From the first confrontation you know how it will end, but you keep hoping that perhaps the mindless and soul-less rush of progress won't wipe out one more culture. 4 out of 6 found this helpful. What i do know is that a film still with me after almost 20 years deserve a comment. Was this review helpful?
I would classify this movie as being Herzog's most mainstream (which I know isn't saying that much), but still, for a movie that takes place in possibly the most minimalist setting (a stretch of land on the Australian outback littered with the remains of drilling for minerals) I found it absolutely engrossing.
But as time has gone by, and the film still stick I'm no longer so sure. Immediately I knew this movie would work.
Where the Green Ants Dream- at the least featuring one of Werner Herzog's best titled films as it's one of those amazing visuals one gets out of the strangest of the director's work- is placed in a somewhat minor cannon of the German maverick's work, and maybe rightfully so. My one fault with the movie is that you know when Herzog is setting things up for an awe-inspired moment, and it does get a little dry toward the end, but still a grand achievement. This is the movie: A group of aborigines refuse to budge from a small strip of land when a mining company wants to occupy it for drilling purposes; their reason: `This is the land where the green ants dream'. How could the great German director of Wozzeck, Nosferatu and other Gothic classics concern himself with a very oblique tale of a development project impeded by Aboriginal Australians who contend that disturbing the green ants dreams by ripping up their habitat will likewise rip the fabric of the universe?
The film was first of all my first encounter with aborigines, and it made me feel sad on their behalf. 1 out of 8 found this helpful. The words uneven and messy can not do this film justice. It's about a controversial topic, that of the rights of the Aborigines and the Australian's seeming right via original British Imperial rule, and it features practically all non-professional actors and some shaky transitions between its sturdy plot and non-sequiters and quintessential Herzogian landscapes. I really went looking for this film and I now regret every minute I wasted trying to find it.
None of the dialog is improvised though the performances are raw which the previous reviewer might be confusing with improvisation. 2 out of 2 found this helpful. Before I go to my real analysis, I have to say I am a pretty big Herzog fan but this film is a humongous disappointment.
Interesting account on the fight for land rights by the Aboriginals who are up against a mining company that do the dirty on them by disturbing the land where the green ants dream! Was this review helpful? In "Where the Green Ants Dream," his images include an old woman sitting patiently in the Outback, an opened can of dog food on the ground in front of her, waiting for a pet dog that has been lost in a mine shaft. I saw it at the TIFF many years ago and was baffled by it. The geologist Lance Hackett is employed by an Australian mining company to map the subsoil of a desert area covered with ant hills prior to a possible uranium extraction. Some idiot claims that this movie is horrible but I would argue that this he/she is mistaken. Was this review helpful?
14 out of 17 found this helpful. 3 out of 6 found this helpful. I probably saw this film back in in 1984 and it still sticks to my memory. 11 out of 12 found this helpful. 12 out of 17 found this helpful. Second of all, the opening scene with native music and majestic nature, is one of the best ever made.