Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

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source: Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World

WERNER HERZOG is a world class director who seems to keep his projects revolving around the constant thought of dreams. What could have been, what will happen, what are we thinking, and ultimately who are we? To make a documentary about the Internet, which would seem so rooted in science, and then use it to explore humanity and all our flaws and desires, made for a movie that is both eye-opening and reflective. For Herzog, I would expect nothing less, but the documentary still surprised me in more ways that one. It's a slow-churning story told in 10 chapters. The familiar voice of Werner himself narrates the action, through interviews and questions that attempt no less than to determine the progress of humanity with the dawn of the technological age; the age in which we are all connected and information is both limitless and ever-growing. In a small room in a science classroom in California, the very Internet was born in the 1960's, and the first transmitted message "LOG" was cut off midway through. As one man explains, the importance and simplicity of that first message ("lo and behold what man has achieved") is the thesis on which Herzog explores the topics. We see how information grew, how newspapers were first programmed for people to view on their home computers, how emails began to document business needs at almost instantaneous speeds. What a marvel, indeed. Smartly, Herzog also explores the darker shades of our brilliance: of hate mail and the lawlessness of the online community. From hackers to a family who received spam emails of their daughter's mangled body, nearly decapitated in a car wreck... The tapestries of any invention are countless, but as the documentary begins to explore, no man made invention in history has ever grown at such an exponential rate. A wide-eyed woman with a Stepford Wife's sensibility declares "the Internet is Satan." In the hands of a lesser filmmaker, Lo And Behold would be a bore of talking heads and the breakdown of important dates and times. Herzog seems to relish the bore, asking his subjects questions that often throw them off ("do you love this robot?"). It's oftentimes quite funny, but when we explore the darker implications just below the surface, it could also be one of the scariest films I have ever viewed. With our reliance on the internet so thoroughly engrossed in our lives, one scientist speculates that potentially billions could die were a large solar flare to wipe out electricity as we know it. Nature give and nature take away, but has humanity moved beyond the point of simple survival without technological help? With a haunting score that recalls precious Herzog themes, the movie is nonetheless a fascinating and endlessly entertaining journey through modern times, with Herzog's deliciously German accent piercing through the bland images of computers and wires. There seems no better director to tackle this subject matter, and in fact I doubt many other filmmakers could achieve something so remarkable from something so apparently average as the Internet. I left this movie, looked around, thought about life. There's an existential theme at work which forced me to think about how my life is wholly dependent on machines. They make life easier. I need them for daily support and connectivity. At this point in society, 2016, what is life if not the reliance on technology?

The overarching theme of this documentary by Werner Herzog is the internet. However, this is a HUGE topic--way too much for one film. Additionally, Herzog chooses to go off in many directions--any of which could have merited an entire documentary in and of itself. So, had "Lo and Behold" been a series, it would have been terrific. As is, it's enjoyable but often frustrating because it lacks a concise focus. The film begins with a tiny introduction to the birth of the internet through the ARPANET. I really liked this historical aspect of the film...but it was very brief...frustratingly so. The film then bounced to topics like self-driving cars, cyber bullying, living off the net and folks who claim to have illnesses caused by various waves (such as cell phones, microwaves and the like), hacking, the vulnerability of the net to solar activity, artificial intelligence and robots and the future of the internet and technology! As I said, too much information and it's presented but often not adequately explored. So is the film worth seeing? Yes. But it's also maddening to watch as it often felt as if you've been invited to a gourmet meal....with 156 different courses and each one comes and goes like lightning in order to get the meal completed on time! I have seen many of Herzog's documentaries and have loved many of them. I know he's a brilliant and talented man...but here the whole project just seems as if it was slapped up on the screen without regard to the subject matter or the effect it would have on the viewer. A misfire.

Yes, summed up, I would say 'unworthy'. From both the perspective of the Internet: way too complex, large and important to be portrayed the way it is in this 'documentary'. And from the perspective of the maker. Werner Herzog can make very nice films, were his style and humor is a real benefit. This is just not one of them. It seems to be due to a total lack of knowledge and feeling with the subject. Watching this movie feels like someone picked a very at random words and then tried to make a movie on The Internet around it. Monks.. Mars.. Robots.. Dreams.. Radiation.. Stars.. and this just continues. If the purpose of this movie was to let Mr Herzog have a laugh, I'm sure he succeeded. But pretending it to show the history of The Internet, and it's social impact.. No way! Shame on you Werner!

This documentary promises to shed light on the history of the internet, especially the time before the invention of the World Wide Web, in 1990. What we get instead is a procession of middle aged kooks pontificating randomly on AI takeover, sun spot events and the end of the world, and the internet being embedded into walls. The framing of most of the interviews is quite flippant. Normally a WH documentary is irreverent, but fond. Here though the viewer feels like an intruder into the world of a series of out-of-step eccentrics, whom the internet had long since left behind and taken on a life of its own - this being brought painfully into view when the question "does the internet dream of itself"? is raised. It seems what was intended to be a film about the, mostly undocumented, innocent history of the pre www internet, took on a life of its own as the subjects started rambling about other things. It ended up showing only the wide-eyed naiievety of both Herzog and the interviewees, as they wandered away from their areas of expertise and into what is essentially uninformed futurology. There was a veteran "Hacker", who "hacked" into this and that, we're told. That he'd done 99% of his "hacking" by calling companies and pretending to be a manager wasn't made clear. A bizarrely posed family who'd had a picture of their daughter that had fatally crashed on a joyride in the father's Porsche published online, told us the devil was in the internet, listing some nasty things that had been emailed to them about their daughter and her death. In the same vein, an apocalyptic prediction by three fervent geeks, who think we're on the edge of a societal collapse caused by solar flares. All in all, the film misses the mark. If it had been presented a bit differently, I think it would have been a more worthwhile watch, but as it is, it comes across as nothing more than the poking of some Silicon Valley eccentrics with a stick, and seeing what they do.

The worst part about this strange disjointed documentary that offers no new insights is the interviewer. Take for example the Elon musk interview. He was actually saying something interesting when the interviewer interrupts him like a silly 5 year old to tell him something like "will you take me along too?". I mean seriously wth, the whole interview quickly went downhill after that very fast. This is not a good documentary.

The internet is only a small subject for those that (like me) see it in the simple terms of what I know I do on it – check emails, read information, etc. However with such an expansive subject it was a good thing that the curious mind of Herzog was given the project of examining it in this film. I have read some people complain about the weakness of this film as a 'documentary', with comments about how key players such as Mark Zuckerberg and others are not included; the answer to such criticism is in the title, because this is not a documentary so much as it is a reverie, which is to say a musing and free-floating daydream through the subject. In the editing suite this was obviously reined in somewhat because the film is structured into broad chapters. This helps the film be watchable, but importantly does not lose the sense of drifting through the subject with plenty to think about but nothing too solid that would break the state of reverie. Whether or not this works for you will depend on the individual, but Herzog's style made it work for me because he drives this approach with his angles and his line of thought (although he often seems less present than in some other of his films). It doesn't all fit together neatly of course, and at times tonally it is uneven, but mostly it is a quite fascinating wander through the ideas and connections of the internet, and is well worth seeing for what it leaves you with as much as what it offers directly.

What bothered me the most was that it seemed like werner herzog used his reputation to get famous people in front of the camera, and just decided to have a chit chat on the record... the whole piece lacked any clear direction, concept or depth as it were shot for a tv news channel. it was painful to watch him do interviews with seemingly random people and could not even convince them to talk... then there's this cutscene of elon musk, looking down to his knees, not knowing what else to say in an absolute absence of guidance and substance. maybe he thought getting smart and famous people in front of the camera would do the trick, but nothing fills that void when you don't have a story to tell in the first place...

Werner Herzog's exploration of the Internet and the connected world. My expectation was that this film would explore the development of the Internet and a bit about how it works and has expanded. To an extent, this is accurate. We get a look at the birthplace of the Internet, and we see plenty of stories about the world of computing, especially hacking (both from cyber threats and from trophy-hunters like Kevin Mitnick). But we go way beyond that. I am disappointed that we don't explore the Internet more, but Herzog makes up for this by exploring other loosely connected ideas. Space travel to Mars, for one. He also talks with people who have an intense sensitivity to electro-magnetic fields. The most bizarre segment involves a family who was apparently attacked over the death of their daughter. Herzog makes the family look a bit crazy, and this isn't helped by the mother's claim that the Internet is the Anti-Christ, a view that clearly demonstrates she is mentally unstable.