Lessons Of Darkness Film Analysis Essay

The film that I have chosen to analyze is Lessons of Darkness by Werner Herzog. I chose this film because I really enjoy Herzog’s film style, and I also enjoy how he uses specific shots and scenes to portray how he is against the gruesome nature of war and attacks. In this film, I have chosen two sequences where I believe that Herzog is trying to get his point across of the violence that come from war. For example, as Herzog uses the first sequence of the birds, to the bones of the dead, to the empty military vehicles, he is contrasting life and death. Similarly, he pans over in the sequence of the tools to show “what used to be” of those in the war. As he interviews the woman, one cannot help but feel bad to see how negative this affected her. Thus, Herzog conveys the violent and gruesome realities of the Gulf War in Kuwait through a series of long shots and overviews of the objects, as well as mise-en-scène. According to the …show more content…
Lessons of Darkness is a film created in a poetic mode. It is set in Kuwait following the attacks from the Iraqi army setting fire in their oil fields. This film shows the gruesome nature and aftermath of war, and most importantly how that violence affects those both alive and dead. It primarily focuses on the effects of the people in Kuwait during the attacks, but towards the end it focuses on those trying to uncover what happened in the oil fields. Herzog transitions from showing a shot of live birds in the sky to a shot of the bones of the dead to a shot of empty vehicles and abandoned objects. He also pans over other objects and tools in a separate sequence that once belonged to the living. Herzog does all this as physical evidence of what truly happened. He also then interviews different women who give their accounts of what happened to them and their loved once as emotional evidence, also known as