Werner Herzog's mock documentary/travelogue on a graveyard locale — a godforsaken region of the Sahara littered with ram-shackle native dwellings and abandoned remnants of Rommel's WWII desert campaign. The movie guards its intentions like a crafty card player, and grows on you by degrees — a hard movie to get a grip on. The imagery swings from Life Magazine photo journalism to Leftist poster propaganda, from awestruck, smooth-sailing tracking shots of sand dunes to awkward, smirking candid-camera coverage of the natives, tourists, scientists in the region; the music ranges from Couperin to Leonard Cohen; and the narration matches a sanctimonious, incantatory voice with an increasingly ridiculous sacred-text script ("In paradise, birds fly into your mouth already cooked"). (1973) — Duncan Shepherd
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