![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() But these same shots are beautiful on their own terms, as spectacle. The many lengthy shots of erupting volcanoes, rivers of lava and pools of magma soon start to feel like obvious metaphors, not just for the single-mindedness of people whose lives revolve around volcanoes, but for Herzog's obsession with those same people, as well as for his obsessive personality generally, which seem unbearably self-regarding if he weren't such a witty, self-deprecating storyteller and guide. They died doing what they loved, which in Herzog's eyes amounts to a hero's death. This piece of information is conveyed with an undertone of respect, as well it should be. ![]() The sequence ends by telling us that they were killed by a fiery avalanche. At one point Herzog detours to show us documentary footage of Katia and Maurice Krafft, a married team of volcanologists. Not only do they seem not to care whether their obsession destroys them, obsession might be the fuel of their existence. His filmography is filled with people who are obsessed with achieving a goal, learning all they can about a subject, or getting to the heart of a mystery. ("Every single piece of bone is a keeper," Herzog intones over footage of a dig site, one of many bits of voice-over that sounds a lot funnier when he says it.) He serves as the on-camera guide for Herzog, interviewing fellow volcanologists as well as people who spend most of their lives living or working near active volcanoes, including a woman who works at a monitoring station and a group of archeologists digging up shards of bone preserved by cooled and hardened lava. So are all of the people profiled in this movie, which is directed by Werner Herzog but credited as "A film by Werner Herzog and Clive Oppenheimer." Oppenheimer is a Cambridge volcano expert, or volcanologist, a slim man with a kind face and voice. Then comes a succession of long shots of the magma. The camera draws close to them, eventually peering over their shoulders to reveal what they're looking at: a gigantic pool of magma. A gliding helicopter shot takes us across the Vanatu Archipelago in the Galapagos, over waves of ground that resemble dried black pudding, until we see a group of tiny figures on the crest of a mountain. The documentary "Into the Inferno" sums itself up in its opening moments. ![]()
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