Land of Silence and Darkness
Dir: Werner Herzog
1971
****
After completing The Flying Doctors of East Africa in 1969 and Handicapped Future a few months before, Herzog strives to tell a similarly amazing story but without it being "dangerously conventional." as he would later state. In Handicapped Future Herzog realised that the people were very much the heart of every story and to overlook their character would be to miss the point of the documentary. Land of Silence and Darkness explores the world of the deaf and blind through the life and work of Fini Straubinger, a rebellious character who decided to address the situation she and many others had been left to suffer in silence. Herzog pushes nothing, he's no fly on the wall documentary maker, his skill is in letting the people show the audience just what a lack of communication is like. It's this focus and patience that has always made his films better than most, Land of Silence and Darkness is probably his first great documentary and the first of many masterpieces.