Fun
Frisky
Nostalgic
Intense
Adventurous
Choked Up
Curious
Romantic
Weird
Welp, I guess I’m terrified of volcanoes now.
The level to which you enjoy watching Into the Inferno will depend on your feelings towards the documentary’s director, incomparable German filmmaker Werner Herzog. His latest odyssey into the unknown, which is now available to stream on Netflix, pays tribute to the volatile goliaths of nature known as volcanoes. A veritable Where in the World is Werner Herzog, the intrepid director travels across the globe — from Ethiopia to Iceland to North Korea to the Vanuatu Archipelago — while setting his incisive gaze on the scientific and spiritual aspects of the colossal structures of destruction. Examined with a combination of reverence, fear, and wonder, the documentary is at its best when it lingers in the simplicity of the visually magnetic images of the renegade magma and delves into unique personal stories related to the volcanoes. The film is at its worst when it forgets that it’s a documentary about volcanoes.
Part of what makes Herzog’s work so captivating is his unrelenting curiosity, but it’s that same inquisitive spark that gives Into the Inferno the narratively disjointed feel of four mini-movies instead of one cohesive documentary. “It is hard to take your eyes off the fire that burns deep under our feet,” the acclaimed director intones in his distinctive German accent. And yet that’s exactly what happens. While every section of the documentary is at least tangentially related to volcanoes, a few stories seem as though they were lifted from different films.
The biggest volcanic crater lake in the world is located at Lake Toba in Indonesia, which is the site of one of the largest volcanic eruptions in earth’s history. Taking place around 74,000 years ago (ish), it was an estimated 10,000 times larger than the 1980 eruption of Mount St. Helens. A theory persists that the eruption almost wiped us out as a species, so volcanologist and Herzog collaborator Clive Oppenheimer travels to the Afar Region in Ethiopia to try and locate human fossils in an attempt to establish cause and effect in relation to the theory. I appreciate the enthusiasm of the fossil finding mission and recognize the allure of pondering our ancestry while understanding we’re all just dust in the wind, but after fifteen minutes the novelty wears off and you’re just watching a bunch of excited people looking at rocks.
Between the fossil excursion and a trip to North Korea in which Herzog seems more interested in investigating the country’s political ideology than relationship with volcanoes, the documentary suffers from an inconsistent tone and meandering story. C’mon, Herzy! Give us more of that sweet, sweet aggressively mesmerizing volcano footage!
“It is a fire that wants to burst forth and it could not care less about what we are doing up here,” Herzog says late in the film. “This boiling mass is just monumentally indifferent to scurrying roaches, retarded reptiles, and vapid humans alike.”
Aside from the truly hypnotic visuals, the documentary truly shines when it juxtaposes the divine-like nature of volcanoes with intimate anecdotes. From Chief Mael Moses — the head of the Endu Village who at one point wouldn’t allow tourists to visit a volcano because he believed that the spirits inside would be angered by outsiders — to the chilling story of Katia and Maurice Krafft, French volcanologists known for capturing incredible images of volcanos who tragically died during an eruption in Japan.
Near the end of the film, Herzog’s affinity for the spiritual aspects of nature lead him to a cargo cult in the Republic of Vanuatu where its members believe that a volcano created a new God by the name of John Frum, a mythical American G.I. who descended from the clouds and will one day return with copious cargos of consumer goods. The fleeting glimpse into their lives is fascinating and a reminder of the kind of exceptionally rare moments a filmmaker like Herzog is capable of capturing.
Into the Inferno is at its most captivating when the fine line between spiritual belief and the overwhelming rapture of nature becomes blurred. It’s a mesmerizing 60-minute documentary that lasts about 105-minutes.
