There’s a nicely cohesive vibe to this about the brave but amusing approximation that characterises the human struggle to understand and explain the world. Having attained a ‘golden era’ of modern enlightenment, if anything we’re further adrift from that steep and bizarrely noble path: the dusty lizard zoologist’s productive travails make an amusing contrast with the later guy in flippers and neoprene pointing out that turtles have openings at either end. The problem with the film is more that most of its constituent parts seem frivolous and redundant. of the 15-odd Herzog pieces i’ve seen probably this and Rescue Dawn are the only two to have left no kind of lasting impression on me.
Something tickled my memory during the narration in the second part, reporting how “in paradise roast pigeons fly into your mouth”. A friend once shared a screenshot of this 1843 letter from Marx with me while they were studying:
It is precisely the advantage of the new trend that we do not dogmatically anticipate the world, but only want to find the new world through criticism of the old one. Hitherto philosophers have had the solution of all riddles lying in their writing-desks, and the stupid, exoteric world had only to open its mouth for the roast pigeons of absolute knowledge to fly into it. Now philosophy has become mundane, and the most striking proof of this is that philosophical consciousness itself has been drawn into the torment of the struggle, not only externally but also internally.
My friend’s caption was just: “Delicious”.
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