Lessons of Darkness

In his Leçons de ténèbres, Couperin draws on the text of the Lamentations of the Prophet Jeremiah, who laments the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians. Here, Werner Herzog mourns another destruction, a crime against the Earth and humanity: the setting alight of 732 oil wells by Iraqi forces as they withdrew from Kuwait. Flames as far as the eye can see, fires that will take months to extinguish, 20 million tonnes of oil spilled into the ground... an apocalyptic vision that Herzog stages like a science-fiction film, like a long poem on the end of the Earth.