Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World - Review
One of two documentaries released this year by Werner Herzog, Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, is an interesting exploration of the expanding technological age and an insight to the people connected to it. Herzog’s curiosity is never up for question, this is a man with over 60 films under his belt who (thankfully) refuses to go away. His ideas are infinite. So it is no surprise that Herzog has chosen to take on such a broad and elaborate subject as the internet for his newest project.
Herzog tackles the immensity of the subject through just 10 chapters. It is interesting to think of all he left out or chose not to even touch, and under what criteria the featured subjects made the final cut. This film so easily could have been made up of 50 chapters and ran for 500 minutes.
He begins with the birth of the internet, a mammoth task in itself, and progresses through the digital age. Artificial intelligence, hacking, and the colonisation of Mars are a few of the subjects Herzog chooses to explore in his almost 100 minute runtime.
Some of the more engaging chapters deal with the human impact and repercussions of the ever increasing digitalisation of our society. Throughout these chapters the tone grows increasingly more anxious; we are spared from the scientific jargon that seems to have taken over most of the film, which is frankly a little overwhelming, and are given a chance to connect and reflect with real human subjects and experiences.
Internet addiction is one of these more humanly engaging chapters. We travel to a remote internet rehab centre where 2 subjects share with us their internet gorging horror stories. Something most of us could connect to. We also travel to an even remoter part of America where we meet a group of hermits straight from a real life version of Todd Haynes ‘Safe.’ These people believe our technological age is poisoning their bodies, making them ill, so they retreat in a safe haven devoid of phone towers and other pesky tech.
One of the most human encounters of the film come from an interview with the Catsouras family. An odd but not surprising camera set up from Herzog, show the upper middle class, seemingly perfect family gathered around their dinner table, food for the crew and perhaps overdone hospitality crowd the frame. The family discuss the traumatic death of their young daughter and its links to the internet.
18 year old Catsouras took off in her father’s Porsche, tragically losing control resulting in her instant death. The accident was so gruesome that the coroner wouldn’t even allow her parents to identify the body, however, photographs of the scene and Catsouras body were leaked online and led to a rush of attention and internet trolling. The incident was so traumatic to the family that they withdrew from using the internet completely and even began homeschooling their youngest daughter in hopes of protecting her from the images and taunting.
With an internet society so concerned with meme culture and trolling it is a difficult scene to watch, its an incident we ourselves are probably aware of or have seen similar cases of.
It is worth noting that Herzog chose not to seek out the images of the young girl, that still exist on the web despite the family’s best efforts, and this is a man that listened to the audio of a vicious bear mauling in front of the victim’s grieving friend. In this chapter Herzog succeeds in showing us the dark grisly side of the web, that I myself are more interested in, and his choosing to not look at the images or even describe all that much about the content of the images, it’ll hopefully entice us to react the same. Go take a Buzzfeed quiz or look at more Nick Cage gifs instead.
The film possibly could have worked better as a 2 part documentary project. Perhaps choosing in one to focus on the birth of the internet and all the intricacies of technology and another more character based and focusing on human interaction with increasing technology; the benefits the consequences and such like. I would have loved to see more of the ‘Safe’ people or those facing internet addiction rehab, and perhaps then the sheer immensity of the technology itself and its journey from small beginnings to mass usage would be more clear and easier to digest in a longer runtime, and the human experiences would have more of an impact emotionally.
Lo and Behold is a pretty conventional documentary featuring multiple characters and topics. Some topics, as mentioned are more interesting than others, however the film is filled with awkward Herzog humour, and paired with his signature breathy narration makes for an overall engaging piece of cinema.
Herzog who once described social media as a “massive, naked onslaught of stupidity”, switches his trademark nihilism for childlike wonder and inquisitiveness, exploring the vastness of the reach and impact of the internet.
In the end he succeeds in showing us the darker side of the internet, even hinting at the internet as a possible threat to mankind, whilst presenting the internet as an immense accomplishment, one of man’s biggest achievements. He tackles the internet with his classic Herzogian existentialism and in the end leaves the audience pondering its own fate. Will our downfall be a HAL-9000 type technological evolution of absolute chaos or will we continue to evolve with it and hey, perhaps all move to Mars.
