LAND OF SILENCE AND DARKNESS (Herzog, 1971)
Shout! Factory, Blu-ray, July 19, 2014
Review by Christopher S. Long
Though Eva Mattes netted a
much-deserved supporting actress awards at Cannes for surviving
opposite Klaus Kinski in “Woyzcek” (1979), Werner Herzog has
never been known for his strong female characters, nor should he be.
Yet in a filmography consisting of delusional conquistadors, doomed
rebels, vampires, African warlords, and Nicolas Cage, perhaps the
most unforgettable (and certainly the most overlooked) Herzog
character of all is Fini Straubinger, subject of the extraordinary
documentary “Land of Silence and Darkness” (1971).
After suffering a bad accident at the
cusp of adolescence, young Fini lost first her sight and then her
hearing, and wound up spending the bulk of her adulthood bed-ridden
and cared for by an overtaxed mother. She describes an isolation that
is virtually... indescribable: “I prayed, but it wasn't any use.”
Despite seemingly overwhelming obstacles, Fini was able not only to
get out of bed, but to connect to the world once again as an
ambassador to Germany's woefully underserved
deaf-blind community.
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Fini Straubinger |
Herzog has never been shy about
bringing his signature stylistic excess to all of his projects, both
fiction and non-fiction, but in the case of Fini Straubinger, who
celebrates her 56th birthday during the course of the
film, he is largely content to gape in awe at this remarkable woman.
He limits his “ecstatic” inventions to a few framing devices,
such as when Fini relates a childhood memory of seeing skiers flying
through the air (entirely a Herzog creation, one he would later
expand into the film “The Great Ecstasy of the Woodcarver Steiner”)
and a few evocative poetic phrases: “When you let go of my hand, it
is as if we were a thousand miles away.”
Herzog's unique deployment of Kinski
and other wild animals dominates the discussion of his films of this
era, but some of his earliest obsessions revolved around atypical
modes of vision and communication. In the otherwise standard-issue
documentary “The Flying Doctors of East Africa” (1970) Herzog is
amazed by the distinct ways in which villagers in Tanzania and Kenya
process (or do not process) two-dimensional images, and he has been
mesmerized by the “extreme language” of cattle auctioneers,
fire-and-brimstone preachers, and even characters who struggle to
speak at all.
“Land of Silence and Darkness”
embodies these concerns as vividly as any of his films. Fini speaks
quite articulately, but needs an interpreter to relate questions to
her by means of the tactile alphabet, an intricate system of taps
applied to fingers and palms. Much of the film strives to evoke a
tactile experience for the audience; visits by groups of deaf-blind
people to zoos and gardens form some of the most memorable scenes as
they thrill to embrace baby chimpanzees or run their fingers over cacti
(much safer than it may sound.) Fini also describes how
deafness and blindness are not, in fact, the complete absence of
sounds and images, at least not as she perceives.
Having been almost mature before losing
her sight and hearing, Fini is uniquely capable of interacting with
many other deaf-blind people, many of whom live in heartbreaking
conditions, some thrust into mental asylums only because the state
provides no other care for them. Later in the film, we meet younger
people who have been deaf-blind from birth, and the possibility of
communication with them remains far more tenuous. A young man named
Vladimir achieves his most intimate interaction with the world by
hitting himself in the face with a ball and clutching to a radio
whose vibrations he can feel. Fini works determinedly to reach Vladimir
nonetheless and her gentle ministrations with him will touch the heart of any
viewer.
There's a certain mystery generated by
capturing images of people who will not have access to those images,
and when we see a deaf-blind woman sitting on the edge of a hospital
bed with her hands steepled in prayer it feels as if we're being
granted access to an experience far more private than cinema usually
achieves - “too real” even for documentary, a genuinely sublime
moment. A shot late in the film when a man wanders off from an
interview and winds up embracing a tree is one of those unplanned
poetic images that Herzog has always had an uncanny knack for
finding.
Again and again, we return to the
amazing Fini, a tireless advocate for the disenfranchised. Herzog has
a penchant for futile causes, often mining them for irony, but if he
senses there is something irredeemably lonely in this land of silence
and darkness (and perhaps hopeless for poor souls like Vladimir) he
is so gobsmacked by Fini and some of the people she encounters, he
delivers no cosmic punchline, only admiration and the tacit
acknowledgment that perhaps even the grand Bavarian poet has proven
inadequate to articulate the immensity of Fini's experience. But
getting somewhere close is an impressive achievement by any standard.
This is Herzog in full celebratory
mode, and when Herzog comes to sing his subject's praises, he holds nothing
back.
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2005 New Yorker DVD cover |
Video:
The high-def transfers in this huge
Shout! Factory Herzog set (see details at Amazon) are all pretty much similar, competent but
somewhat underwhelming compared to the competition. Nothing wrong
here, but nothing impressive either. It's certainly an upgrade over the shaky New Yorker DVD release of 2005, though it appears to be taken from the same source. The film is presented in its
original 1.33:1 aspect ratio.
Audio:
Just fine for the job at hand. Optional
English subtitles support the German audio.
Extras:
None. In this Shout! Factory set, “Land
of Silence and Darkness” shares the same Blu-ray disc as “Fata
Morgana.”
Final Thoughts:
I first met Fini Straubinger about 15
years ago through this film, and I've thought about her often since.
What a woman. And what a documentary.
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Herzog Collection cover from Shout! Factory |
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