Werner Herzog Film Collection: Where the Green Ants Dream
Werner Herzog
Open iTunes to preview, buy, and download this movie.
Plot Summary
"Civilization is like a thin layer of ice upon a deep ocean of chaos and darkness." - Werner Herzog. In the wilds of Australia, aboriginal tribes observe their ancient legends and laws evolved over 40,000 years. Their culture is threatened by a giant corporation that wants to mine in one of the aborigine's holiest sites - the place 'where the green ants dream.'
Customer Reviews
Stunning shots, pregnant silence
Here Herzog has shown the reality of cultural incomprehension much more believably than I've seen it in any other movie. The collision between obsolete tradition and the greed of modern mining is presented not as a sob story or a pep talk, but a conversation where neither side can get its meaning across
Aborigines stare in unmoving, stoic resignation while white men pepper them with offers and arguments totally irrelevant to their world. Whites listen to their needs and fears with no more than a rare flicker of imagining what they are talking about.
Extremely long pans and static shots irresistibly convey the impersonal but overwhelming presence of the desert, and the ultimate futility of mining, manufacturing, and probably living. Some of the white characters are simplistic caricatures, but the aboriginal performances held my belief and attention throughout, while the minimal plot generates enormous tension and foreboding. Boring if you are hooked on constant stunts and plenty of explosions, stunning if you can pierce the minimalist presentation and hear what the film is saying.
Boring
The most boring movie I have ever tried to watch...bar none
Viewers Also Bought
- Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary
- Pepita Ferrari
- View In iTunes
- Close-Up
- Abbas Kiarostami
- View In iTunes
- Keep the River On Your Right: A Modern Cannibal Tale
- David Shapiro & Laurie Gwen Shapiro
- View In iTunes
- Vernon, Florida
- Errol Morris
- View In iTunes