Werner Herzog is no stranger to stories depicting people driven by mad and doomed desires. At first, his latest movie feels like a natural successor to that line of ill-fated adventures as he follows Steve Boyes, a South African naturalist, on a quest to discover a lost breed of elephants.
Like all of Herzog’s tragic heroes, Boyes is a charismatic individual. From the first moment we meet him, there’s a sense that we want his dream to succeed. Boyes isn’t in it for fame or fortune, but rather what is left of his sanity. This quest has taken everything from him and he’s no closer to the truth than he was decades ago. His only connection to the dream are bones of the last known elephant of this kind, which reside in a museum in Washington, half a world away
Boyes and Herzog head into the Highland Pleatau of Angola, where much of this film takes shape. Its here that Herzog can fully embrace his love for the unexplored and the untouched wonder that we can still find on the planet. For me, a lover of his narrative style, GHOST ELEPHANTS delivers plenty to admire. At times it almost feels as if Herzog’s attention drifts from Boyes during the long periods of waiting. Yet none of the is aimless. Every diversion leads back to to the big picture of an interconnected world of which we can only decipher a small fraction. Along the way we meet tribesmen who still speak with nature in ways that others have forgotten. For a moment Herzog risks trampling into the territory of the great saviour until we realise just how fixated and deeply reverential both he and Boyes are of this place and its people.
Greater questions of olonialism and social structure imposed through centuries of bloodshed remain unanswered but it would be a disservice to expect this film to answer them in the first place. Unlike other Herzog films about desperate passions, GHOST ELEPHANTS is one of the few that has a chance of success. Boyes isn’t an unprepared tourist or troubled individual. His methods take time because he’s so intensely concerned about disturbing the natural order of things.
When progress happens, even the smallest victory feels like scaling a mountain. But as with mountains, they often reveal a larger, more complex vista beyond it. By the end, Herzog himself is uncertain if there is peace to be found in chasing ghosts, even or especially if they turn out to be real.
There aren’t a lot of elephants in GHOST ELEPHANTS. Its also unsurprising if you’re familiar with the subject: the supposed descendants of Henry, the largest elephant ever known to exist, which was – tragically but unsurprisingly–hunted for sport in 1935. Like allusive quests, Boyes is well aware that he may never do so and thinks it might be better that way–if something remains a dream, its somehow purer
The GHOST ELEPHANTS are very much a white whale. Should they be found, they’d be well within their rights to do to us what Moby-Dick did to the Pequod.
A lovely sentimental, nicely crafted documentary
