\n
![](\"https:\/\/cdn.craft.cloud\/26ed9c78-feb7-4ee6-8ddf-262fd7bafb2d\/assets\/tco\/images\/Ghost-Elephants.jpg\")
<\/p>\n [ad_1]
\n<\/p>\n
There are certain filmmakers where each utterance becomes a\u00a0gravitational pull, and Werner Herzog \u2013 charming anticonformist, profound depictor of hubris, reality television fan, chicken loather and occasional bullet survivor \u2013 is undoubtedly one. His latest,\u00a0<\/span>Ghost Elephants<\/i>, is not only intriguing as the film that accompanied his lifetime achievement award at Venice, but also for the anticipation of how his truly iconic cadence might utter the title words itself (spoiler: Ga host Eh Luh Phunts) might sound like a\u00a0late-career curio, a\u00a0footnote in a\u00a0singular oeuvre already swollen with human tragedy, ambition and misunderstanding of life itself. And in many respects, the film does play as of some of his thematic greatest hits but what emerges is something gentler and more fractured. While its relatively toothless compared to his earlier work, this film, made with National Geographic, peers into the Angolan highlands in search of colossal elephants, and ends up gently reflecting on the ghosts of human longing.<\/span><\/p>\n The ostensible protagonist is Dr Steve Boyes, a\u00a0South African naturalist with a\u00a0misty-eyed devotion to a\u00a0museum exhibit: \u200b\u201c<\/span>Henry,\u201d the F\u00e9nyk\u00f6vi elephant, felled in 1955<\/span> and immortalised behind glass at the Smithsonian. Boyes, clutching a\u00a0decades-old photo of the taxidermy beast, embarks on a\u00a0quest to find Henry\u2019s descendants in the wild. It\u2019s a\u00a0premise that on paper recalls his beloved documentary\u00a0<\/span>Grizzly Man<\/i>, yet Herzog, ever suspicious of both fictional and non-fictional obsession, does not sharpen his knives. Instead, his voiceover purrs around the edges, slyly amused, gently sceptical of its own romanticisation of events.<\/span><\/p>\n The film\u2019s true sympathies lie elsewhere. When elephants finally fill the screen, sliding underwater with a\u00a0grace that belies their heft, congregating in unspoken bonds shimmering with the gauzy gaze of African heat, the camera lingers. Their enormity feels otherworldly, titans out of sync with the small human concerns that pursue them. The San trackers, particularly a\u00a0man named Xui who reads prints with all the precision of elite military tracking devices, provide the most grounded counterpoint to Boyes at times when his insights are uncomfortably fixed through a\u00a0colonialist gaze, yet Herzog also seems to have more true interest in their stories of their connection to these magnificent animals and environments, sketching a\u00a0push and pull between reverence and entitlement to nature\u2019s spoils.<\/span><\/p>\n This is less a\u00a0fully cohesive narrative than an occasionally overtly stitched together patchwork of filmmaking goals. Audiences with kings are framed with almost impressive mundanity, Boyes\u2019s motive seems at times puerile but sits alongside a\u00a0musician spending his day transfixed by fixing his instrument; the latter being held with more tenderness in Herzog\u2019s gaze, while he himself questions the true motives behind his fascination with this simpler worldview. The editing has a\u00a0signature looseness, refusing to promise neat climaxes or conclusions. That refusal may frustrate those conditioned by a\u00a0far spread National Geographic polish which adheres to a\u00a0sunnier view of nature, but post-credits, the film as a\u00a0whole still feels true to Herzog\u2019s own perspective that the world is filled with beauty and an unnerving propensity to destroy it.<\/span><\/p>\n What lingers most is not Boyes\u2019s quest but the vignettes stitched around it. An archival clip of elephants strafed from a\u00a0helicopter leaves an audience audibly sobbing; photographs of Josef F\u00e9nyk\u00f6vi, rifle in hand, grinning grotesquely. \u200b\u201c<\/span>Man is on a\u00a0mission to destroy what he\u2019s part of,\u201d one anthropologist remarks, and Herzog lets the words hang heavy. While it would be easy to read Herzog\u2019s work as a\u00a0reflection upon his own mortality as a\u00a0filmmaker, he seems uninterested in chasing closure. He remains elusive, but imbued with affection for human condition, the potential of cinema and beasts too grand for either to truly capture.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n\nGet more Little White\u00a0Lies<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n