the odd thing about the Herzog film though is that it includes a narration that casts the images into a kind of scifi story unrelated to Kuwait/Iraq, rather than a documentary. The filming is amazing though.

Herzog has this concept of the ecstatic truth, which means his documentaries are rarely as simple as they can seem; it's almost a third form of film.

I'm an unabashed fanboy, but in any event, Lessons Of Darkness is highly, highly recommended.

Like gp also said, his narration is also hypnotizing. It's pacing is like a metronome. Induces some sort of a trance.

Weeks after watching his films (for example The Cave Of The Forgotten Dreams) I would talk in his voice in my head.

> ... it's almost a third form of film.

What are the other two?

I'm presuming "documentary" and "narrative".

Yes, exactly. I'm sure that there are more forms, but those are the two that Herzog traffics in.

> the ecstatic truth

Usually known as fiction.

Or fiction intended to be taken as fact, which is either a hoax or a gag, depending on context.

No, not really. You can tell a true story with a narrative film, or a documentary; what Herzog believes is that there is a truth beyond a strictly factual accounting, and he makes movies informed by this belief. There are a variety of techniques, but the most obvious is inserting himself into someone else's story, whether this is talking explicitly about the difficulties of making Cave Of Forgotten Dreams, or the scenes in Grizzly Man where he views Treadwell's death footage and then makes an in-camera judgement about showing it more widely; or basically all of Little Dieter Needs To Fly, wherein he takes Dengler back to Indochina and subjects him to much of the same suffering he experienced in his escape.

This also works in reverse, of course, notably with Fitzcarraldo, where he replicates an insane feat of human ingenuity that wasn't actually part of the real life Fitzcarrald's story.

In any event, all of Herzog's movies are worth viewing from my highly fan-boyish perspective.