Title: Into the Inferno
Course: Into the Inferno

Into the Inferno

Werner Herzog, 2016

104 min

"Obviously there is the scientific side to our journey," says Werner Herzog, narrating this film essay on volcanoes. "But what we are really chasing is the magical side, the demons, the new gods. This is the itinerary we have set for ourselves, no matter how strange things may eventually get."

SYNOPSIS

An exploration of active volcanoes in Indonesia, Iceland, North Korea and Ethiopia, where Herzog follows vulcanologist and co-director Clive Oppenheimer, who hopes to minimize the volcanoes’ destructive impact. Herzog’s quest? To gain an image of our origins and nature as a species. He finds that the volcano—mysterious, violent, and rapturously beautiful—instructs us that, “there is no single one that is not connected to a belief system.”

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YoSmPkWmG4k

“It is a fire that wants to burst forth, and it could not care less about what we are doing up here. This boiling mass is just monumentally indifferent to scurrying roaches, retarded reptiles and vapid humans alike.”