Nature and Absurd Freedom in Werner Herzog’s Science-Fiction Fantasies | Tyson Namow

Summary: Changing the Climate: Utopia, Dystopia and Catastrophe | Tyson Namow In experimental, non-fiction films such as Fata Morgana (1970), Lektionen in Finsternis (Lessons of Darkness) (1992) and The Wild Blue Yonder (2005), German filmmaker Werner Herzog creates fantastic, science-fiction dystopias. These films deal with relationships between human beings and the natural world, including how human activity is transforming the Earth into an uninhabitable, alien planet. On the one hand, these films suggest that degeneration is built into the evolution of the human species and that there is a course toward environmental catastrophe that cannot be avoided. Time in these films is presented as being in a paradoxical stasis where the end is inscribed in the beginning and vice versa. On the other hand, however, these films counter such pessimism by employing various ironic devices that can result in spectators experiencing a self- reflexive, aesthetic distance from what they see and hear. This distance can enlighten audiences to the nature of their relationships to the external world and the need for them to own and take responsibility for the inner meaning and emotion they ascribe to phenomena. I will argue that this evokes a sense of Albert Camus’ notion of absurd freedom. Tyson Namow is currently completing a PhD thesis on the aesthetics of natural landscape in the non-fictions films of Werner Herzog. He has refereed publications in Screening the Past and Colloquy and has presented a number of papers at cinema conferences since 2008.