Werner Herzog is a filmmaker who has spent much of his career gazing, awed and afraid, into the wilderness. In the sweeping epics Fitzcarraldo and Aguirre, The Wrath Of God, he studied European men struggling to tame the jungles of South America. In the award-winning documentaries Grizzly Man and Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, he explored the way that humans have tried, and often failed, to thrive in a world with only the most rudimentary comforts of civilization. And in his new documentary, Lo And Behold, Reveries Of The Connected World, he looks at possibly the most frightening wasteland of all: the internet.
The 73-year-old German filmmaker speaks to people who have built their lives on the information superhighway, like Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal and Tesla Motors, and Bob Kahn, co-inventor of the Internet Protocol. He also speaks to people who perceive the darker aspects of the web, such as a family that shuns the electronic “manifestation of evil” and a woman who “became very ill from wireless radiation.” Leave it to Herzog to make a source of adorable cat videos seem so menacing. The doc premiered at Sundance back in January, and has so far received overwhelmingly positive reviews.
Lo And Behold, Reveries Of The Connected World can be seen in theaters and on streaming devices beginning July 8.