[ad_1]
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds | Movie review
November 9, 2020
Rely on Werner Herzog to end 2020 by reminding us of the omnipresent possibility of our extinction due to a meteorite. In his latest documentary, Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds, everyone’s favorite deadpan German (sorry Henning Wehn) travels the world exploring meteorites, their recorded history and cultural impact. He approaches the subject with the melancholy fascination he has adopted since mistaking violent actor Klaus Kinski for mild-mannered volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer as his main collaborator, sharing directing duties and delegating interviews to his assistant scientist.
The duo meets bespectacled experts and eccentric amateurs from around the world, from Hawaii to Antarctica, including a Norwegian jazz guitarist who collects space dust and a Vatican astronomer who answers the question of how the church would react to a meteor strike with a reassuring feeling: “We will pray.” The film jumps between disciplines as sporadically as it changes locations, mixing science, anthropology, mysticism – you name it, Herzog has a memorable aphorism about it. “We won’t torture you with the details,” he assures us in the midst of a geological discussion.
It is often forgotten that Herzog is behind the camera until he interrupts an astronomical interview to remind us: “I’m not stardust, I’m Bavarian”, causing a nervous laugh from a prominent planetary scientist. Beyond these insights into the unpredictable director (he likes the 1998 disaster film Deep Impact and doesn’t like dogs), let’s learn what meteors mean to different cultures: for 15th-century Christians they were “emails from God” ; to the Melanesian tribes they bring the souls of the dead; and for some NASA astronomers they are “parasites of the solar system”, photographing their observation of planets.
There are almost certainly meatier meteor movies out there, but what the film lacks and rigor it makes up for with passion and personality. Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds blends extraordinary phenomena, “look eternity in the eye”, as an interviewee says, with personal moments of humanity, where we witness the ecstasy of a man who discovers a meteorite or we meet people who watch the skies all night for signs of approaching meteors. Combined with stunning drone photography and ethereal sounding music, this makes for surprisingly comforting viewing in a time of existential crisis, almost like manna from heaven.
Dan Meier
Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds is released on Apple TV + on 13th November 2020.
Watch the trailer for Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds Here:
[ad_2]
Source link
