Werner Herzog is a poet of the sublime, a filmmaker of the sacred and the profane. His signature style blends opera, the music of various mystic traditions, dramatic encounters with nature that evoke both horror and awe, and an intimate interview style that reveals the humanity of his subjects. Herzog is a master of taking popular subjects and finding the uncommon vantage. In Encounters at the End of the World, for instance, at a time when films about penguins were quite popular, Herzog makes clear in the opening scenes that he has not set off to Antarctica to make another film about penguins. In his film about volcanoes, Into the Inferno, Herzog spends as much time exploring the religious, scientific, and social systems surrounding volcanoes, as he does exploring the volcanoes themselves. Any subject for Herzog begins and ends with the humane and the human. And so, while Fireball: Visions from Darker Worlds is a film about meteorites, it is really a film about the people who study them, and about the implications that meteors have had on the human experience.
Herzog has teamed up with the volcanologist, Clive Oppenheimer (who does most of the film’s on-screen interviews) to explore the esoteric and wondrous world of meteorites and other near earth objects.
What makes Herzog’s films a delight is their ability to tap into our profoundly human hunger for discovery. Humanity’s collective and individual thirst for exploration and discovery has taken us into outer space, under the sea, and across oceans. It could be said that discovery is what motivates some of the best and worst outcomes of human activity. Discovery is intoxicating–quite literally. It releases dopamine. The particular joy of watching Fireball: Visions from Darker Worlds is the little discoveries one encounters in the process of watching the film.
For example, I didn’t know that every year, micrometeorites fall from the sky, raining their dust all around the planet. These dust-sized particles, when magnified, are otherworldly, and incredibly beautiful. They look decidedly alien, but also like pieces of abstract sculpture. For a moment, the film reminded me of David LeBrun’s, Proteus, another stunning documentary that magnifies the tiny world of diatoms, single-celled algae that reside in the ocean and soil, unseen, but stunning in their hiddenness, right before our eyes. Herzog’s filming of the micrometeorites is a stunning homage to LeBrun.
The hidden, right before our eyes, is Herzog’s majestic work and his particular talent. Micrometeorites lie all around us, and all we need to do is know where to look and get the right equipment for gathering them. Herzog shows us how. He introduces us to Jon Larsen, Norway’s most celebrated Jazz guitarist who happens to spend his free time on the roofs of sports arenas looking for space dust. We are told that Larsen invented a new kind of science as we are also taught how to use a zip lock bag and magnet to go searching for space dust and marvels of our own.
We visit ancient craters, the “godforsaken” seaside village of Chicxulub where an ancient asteroid cataclysm rewrote the history of life on earth. We go to Mecca, where sourced footage reveals a haunting image of the asteroid worshipped at its center. We meet the scientists in Maui who watch the skies 24 hours a day, seven days a week, looking for signs that an asteroid may be coming our way. Herzog takes the time to linger on their faces. We look into the eyes of those who have been entrusted to keep humanity safe and I felt safe looking into their eyes.
One of the most stunning moments in the film is when Herzog returns to Antarctica with Oppenheimer (they met in Antarctica during his filming of Encounters at the End of the Earth) and the camera pans out on the vast expanse of ice of the uninhabited continent that stretches forth for thousands of kilometers into the distance. The sheer blankness of the ice, the blueness, and the vastness is overwhelming and breathtaking. And, amid this blankness, scientists walk, searching for the messages from the sky that the stars have left written on the ice. Because the ice is so blank and because there are no other rocks present, the only rocks on the ice are meteors. Oppenheimer discovers one while performing one of these walking surveys of the ice. Herzog makes clear that the discovery has not been staged. We see the moment the rock is found. It’s beautiful.
Watching a film for the first time brings about the same sense of discovery. To discover a new artist, a new piece of art, or a new creation brings about the same sense of wonder I imagine scientists feel when they stumble or struggle upon new knowledge. There is awe. There is gratitude, and there is a sense of encounter and sublime wonder in it.
Watching a film during a film festival, when a film has been seen by so few people, when you are among the first to see it, is even more special. I live in Hawaii and would have never made it out to Chicago to see the Chicago International Film Festival.
But we live in the era of COVID-19, which has forced the whole film festival to be streamed, and the Q&A at the end of the screening held over Zoom. And so, I saw the film in my living room in Hawaii. And afterward, during the Q&A, I did something I’d never do in an actual movie theatre—I asked a question. (Perhaps it was the anonymity of typing my question into a little box that gave me the courage.) And so, I had the pleasure of my own encounter, the awe and wonder of getting to hear Werner Herzog listen to a question I asked—and answer it.
The question?
In the film Herzog discusses the unique ability of meteoroids to serve as divine prognosticators. They have been used by historic political figures to lend their projects legitimacy. Given all this, I asked Herzog what he made of the fact that an asteroid was passing close to earth on election day.
To this, he chuckled, and in his distinctive Teutonic voice said, “It would be beautiful.”
And it was beautiful.
About the Writer
Janice Greenwood is a writer, surfer, and poet. She holds an M.F.A. in poetry and creative writing from Columbia University.