In his first ever feature documentary, Werner Herzog has created something of a “60 Minutes” piece without the narration and asides. We’ve come to experience Herzog’s documentaries with his interjections and narration guiding us down narrative paths we otherwise might not have considered, but here he leaves everything up to the observer as he documents a brief moment in the life of a handful of people afflicted with deafblindness, largely from the perspective of 56-year-old Fini Straubinger.
The documentary begins with Straubinger and several others she’s in consistent communication. She has maintained a certain level of speech having gone deaf and blind as a teenager, but many of the people around her communicate largely through the use of what is referred to as the Lorm alphabet, in which a variety of strokes on someone’s hand eventually spells out words so as to essentially “talk” to one another. It’s clear what they are doing, but Herzog saves the explanation for much later in the film, perhaps as his own subtle way to leave the audience in the dark.
A variety of cases are visited and Herzog, for the most part, just lets the camera role without interruption. The goal here would simply be to document more than inform, instruct or even have an agenda.
In all honesty, a review is virtually impossible as all I can really do is tell you what I saw. The images are powerful and the stories sad, and in a lot of ways it made me extremely uncomfortable. Herzog has never been one to let the camera waver or shy away. He’ll hold a shot for as long as he thinks the image is telling a story and then a little longer after that, forcing you to confront, accept and deal with what you’re seeing, seemingly in hopes of breaking down that uncomfortable barrier to the point of acceptance and you see beyond the superficial.
Overall, Land of Silence and Darkness is a film I have a very hard time looking at from a critical approach. I can certainly feel the power of the images Herzog presents, but I have a hard time coming to any real conclusion other than to recognize the fact the images had an effect on me, but to what extent I’m not entirely sure.
