The White Diamond (2004)

Good

This film starts with an overview of the history of flight, especially the non-mechanical sort, and, of course, ends with scenes of the Hindenburg disaster in Lakehurst, New Jersey, in 1937, which kyboshed the dream of lighter than air vehicles as practical instruments of travel. Then, the film follows the obsessive modern flotative folly of aeronautical engineer, Dr. Graham Dorrington, of St. Mary's College in London, England, and his attempt to use a miniature blimp (which is diamond shaped and white) to circumnavigate the forest canopy in Guyana, in order to a) vindicate the death of a friend of his, documentary cinematographer Dieter Plage a decade before when an earlier blimp got tangled in Sumatran trees, and the man fell to his death trying to free himself from it during a storm, as well as b) ostensibly find out much about the canopy's resources for commercial development. Dorrington is a bit of a nutty guy, albeit rather tame by Herzogian standards. He lost two fingers on his left hand when, as a teen, he forgot to let go of a small rocket he was testing. Like most Herzog `documentaries,' though, the term must be loosely applied, for Herzog is not merely recording Dorrington's obsession, but financing the expedition. This is made clear when, on the mini-blimp's maiden flight, Herzog insists that he take his camera along for the ride, in case it is the only flight the vehicle makes, and chides Dorrington's desire to test it alone, first, as stupid, and the worst sort of stupid. His rationale: `I cannot ask a cinematographer to get in an airship before I test it myself.' It has been reported that much of that scene was scripted, but so what? Herzog has never been a literalist, no more than his pal Kinski was.
The White Diamond is a minor film in Herzog's oeuvre, and much too digressive, even if a far better film than any other filmmaker could do with the materials at hand, but one wishes the DVD company, Wellspring, would have included some extra features, like a commentary by Herzog. All we get are a Herzog filmography, and some trailers- labeled as both Trailers and Coming Attractions. We don't even get this film's trailer in the bargain. But, why be grounded when this film is dedicated to the very antipodes?
September 21, 2008

Beautiful scenes of the jungles of Guyana

I had the pleasure of living in Guyana for 2 years and visited Kaiteur Falls where most of this was filmed. It perfectly captures the beauty of that remote place.
I read other reviewer's concerns about how true some of the scenes with the professor and the director were, and they are valid fears.
That being said the drama between them and the beauty of the images make this an entertaining film to own. May 15, 2008

WHITE DIAMOND

I had not heard about this film prior to seeing it on Amazon. It is very much a Herzog film in style but the usual Herzog imprimatur of borderline outrageousness is not there. This is a documetary not really an adventure. March 29, 2008

poetic ecstatic truth?

Werner Herzog has been talking about poetic ecstatic truth recently. I'm not sure quite what he means, but it seems to be something in the space between (a) his willingness to stage or set up the subjects of his documentaries in the manner of a feature film to get his point across, and (b) the fact that some people in the audience can receive epiphanies of a secular sort, from his work.

There is truth of a kind in the fabulous beauty of the photography in his documentaries, of course - and there's a lot of that in this film. Especially moving are the night shots of the balloon lit up like the moon, and the day shots of continuous circling movements of birds over water. These circular movements echo previous scenes - in Nosferatu there's a wonderful shot of eddies in a stream; in Heart of Glass a painting of a tavern interior seems to come to life, with people endlessly turning circles to return to their original poses. I once met a German film director who knew Herzog, and he told me that he thought that water in Herzog's films probably signified transition. Get an ephiphany off that lot, if you can.

And what about the much-discussed exploitation/misrepresentation of the eccentric/non-eccentric scientist? He doesn't look too eccentric to me, but perhaps that's because we see him next to Herzog. But he does get to be ecstatic. True or staged? You decide.

The White Diamond is as beautiful as all Herzog's films are - and I reckon if I'm lucky it will take me a lifetime (and some) to feel the true depth of it. Some films get into your soul - and I think this may be one of them. August 7, 2007

poetry meets documentary

Though I've only seen a handful of films by Werner Herzog, I found every one of them adroit and powerfully arresting in unexpected ways.

Exquisite and moving, "The White Diamond" (2004) is no exception, being representative of Herzog's recent approach, at least as a documentarian. What he seems to do is pick a subject, a guy who's either fiercely dedicated to or unusually accomplished at some offbeat occupation, and then take a musing, unhurried look his life and philosophy, taking no particular pains to absent either himself or his interpretations from your consideration.

I especially like the way he allows his films to be finally edited together, frequently allowing dialogue to trail off, scenes to linger, and sequences to end on unexpected notes. His style has a look and feel all its own.

Anyhow. The "White Diamond" in this film is a specialized airship, a one-man dirigible which resembles a diamond on its side. The engineer, Graham Dorrington of London University, has specially designed it to be highly maneuverable and as quiet as possible. Thus it could accomplish its purpose: exploring one of Earth's last unexplored biospheres: the canopies of rain forests (Guyana in most of this movie). Only the most gingerly engineered ship could explore these impossible delicate, life-teeming regions, and most of the film records Dorrington testing his prototype.

But there is a darkness that lurks behind Dorrington's efforts: his close colleague, Dieter Plage, the original mastermind behind the project, died in a similar balloon during a previous expedition to the rain forest of Sumatra. In the shadow of this tragedy, Dorrington is determined to successfully see through the creation and successful usage of the improved balloon.

The film starts with a brief black-and-white history of dirigibles, then takes us into a windtunnel to witness the airship's design. Finally we see the balloon in action.

What I liked about this movie was the slow, poetical approach that Herzog adopted while exploring his subject. It seems to me he's saying something about life.

Say you're walking through Paris. You're going to remember the Seine, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, etc. But often what looms most in the memory of the traveler are minor things that caught the eye: a street vendor, a bird, a sewer grate, the rustle of a dress, a shoot of ivy. Later these memories loom even larger in your mind than the monuments you expressly went to see.

Herzog seems to capture this in his directing style, lingering curiously on extranea that, while at first blush appearing irrelevant to his presumed purpose, soon swell to assume a power over the viewer that is hard to describe.

Thus when this film is over, the things you remember most wondrously and tenderly are not the airship, but the cave of the swifts, the lonely motion of the dancer against the waterfall, and the Rastafarian who has been torn from his family.

Isn't this how we travel through life? People and events we think unimportant at the time later seize our imagination with a force that can scarcely be credited. Herzog is on to this and deliberately, I submit, incorporates this insight into his filmmaking style, thereby suggesting the beauty and importance of small things.

Unfortunately, the same thing that makes the movie so charming and so unusual is the same thing that stops it from being truly great: large chunks of it simply do not cohere. It would appear there is a price to be paid after all for not observing the unities, whatever other insights you may bring to the table. Shame this didn't get a bigger release, though.

By the way, this DVD is fullscreen only; there is no director's commentary track, no extras, and no subtitles in English or any other language. May 9, 2007

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