A couple of months ago I read about an initiative over here in the Netherlands called “Filmthuis” (which translates to Moviehome). It’s one I was very enthusiastic about: It offers a selection of movies which currently are playing in the art house theaters, which you can also watch from your own home. So they are released simultaneously in the cinema and on demand. It’s a great first step to a future in which you can hopefully do this for any film, because not everyone has the possibility to head to the cinemas as much as they would like to. After reading about it I admit I hadn’t used it, until I read that the new documentary by Werner Herzog (one of my favorite directors) would be available through this service on the day of its release over here (a couple of weeks ago).
So I set up my screen, started the movie on my laptop and sent it to the screen with AirPlay through my AppleTV. These are all things I don’t think about and really take for granted, but they weren’t possible 40 years ago (or even 10 years ago). Werner Herzog is someone who has a lot to do with technology. He doesn’t have a mobile phone and claims not to know much about the internet. With his curiosity he looks at various aspects of the web during ten chapters.
Het starts with the very first computer which was the start of the internet, with the first letters to be sent. The idea was to log in, but after sending the first two, “LO”, the computer crashed. But the first network communication had been done. The subjects he looks at after that are diverse. He talks about the glory of the internet, its dark sides, life without it, the end of it but also subject matter like hacking, internet on Mars, artificial intelligence, the internet of me and the future. With so many things to look at it is impossible for him to look at them in much detail, but Herzog (who never prepares his questions) talks to various scientist and even Elon Musk. He is interested in questions like “will the internet ever dream about itself?” or what the weakest link is. An interview with notorious hack Kevin Mitcnick is one of the highlights, as it proves that it doesn’t matter how well you secure your system, in the end it’s the person that uses it who remains the vulnerable part of it (just look at Snowden).
Herzog does his famous voiceover and does the interviews, but it’s the people he talks to you will hear the most, together with the products they are working on. Whether that’s a robot who can be deployed in dangerous situations, self driving cars or football playing robots. When he discusses the future in which artificial intelligence might start making movies, but which would probably wouldn’t be as good as the ones Herzog makes, he confidently states “of course not”. It are moments like these which you watch his work for. They are not only about the subject he is looking into, but his presence adds something to the experience. As a human being he is just as interesting. As I keep up with the things he discusses this documentary didn’t offer many new insights, but despite that it was fun to watch Lo and Behold.
