Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World (2016)

What bothered me the most was that it seemed like werner herzog used his reputation to get famous people in front of the camera, and just decided to have a chit chat on the record... the whole piece lacked any clear direction, concept or depth as it were shot for a tv news channel. it was painful to watch him do interviews with seemingly random people and could not even convince them to talk... then there's this cutscene of elon musk, looking down to his knees, not knowing what else to say in an absolute absence of guidance and substance.maybe he thought getting smart and famous people in front of the camera would do the trick, but nothing fills that void when you don't have a story to tell in the first place...

Provocative. Terrifying. Quirkily informative. Engrossing. As always, Herzog poses questions that draw revealing responses from his interviewees—collectively a fascinating bunch of hackers sace and its distribution via networks; how it got started, where it is today, where it's going. He delves into the darkest aspects of the Internet looking at lives disconnected from nature and ruined by web addiction. Herzog also explores the immense benign and even, perhaps, spiritual possibilities of a connected globe while schooling us on the digital underpinnings we take for granted. The way the internet balances its data-flow load, for example is instructive. We learn, counter-intuitively, the larger such networks grow, the more efficient they become. Or consider that one good-sized solar flare—an event scientists deem a certainty every few hundred years—could fatally disrupt modern civilization. This is at once an inspiring and scary film. But there are moments of lightness too. A radio telescope specialist plays banjo in a bluegrass band. We learn the "Lo" of the title derives from the first word ever sent via modem —"Log." But it crashed the receiving computer after the first two letters. The ingenuity of humankind juxtaposed with humans' tendency to foul our nest has not been looked at with an eye as steely as that of Werner Herzog's. Like all the best docs, the ideas that enrich Lo and Behold will likely boil up in your consciousness many times in the days that follow your viewing.

The overarching theme of this documentary by Werner Herzog is the internet. However, this is a HUGE topic--way too much for one film. Additionally, Herzog chooses to go off in many directions--any of which could have merited an entire documentary in and of itself. So, had "Lo and Behold" been a series, it would have been terrific. As is, it's enjoyable but often frustrating because it lacks a concise focus.The film begins with a tiny introduction to the birth of the internet through the ARPANET. I really liked this historical aspect of the film...but it was very brief...frustratingly so. The film then bounced to topics like self-driving cars, cyber bullying, living off the net and folks who claim to have illnesses caused by various waves (such as cell phones, microwaves and the like), hacking, the vulnerability of the net to solar activity, artificial intelligence and robots and the future of the internet and technology! As I said, too much information and it's presented but often not adequately explored. So is the film worth seeing? Yes. But it's also maddening to watch as it often felt as if you've been invited to a gourmet meal....with 156 different courses and each one comes and goes like lightning in order to get the meal completed on time!I have seen many of Herzog's documentaries and have loved many of them. I know he's a brilliant and talented man...but here the whole project just seems as if it was slapped up on the screen without regard to the subject matter or the effect it would have on the viewer. A misfire.

There are very important, tough questions that need to be asked about where technology is leading us. "Does the internet dream of itself?" is not one of them. This effort from Herzog is a major disappointment but not a surprise, partly because it started out as a corporate promotional video. Also because most of his docs are ostensibly on subjects that aren't that interesting or important on the surface, but he makes them riveting. Here, he's tackling a subject about which everything that can be said, has already been said, except for the hard questions. Is the internet even a net positive thing? Why bother going to Mars? It's getting harder and harder "to make a contribution" (to science, or to society), so what does that mean for us? Soon enough robots will beat Messi at football -- will anyone want to watch that? These questions don't get asked. And these are easy ones that came up anyway. Herzog, who is a known non-tech guy, just seems ignorant and uninterested in technology, both the good and the bad of it. And we need him to pry forcefully into the moral morass that it's dragging us into. But he can't. He's just a baby boomer who is completely immersed in his real- world occupation that doesn't involve surfing the internet. He doesn't know, doesn't care. So unfortunately, he has gathered the most maddeningly thick-headed "scientific experts" to make bland, vapid observations about how amazing it all is. This is a huge disappointment. Werner is just not the man for this job -- so he's moved on to something more up his alley; volcanoes...