Werner Herzog’s new documentary "Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World" (2016), which originally premiered on Jan. 23 at the Sundance Festival, takes its name from the first message sent from one networked computer to another. A connection between a computer at University of California, Los Angeles and one at Stanford University crashed before the word “login” could be typed, leaving only "lo." It's an apt inaugural message for an innovation that would transform the world. Herzog’s fascination with that transformation and its effects on individuals and society drive the film, and his personal investment is evident in the footage.
Herzog is certainly not a young man — he celebrated his 74th birthday earlier this month, and his devotion to capturing the layperson’s perspective can create the feeling that your uncle or grandfather has shot a movie about technology. Technical details are entirely absent, and while this conscious omission of potentially confusing or simply unintelligible jargon prevents the film from getting bogged down in the exposition and explanation of terms and concepts, it makes the proceedings elementary for more technically-inclined viewers.
Government security analyst Shawn Carpenter is called upon to figure out the potential damage a cyber-attack could cause, but these dangers will not be news to most viewers, especially those who saw Bruce Willis in "Live Free or Die Hard" (2007), which dealt with the threat of a massive cyberattack almost a decade ago. Those following current affairs and the presidential campaign will also be familiar with recent hacking threats from Russia and China.
Herzog is further limited by the breakneck pace of technological development. Since the film’s January Sundance premiere, some of his information has already become out of date. His introduction to Elon Musk and SpaceX, for example, seems overly optimistic in light of the recent explosion of one of the company’s Falcon 9 rockets.
To assume Herzog is simply out of touch would be judging him too harshly. The legendary filmmaker and documentarian is not so much interested in the future and what gizmos Silicon Valley will produce next; rather, his interests lie in the world of ideas.
For instance, networking pioneer Ted Nelson’s ideas of information are presented supremely vaguely — Nelson is prone to metaphors, and the audience never gets a concrete understanding of how his ideas diverged from what became the dominant method of computer networking. But that isn’t Herzog’s aim; his camera lingers on Nelson’s computer screen for only a few seconds. What he is after is a portrait of a man technology left behind. If the man credited with inventing the internet, Tim Berners-Lee, is Blu-ray, Ted Nelson is HD-DVD. Nelson’s stubborn clinging on to his theories is far more fascinating than their intricacies.
Those familiar with Herzog’s work will also be familiar with his voice, which is famous enough that his Wikipedia page features an audio sample. Whereas in most documentaries only the subjects’ answers are heard, Herzog’s own comments and questions are a constant presence, alternately inspiring laughter and deeper thought.
Interviewing a video game addict, Herzog asks, “[Have you adopted] characters that became almost like you?” She declines to answer, and Herzog says in voiceover that he wishes he could have discussed her fictional characters, such as “the malevolent druid dwarf." The audience could not help but laugh at (and with) his enthusiastic intonation of that absurd phrase, which also belied his complete unfamiliarity with video games.
On the other hand, when Sebastian Thrun – Udacity founder and self-driving car innovator – asserts that robots almost always perform better than humans, Herzog responds, “But they cannot fall in love, as we can.” In response, Thrun asks, “And would it be useful for machines to fall in love? Would we want to have machines that are just like people? I would say, no.” With just that nudge, Herzog pushes Thrun away from technological limitations and into philosophy, just as he does when he poses the question of whether the internet could start to dream of itself. Herzog himself does not attempt to answer any of these grand questions, instead letting his subjects puzzle and ponder, keeping the camera on them long after their responses have trailed off into silence.
While Herzog has only scratched the surface of what the internet has wrought (how could he do more in only 90 minutes?), his curiosity is infectious, and his wanderings from topic to topic hint at the edges of a world unexplored. People living near an astronomy facility that blocks out all electronic signals, Buddhist monks glued to their smartphones and soccer-playing robots who could one day beat human players demonstrate both the depth and breadth of the internet’s impact.
Herzog's new documentary delves into digital world
