''Lessons of Darkness'' (german: link=no, Lektionen in Finsternis) is a 1992 film directed by
Werner Herzog. Shot in documentary style on 16-millimetre film from the perspective of an almost alien observer, the film is an exploration of the ravaged oil fields of post-Gulf War Kuwait, decontextualised and characterised in such a way as to emphasise the terrain's cataclysmic strangeness.
[ An effective companion to his earlier film '' Fata Morgana'', Herzog again perceives the desert as a landscape with its own voice.][
A co-production with Paul Berriff, the film was financed by the television studios Canal+ and ]Première
A première, also spelled premiere, is the wikt:debut, debut (first public presentation) of a Play (theatre), play, film, dance, or musical composition.
A work will often have many premières: a world première (the first time it is shown anywh ...
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Synopsis
The film is a meditation on catastrophe, contextualised through the literary modes of religion and science fiction.[ It begins with a quotation, attributed to ]Blaise Pascal
Blaise Pascal ( , , ; ; 19 June 1623 – 19 August 1662) was a French mathematician, physicist, inventor, philosopher, and Catholic Church, Catholic writer.
He was a child prodigy who was educated by his father, a tax collector in Rouen. Pa ...
: "The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendor." This attribution is apocryphal, as the text was in fact written by Herzog for the film and chosen, like the music, to give the film a certain mood.[ The prologue of the quotation is followed by thirteen sections, denoted by numbered title cards: "A Capital City", "The War", "After the Battle", "Finds from Torture Chambers", "Satan's National Park", "Childhood", "And a Smoke Arose like a Smoke from a Furnace", "A Pilgrimage", "Dinosaurs on the Go", "Protuberances", "The Drying Up of the Source", "Life Without the Fire" and "I am so tired of sighing; Lord, let it be night".][
Mostly devoid of commentary, the imagery concentrates on the aftermath of the first Gulf War – specifically on the Kuwaiti oil fires, although no relevant political or geographical information is mentioned.][ Herzog intended to alienate the audience from images to which they had become inured from saturated news coverage, and thereby to "penetrate deeper than CNN ever could".][ Herzog uses a telephoto lens,][ truck-mounted shots as in ''Fata Morgana'', static shots of the workers near the oil fires, and many helicopter shots of the bleak landscape.][ Through avoiding establishing shots, Herzog heightens the apocalyptic effect of depicting the devastated landscape.][ Herzog remarked that "the]