04/09/2005

An Unidentified Cinema Object landed yesterday on the Lido, unleashing the admiration of the international press: the docu-film The Wild Blue Yonder in the running for a prize in the Horizons section. Its pilot, the famous German director Werner Herzog who celebrates his 63th birthday tomorrow and makes a brilliant returns to the top of the 7th art, adding another jewel to his collection of out of the ordinary feature films. This space voyage, poetic, humorous and philosophical of cosmonauts on the way to planet Yonder within the solar system is a work of hypnotic beauty with an original soundtrack of bewitching music by Ernst Reijseger and with the enchanting voice notably of Mola Sylla from Senegal.

As recounted by a narrator (the excellent Brad Dourif), an alien living on Earth using a voice off or seen in close-up in a deserted town), the space adventure The Wild Blue Yonder is made up of ten chapters whose headings perfectly sum up the wacky dimension of the subject matter : "requiem for a dying planet", "mission beyond the limits ", "the mathematics of chaotic transport", "utopia of the ideal colony", "the time tunnel"… But Herzog applies a very original treatment to the story which traces the exploration of a solar system by a vessel charged with finding an habitable universe for Man, secretly under threat from a virus in development. Alternating entirely musical sequences of the cosmonauts floating in their confined space (with the help of Nasa), with the aquatic blue of the planet Yonder, and interviews with scientists flirting on the edge of the plausible and the improbable, the director succeeds in captivating the spectator. Breathtaking images make this film a veritable "trip" without breaking the narrative line (the history of the world reviewed by an alien) as passionate as it is hilarious.

Produced by British outfit West Park Pictures in co-production with the filmmaker’s company (Werner Herzog Filmproduktion, also handling sales internationally) and French Tetra Media, The Wild Blue Yonder also had support from the BBC, France 2 from the CNC.

(Translated from French)