Product Details

• Actors: Eugen Des Montagnes, Lotte Eisner, James William Gledhill, Wolfgang von Ungern-Sternberg
• Directors: Werner Herzog
• Format: Anamorphic, Color, Full Screen, NTSC, Widescreen
• Language: German (Dolby Digital 2.0)
• Subtitles: English
• Region: Region 1 (U.S. and Canada only. Read more about DVD formats.)
  
• Aspect Ratio: 1.77:1
• Number of discs: 2
• Rated: NR (Not Rated)
• Studio: Starz / Anchor Bay
• DVD Release Date: January 8, 2002
• Run Time: 164 minutes
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• ASIN: B000059PPP
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #77,742 in Movies & TV (See Top 100 in Movies & TV)
• Learn more about "Lessons of Darkness / Fata Morgana" on IMDb

Editorial Reviews

Lessons of Darkness shows the disaster of the Kuwaiti oil fields in flames after the Gulf War. This comes packaged with a special bonus DVD of Fata Morgana, which also takes a special non-linear look at the beauty of the Sahara Desert.

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A visually stunning Herzog documentary worth preordering. December 26, 2001

By A Customer

Format:DVD

While I cannot comment on this particular DVD issue, I have seen a PAL video of "Lessons of Darkness" and cannot express how thrilled I was to see that Anchor Bay had scheduled this film for release. In addition, they have included an extremely rare, full length documentary, "Fata Morgana," which I have never successfully been able to track down on video (as if Lessons of Darkness alone were not sufficient incentive to order this DVD). Given the high quality of the video and audio transfers for the other Herzog films in Anchor Bay's catalogue, I have little doubt that this DVD issue, which like the other Herzog issues includes audio commentary, will be nothing short of outstanding. Now if only the catalogue of Fassbinder, Godard, or Resnais films on DVD were equally exhaustive.

Lessons of Darkness is a haunting account of the burning of the Kuwaiti oil fields in the aftermath of the Gulf war, and, with the exception of a few engaging interviews with local village dwellers, is told almost exclusively through images, set to the music of Mahler, Arvo Part, and Strauss. This is perhaps Herzog's most absorbing film visually, and, with due respect to "God's Angry Man" and "Little Dieter Needs to Fly," the latter also being released by Anchor Bay, "Lessons of Darkness" is perhaps the director's most compelling documentary. Moreover, the images of the firefighers struggling to put out the infernal flames rising out of the oil fields are all the more timely and moving given recent events. Highly Recommended!

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A Haunting and Hypnotic Masterpiece July 1, 2003

By "youngvelvet"

Format:DVD

Fata Morgana is an absolute masterpiece. It's Werner Herzog's most unconventional film and the most bizzare film I've ever seen. It doesn't have a plot or story. Instead, we're presented with a brilliant collection of images, words and music woven together by a master filmmaker. Fata Morgana is not a documentary either. Most of the people in this film are directed and given lines to read. It has some of the most beautiful and haunting images ever commited to film. Herzog photographs actual mirages and we see cars and people floating around in the middle of the desert who aren't actually there but hundreds of miles away reflected due to the heated strata of air. All of the tracking shots were done with a camera mounted on top of a VW van that Werner Herzog drove himself. The use of music in this movie is amazing; from Leonard Cohen, Mozart, Blind Faith and the Third Ear Band. Imagine Stanley Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey taking place in the desert instead of outerspace. Fata Morgana is so hypnotic that it has the ability to make you feel as though your spirit has left your body. This film is a must see and is not recommended for conformists who've been forced fed a steady diet of Hollywood-commercial fast food movies. It will change the way you view films. Rating: 10 out of 10.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A science-fiction elegy about demented colonialism July 29, 2006

By Salvador Fortuny Miró

Format:DVD|Amazon Verified Purchase

" Fata morgana " means mirage, a metaphore used by german filmmaker Werner Herzog to show us our decadent world as a phantasm, connecting in a very personal way with the pessimist and romantic philosophy of Schopenhauer and a mayan ancient myth that explain the world as a creation that has not been finished. " Fata morgana " is at the same time a disheartened and mesmerezing movie: during the two first parts of the film Herzog blends apocalyptic and ghostly images of Sahara desert ( animals skeletons burned by the sun; tumbledown airplanes in the middle of nowhere )with segments of the mayan myth of Creation ( the " Pupul-Vuh" ) narrated by prestigious cinema essayist Lotte Eissner. The third and last part, ironically entitled " The golden age ", of this shatteredly lyrical movie introduces several sardonic and bizarre vignettes as that one of a west scientist dressed with a picturesque clothing to fit to the new environment holding a lizard, a creature older than man. The message is clear: man is shown by Herzog as an alien; as a grotesque creature that has broken the eerie order of nature in the name of cosmic boredom. In Herzog's words: " Fata morgana" is a "science-fiction elegy about demented colonialism" ( 1 )

" Lessons of darkness " is a haunting documentary shot in Kuwait where Herzog follows the traces of the disasters perpetrated during the Gulf war. ( 2 )

Full-frame ( 1 ) / Widescreen edition ( 2 ). Extras: biofilmography of Werner Herzog; Herzog commentaries about " Fata morgana "