Running Time: 77 min

Cast: Brad Dourif 

While one may argue about the relative merits of different film-makers and their working methods, there is little doubt that one of the people who has made the fullest use of the medium is the German director and living legend of independent film-making Werner Herzog. In a career spanning more than 45 years, Herzog has dabbled in narrative films, purely visual experiments, documentary shoots...and not always with a strict demarcation between the styles. Continuing to make films at a frightening pace, he has also indulged in experiments like 2005's double salvo of Grizzly Man and The Wild Blue Yonder, both of which relied on splicing together footage shot by other people with additional inserts to deliver a vision uniquely Herzog.

The Wild Blue Yonder is introduced as a “Science Fiction Fantasy”, which is a good description, although in my view “Cosmic Joke” may be more apt. What Herzog does here is use documentary footage from two disparate real-life expeditions to spin a story about the discovery of a new planet in another Galaxy, called The Wild Blue Yonder (TWBY). A veteran of the low-budget weird movie Brad Dourif is presented to us as an Alien from TWBY. Brad takes an obvious relish in this pastiche, as do we when he comes up with lines like “You see aliens as these technologically-advanced super-beings who destroy New York city in two minutes flat. Well I hate to say this, but we aliens all SUCK.” In various appearances throughout the movie he goes on to, which I shall not spoil for you, give the juicy details of why the aliens really suck. It makes for funny, ironic and frequently poignant viewing. We are then treated to a pseudo-scientific lecture about spontaneously generated cosmic tunnels that give “free” trans-galactic rides to objects that land up in them.

Herzog draws from two main sources here for his borrowed video. The first is a NASA satellite-launching space shuttle mission in 1991, which Herzog presents as a search for TWBY, putting together a long montage of video footage of astronauts going through their various routines in zero gravity. Set against a prominent cello background (composer and player Ernst Reijseger) intertwined with the chants of a Sardinian chorus, this footage can, depending on your frame of mind while watching, come across as hypnotic or soporific; or as in my case, a little of both. The second source is from an Antarctic expedition, which we are told is TWBY with its frozen sky and liquid atmosphere. This is a significantly more interesting episode, with the strange and incredibly beautiful visuals well-supported by a more evocative use of the orchestra.

TWBY may not be an instant hit with all, and even at its none-too-hefty 77 min length comes across as stretched in certain parts. But it is in the end a genuinely interesting experiment from the man who has resolutely stayed off the beaten track. Well worth the watch.