SFF NOTES: Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2015, Dir. Werner Herzog)

As soon as you hear Werner Herzog's voice in the opening moments of Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, you know where you are. You know who your guide is. You know you are going to see a slant on our world, a paranoia-tinted view that will nevertheless revise your understanding of it.

Herzog's topic this time around is the Internet, its advent, its impact and its impending destruction as the world as we know it. That's right. These reveries, and they are just that - ten short essays on increasingly misanthropic offshoots of Herzog's train of thought.

As a whole, Lo and Behold is interesting though perhaps not wholly involving. Herzog is the attraction and his slant on the world, and that of those who he involves in the enterprise, approaches a bizarrely poetic philosophy.

Much of what Herzog throws up feels artistically opportunistic. When he stumbles on the Chicago foreshore, deserted but for a group of Buddhist monks on smartphones, the scene becomes an abandoned world where the population have emigrated en masse to Mars. A couple of cyborg mannequins in the Spaceex foyer become potential attackers.

Of course, there are kernels of truth in amongst Herzog's hypnotic insanity. Considerations of how reliant we are on our worldwide connectedness and how catastrophic is would/will be if/when it collapses are both startling and sobering. Questions as to whether the Internet itself dreams slightly less so, especially since it seems a little dated post Mr. Dick. But most of the self-proclaimed nerds in the interview booth are delighted to be asked.

I've had more enlightening times with Herzog but I'm never going to pass up the time to spend a couple of hours inside his head.

Nor should you.

★★★☆

Trailer:

Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World screened as part of the Sydney Film Festival 2016.

You can check out other films from the festival here.