LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS - DVD review

Werner Herzog has built his films around protagonists who live on the fringes of society, outcasts who are either madmen or "pure" innocents. For most viewers, the central image of Herzog's films is the contorted face of a raving Klaus Kinski; for others perhaps the placid stare of Bruno S., cinema's ultimate tabula rasa. But if you peel away the layers of Herzog's work, now more than four decades long and still growing prodigiously, you will find at its very core neither Aguirre nor Kaspar Hauser but rather Fini Straubinger, the subject of "Land of Silence and Darkness" (1971), one of Herzog's most enigmatic and mesmerizing documentaries.

Fini grew up like any other child but then took a nasty spill down a set of stairs when she was eight years old. Though she seemed fine at the time, problems gradually developed through her adolescence; she had terrible headaches, heard a ringing in her ears and eventually went deaf and, later, blind as well. She spent years bed-ridden with hardly any access to the outside world, but never gave in to despair over this absurdly cruel cosmic joke played on her. Years in her own land of silence and darkness only made her stronger, and she decided to share this strength with others afflicted with the same condition. Herzog follows her on her wide-ranging travels as she facilitates communication with deaf-blind patients throughout Germany.

Herzog contests critics who describe his protagonists as outsiders; he sees them instead as the "normal" ones and the masses as the real outsiders. Fini exemplifies this Herzogian ideal; she is the center of an entire sub-culture which revolves around her, and Herzog depicts the members of this society (the deaf-blind) with a sense of reverence that borders on the mystical. The deaf-blind are, in this film, seers into a whole different realm of existence denied to everyone else, the real outsiders.

Herzog marvels at the language the deaf-blind use; it's a kind of tactile Morse code in which each letter is represented by a dot or dash on different parts of the hand. Fini has mastered it, but she remains unusual among her fellow travelers because she also speaks quite articulately; she is a unique figure who bridges the worlds of the hearing and the deaf-blind. Fini possesses other remarkable traits as well. When she caresses the face of a deaf-blind woman who is unable to communicate at all, we cannot help but sense Fini's near-infinite reservoir of patience and gentleness.

In another scene, she speaks with a young deaf-blind man named Vladimir who was neglected as a child and thus never "awakened." Never having developed any form of language, he does little more than make guttural noises and hit himself in the face with a ball. He can be quite rough but when he grabs Fini's hands too strongly she simply laughs and says, "Don't hurt me, little one." She holds out hope that she can reach him one day. Fini is practically a saint and through her "Land of Silence and Darkness" acquires an aura of tenderness and intimacy not always present in Herzog's films.

Film can only capture sight and sound, the two senses Fini and the other deaf-blind people in "Land" do not possess. However, the deaf-blind are empowered in the film by their mastery of the other senses. Thus we watch as Fini fondles a flower and smells the bud; she asks if it is ripe enough to eat. In one of the most memorable scenes, a group of deaf-blind people go to the zoo and pet the animals. Fini laughs as she holds a rather confused-looking chimpanzee; she strokes his soft fur and caresses his face. She may never be able to watch or listen to "Land of Silence and Darkness" but we, as mere film viewers, also cannot know exactly what she senses in this oddly lyrical moment.

"Land of Silence and Darkness" is one of the earliest salvos launched by Herzog in his battle against cinema verite. Herzog contends that merely capturing reality does not automatically grant access to the truth; sometimes fabrication and invention are necessary to access a deeper truth or what he calls the "ecstatic truth." In other words, an artist's role is to interpret the mere facts which by themselves are insufficient and present them in a manner that enables the audience to better understand a more profound and resonant level of reality.

In his quest for the ecstatic truth, Herzog has always been willing to concoct (or "fake" if you prefer) scenes in his documentaries. "Land of Silence and Darkness," with its sparse narration and unobtrusive camera, seems deceptively straightforward but still contains a great deal of Herzogian invention. In the opening scenes, Fini speaks of a ski-jumper she saw as a child and how she remembers the look on his face as he soared through the air. In fact, Herzog wrote these lines (Fini never saw this; ski-jumping is Herzog's own obsession which he explored later in his brilliant short documentary "The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner") to convey a memory of motion and beauty (an "ecstatic" moment).

At another point in the film, an intertitle appears: "When you let go of my hand, it is as if we were a thousand miles apart." Once again, this is Herzog speaking though he frames it as Fini's thought. Critics who mistakenly consider documentary film nothing more than journalism, influenced by the grandiose reality-claims of direct cinema, would probably consider this cheating. In Herzog's view this kind of invention, this "ecstatic truth," is truer than mere fact; perhaps even truer than Fini's own words could ever be. For Herzog, a documentarian is a poet and an interpreter rather than a mere reporter. Critics who whine about Michael Moore's alleged "fudges" will probably balk at Herzog's approach to documentary. But let's remember what Picasso said: art is the lie that makes us realize the truth.

You might be thinking this movie is more or less the documentary version of Arthur Penn's "The Miracle Worker" (1962), but the two films bear little in common beyond subject matter. "Miracle Worker" focuses on letting us "get to know" Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan and to engage our sympathy for them, and mostly to good effect. However, like almost all of Herzog's films, "Land of Silence and Darkness" takes minimal interest in character psychology; it doesn't angle for in-depth understanding but settles instead for awe and admiration. "Land" is more invocation than drama and the journey of the deaf-blind is depicted as a holy pilgrimage rather than a road trip. And at the center of these solemn ceremonies stands Saint Fini, possibly the most remarkable person Werner Herzog has ever encountered in his cinematic travels; and that, dear readers, is saying a whole hell of a lot.

Video

The film is presented in its original 1.33:1 aspect ratio. Unlike with "Signs of Life," New Yorker hasn't given "Land" the full treatment. The transfer is an improvement on the grainy, faded versions previously available, but the image is still too dark and soft and shows quite a few blemishes. It's certainly watchable, and it's the best copy I've seen, but a full restoration would have been greatly appreciated.

Audio

The DVD is presented in Dolby Mono. The film makes relatively sparse use of music, highly unusual for a Herzog film, and employs a very simple audio design. The sound mix is solid if unspectacular.

Extras

Nothing except for a few barely relevant essays about the deaf-blind in the liner insert.

Closing Thoughts

The documentary wars rage on today, but while Herzog was once a heretic in the land of the truth-tellers of direct cinema, his early experiments with subjectivity in so-called "non-fiction" now seem downright prescient. He was appearing on camera in his documentaries long before Michael Moore or Ross McElwee pulled off the same trick, and Moore's fast-and-loose play with facts pales in comparison to Herzog's wild inventions.

At the age of 63, Herzog suddenly finds himself in great demand. His new documentary "Grizzly Man" (one of the best films of 2005 so far) will open in theaters this month and play on the Discovery Channel shortly thereafter. He has two more documentaries ("The Wild Blue Yonder" and "The White Diamond") set to run on the festival circuit this year, and, in the most bizarre development, he will be directing a fiction version of his documentary "Little Dieter Needs to Fly" (1997) with Christian Bale scheduled to be his leading man. Is Werner Herzog, the Bavarian poet and mystic visionary, about to go Hollywood?