Unpredictable German director Werner Herzog proved with “Grizzly Man” that he had the knack for taking pre-existing footage and shaping it into something new. He’s done something similar with “The Wild Blue Yonder,” but this is a very different kind of film.
Where “Grizzly Man” was a more or less straightforward account of someone who got too close to bears, “The Wild Blue Yonder” takes off on its own peculiar zen direction. With science fiction thrown in.
What Herzog has done here is take NASA footage from a 1989 space shot and amazing underwater footage shot by director of photography Henry Kaiser and blended it together with a whimsical sci-fi notion.
We are greeted by a man, played by Brad Dourif, who speaks into the camera and informs us that he is an alien, one of many on Earth. (The casting confirms what many filmgoers have suspected about Dourif for many years.)
He tells us that the alien invasion of Earth didn’t go very well, because frankly, “We aliens all suck.” And he narrates the story of an Earth mission to his planet, telling us why it won’t work.
Dourif’s monologues are interspersed with long passages of zero-gravity astronaut footage, which is the kind of thing that looks poetic when you stare at it for a long time (and this movie forces you to stare at things for a long time).
In Herzog’s invented narrative, these space travelers supposedly find a planet of “liquid helium,” which is where the underwater footage, shot in Antarctica, comes in. This truly does look like a different world, complete with sea organisms that could easily pass for outer-space creatures.
Over the silent space and sea footage, Herzog has poured a musical score that should have world music fans in ecstasy. Composed by Dutch cellist Ernest Reijseger, the dreamlike score also uses the voice of Senegalese singer Molla Sylla and a Sardinian folk choir. It’s a big part of the head-trip that the movie creates.
I’m not sure this film – unlike “Grizzly Man,” one of the best movies of 2005 – has much to contribute beyond the trancelike state it induces. But Herzog does have a gift for making the ordinary seem mysterious, a gift not to be taken lightly.
A scene from “The Wild Blue Yonder.”
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