Film Review: The White Diamond

The White Diamond (2004)

Dir: Werner Herzog

Featuring: Werner Herzog, Graham Dorrington, Marc Anthony Yhap

If you’re familiar with the works of master-director Werner Herzog, you may have previously experienced his take on some of the themes in The White Diamond, his 2004 documentary about an Englishman who wants to fly a helium-filled airship over the South American rainforest. The White Diamond is another Herzog tale of man vs. nature, and its subject is a man driven to extremes to make his ideas and dreams come to fruition.

Englishman Graham Dorrington is an aerospace design scientist and a professor at the Queen Mary University of London. He has always had a passion for things that fly; we learn that he lost two fingers on his left hand as a child when he mishandled a rocket. Dorrington has helped construct an airship in London and intends to ship it to Guyana so he can fly over the rainforest. He talks about the unknown and unexplored jungle canopy and the possible medicinal and scientific breakthroughs that may come from exploring it, but Herzog allows us to be quite sure that he’s not telling us the full reason for the project. Dorrington is a man consumed by his visions, and, we learn, by an accident years earlier.

The White Diamond is like a lot of Herzog films, both fictional and non. He loves to bring us to people who think big and have the courage to follow those ideas, because Herzog himself shares their sentiments. Herzog went deep into the rainforests of Peru to shoot Aguirre: The Wrath of God, and pulled a real steamship over a mountain for Fitzcarraldo. Herzog is a man who refuses to compromise his vision, like Dorrington.

That doesn’t mean it always works. There were a few times in The White Diamond where I paused and asked myself, “Why am I watching this?” The film is beautifully shot and tells and interesting story, but Dorrington’s story doesn’t relate to a fundamental piece of humanity like many of Herzog’s other films. In fact, some of the ways Herzog attempts to explain Dorrington’s adventures are a little ham-fisted and forced. Dorrington has some soliloquies about the death of a colleague in an airship years before, on a similar expedition, but he is a little too self-aware and resistant to Herzog for us to really feel why he is embarking on this mission. We understand why he’s flying over the jungle canopy in a blimp, but we don’t empathize.

Regardless, Herzog’s films are, at best, soul quaking mirrors of human nature, and, at worst, impressive spectacles. Though this film might be a little more of the latter than the former, that doesn’t mean it’s without merit. The images Herzog captures while the airship is flying over the jungle canopy are very beautiful, and the overall story is an interesting oddity which is actually quite engaging.

There is a local man in The White Diamond named Marc Anthony Yhap, who visits the base camp for the expedition and becomes a running character in the film. Though the focus is not on him, he gets the most profound scenes of the film to himself, and carries himself with a mysterious playfulness which the film sorely needs. The only times I felt genuine emotion were during Yhap’s discussions of his long-lost family. Perhaps, if the film was about Yhap and not Dorrington, it would have hit home a little more.

B-

(Ed. Note: In the interest of full disclosure, I originally wrote this in September, but never had an outlet to publish it until now.

At the risk of sounding like a pretentious douchebag, I can credit two people directly with influencing my love of film and really pointing out what a good movie is and should be. The first is Roger Ebert, for having seen pretty much every film ever and writing about each one with great love and skill. The other is Werner Herzog, the director of this film.

Herzog is one of the best directors of all time. Ebert wrote about a Herzog film, Aguirre: The Wrath of God, in his Great Movies book. Shortly thereafter, I sought it out, and was amazed at how succinctly Herzog can look at human nature and translate it into a movie. I had never seen anything like that movie and still haven't.

For those interested, Herzog did a number of collaborations with German actor Klaus Kinski, which are perhaps his most famous (and best) films. The aforementioned Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Nosferatu, and Fitzcarraldo are all Herzog-Kinski collaborations and among the best of his films. To be honest, I haven't seen too much of Herzog's other work, though I intend to watch it all.)

John Lacey