Into the Inferno

Into the Inferno (2016) is Werner Herzog's documentary about active volcanoes — watch it online on iFILM. Herzog teams up with Cambridge volcanologist Clive Oppenheimer and takes him to eruption sites across Indonesia, Ethiopia, North Korea, and the islands of the Pacific. The lava flows are real. So is the danger.

But Herzog is not here for geology. He lingers at the crater's edge and wonders aloud what draws human beings to stand above molten rock and call it sacred. A Pacific island tribe builds ritual around the fire. North Korean minders explain — with straight faces — how the volcano is tied to the destiny of Kim Il-sung. Oppenheimer measures and records; Herzog asks why any of this matters to the people living next to it.

The result is one of those Herzog films where the subject is nominally nature and actually the stories people tell to survive it. Made for Netflix, shot with cameras that probably shouldn't have survived. Stream Into the Inferno (2016) on iFILM.