Lessons of Darkness

Lessons of Darkness (1992) is Werner Herzog's documentary you can watch online on iFILM. After the Gulf War, Herzog shot the burning oil fields of Kuwait from a helicopter, framing them like the surface of a dead alien world.

There's almost no reporting here — no explaining narration, just black skies, scorched ground, lakes of crude and towers of flame set to Wagner, Grieg and Mahler. Herzog strips away the specifics of the real war and presents the disaster as a kind of biblical apocalypse caught on film. It runs only 54 minutes, yet the imagery is hypnotic and deeply unsettling — one for viewers who love how Herzog finds beauty and horror in a single frame. Stream Lessons of Darkness (1992) online on iFILM.