, and in Herzog's voiceovers, quoting from the Book of Revelations. Is it an anti-war film? Not really. It has been called such by many critics, but they tend to miss a lot. Reductionists often cannot see that a real artist, especially a great one like Herzog, always has more going on up his sleeve than the predictable rabbit or ace in the hole, even if we are not exactly sure what that squirming mass is. Lessons Of Darkness is a primal, emotional film that abstracts ideas of war beyond the conventional good and bad axis, to become something utterly unto its own set of natural laws (both war and the film), and as such makes most criticism of it superfluous, even silly. But, that does not mean it does not have layers to it, nor that it is not art, nor great art. It is. Taste it.
Review of Lessons of Darkness
