Werner Herzog‘s Fata Morgana (Mirage) is about as experimental as I have seen from the director and it’s not at all easy to come to an understanding as to his full intent. In such situations I believe it is perfectly fine to be confusing and perhaps leave audiences unable to understand what’s going on at all, but the audience should at least want to understand what they’re watching and with Fata Morgana I can’t say I cared much at all.
After an opening montage, watching planes land on a runaway we continue on with what is referred to as part one, “Creation”, and we’re traveling through the not-so-scenic Sahara Desert with voice over provided by German film critic Lotte Eisner, reading excerpts from the mystical text the Popul Vuh and what it has to say about creation. This part of the film is largely empty, sandy landscapes with a frequent focus on dead animal carcasses decomposing in the sun. The following two parts, “Paradise” and “the Golden Age”, work in similar ways but do introduce us to humans and creatures within this landscape.
Much like Lessons of Darkness, though 21 years before it, this one plays heavily on images and a small selection of words, but I didn’t find anywhere near the level of intrigue or thought behind the images. It felt as empty as the landscape it sought to capture.
If the film is meant as an invitation to explore the extent to which man can destroy his surroundings, turning the Sahara Desert into a wasteland of junk and nothingness, that’s fine, but I need more. Certainly I sat and looked on as overturned cars, baking in the sun, provided shelter for a barking dog and how a group of people sit on the shady side of a wall so as to avoid the scorching sun, merely sitting and existing in all that’s left to them. Then comes the third act, in which Herzog delves into the absurd and ridiculous to little or no effect… at least on me.
The film’s opening is the perfect example of what Fata Morgana has to offer. We watch a series of airplanes landing, trailing behind them their pollutants. Is Herzog making a claim here about how merely in our travels we’re all destroying this Earth, or is he preparing us for the monotony and boredom that’s about to set in? It doesn’t take many planes landing for me to understand the black smoke left in their wake is bad, so to beat me over the head with it is… Annoying?
I’ve read Herzog originally envisioned the film as a science fiction (an approach he also took on Lessons of Darkness), intending to capture the imagery from the perspective of an alien species that land on a strange planet (not Earth) and film a report of the place only to have the footage found by humans. Humans splice together the footage, providing some idea of how aliens perceive the planet. In essence, Herzog was attempting to create a found footage feature only to scrap the idea on the first day.
Instead, from that first day, he just began letting the camera roll, as if seeing the world for the first time as an eighteen-month-old baby and had he included some measure of narration that had more to do with his interpretation of the images, perhaps I could have gained something more from this movie. And I’m sure those that have fully given themselves over to Fata Morgana believe the narration and music do more than enough in terms of evoking Herzog’s thoughts, but I couldn’t find anything to take away from it.
