Fireball … the bearer of the secrets of humanity

Werner Hertzou cinema is the cinema of radical dreamers. As a daring and inquisitive explorer of the planet, he traveled the world in search of “the exhilaration of discovering the unknown.” In his cinematic vision of humanity, he introduced truth with myths, imagination with realism, and science with religion. We know your voice, a rusty, monotonous voice, with an urgent tone, like meditation, it takes you. With the Bavarian director No Sakina. No loss of time, always traveling and moving. It cannot be forgotten that his audiobook was published in 2010, based on his 1978 book “On Ice Walking”. An audiobook in which Hertzoe reads his journey, how he traveled by foot from Munich to Paris in 22 days in the winter of 1974. His journey was to save the writer, film critic and his girlfriend, Lute Eisner, one of the founders of the “French Cinematheque”. At the time, Isner was terminally ill, told Herzog that if he came to Paris on foot, she would survive. Isner survived and died in 1983 at the age of 87.

Hertzoe met British volcanologist Cliff Oppenheimer in Antarctica in 2007, when he interviewed him during the filming of his film Encounters at the End of the World. They became friends and met again for the filming of “In the heart of the volcano” (2016). A new collaboration with Oppenheimer released this week is my documentary “Fireball: Visitors from Darker Worlds” (2020). Another trip from Hawaii to Norway, Australia, France, Mexico, New Guinea, India and the United States. This time, asteroids and meteors dominate the journey and the tracks they left on Earth. They both travel the places where meteorites have fallen and investigate the myths that spawned them. The film shows how these celestial bodies haunt thousands of astronomers, who describe them as carriers of human secrets. Hertzuo takes us to the places where a meteorite collision occurred. It illustrates how natural phenomena have been treated culturally, religiously, and mythically. We travel with two friends to these places, he even takes us to the Pope’s summer residence at Castel Gandolfo, and we visit the Black Stone in the southeast corner of the Kaaba in Mecca. There, Hertzoe realizes that he cannot go to photograph himself, because he is not Muslim. But he sent a friend to record on a cell phone the moment when believers rushed to touch and kiss that “stone from heaven” which, according to the Islamic religion, was brought by King Gabriel to the prophet Abraham.
Herzog narrates and films the movie, and Oppenheimer is in charge of interviewing people we don’t know how Herzog came to know. They meet with experts and Nobel laureates, but also with various amateur geologists such as jazz pianist and meteorologist John Larsen and geologist friend Brale Kelly. Larsen’s hobby is collecting meteorite fragments. With the small stone in hand, he speaks with a mixture of enthusiasm and scientific romance: “If I took a small meteorite and felt it on my finger, no one would have touched anything older. You can see infinity with your own eyes. “Herzog intervenes directly in the film once, in Arizona, when researcher Meenakshi Wade said that humans are metaphors for astral dust, Hertzog can no longer afford it. This was the only time that he couldn’t rest during the entire shooting of this movie. He had to interject abruptly from behind the camera, saying, “I’m not made of stardust! I’m a Bavarian!”

The film is a visual celebration of nature and its secrets.

Oppenheimer searches for precise scientific explanations, and Hertzu shortened them so as not to torment us with details. The Bavarian is less concerned with geological influence than with cultural influence. Meteorite Effects on Religions (Black Stone and Papal Church Astronomers) or Art (How Wolf Creek Crater Became an Idea for Aboriginal Art in Australia). The film shows us a crater rooted in Hindu mythology in northern India. Documents a meteorite accident in Siberian Chelyabinsk in 2013, creating a crater 1 km in diameter.
Hertzoo’s movie is a visual celebration of nature and its mysteries. The big question accompanying this global cinematic journey is: How likely is it that another large celestial body will land on Earth again and cause unimaginable devastation? This is what we saw in the Mexican Yucatan peninsula when it was struck by a giant meteor 66 million years ago, and dinosaurs and many other organisms are believed to have gone extinct after its fall.
“You can’t be a scientist if you don’t have a sense of wonder” is the motto of this work, which can also be interpreted as an artistic doctrine. A curious investigation in which Herzog constantly tries to decipher the human code, with all its uniqueness and complexity. “This is science at its finest,” Herzog said, commenting, as a South Korean researcher jumped with excitement after finding an unusual meteorite in the majestic icy white desert of Antarctica. Here’s the “euphoria of discovering the unknown” that Hertzoe never misses.

* Fireball: Visitors to Darker Worlds على Apple TV

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