Tag Archives: documentary

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Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

“I represent the church every time I step into the courtroom, because I represent the people and the people are the church.” – Father Thomas Doyle in Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God

Of course when Thomas Doyle utters this line deep into Alex Gibney’s deeply absorbing Mea Maxima Culpa, we know that he is an ordained priest, but one who has been representing victims in the Church abuse scandal, serving as expert witness.  The victims are every bit the members of the community as anybody else in the Church, but the organization – not the religion, but the corporation that appointed itself the keeper therein – failed them, with considerable evidence that “failed” ought not be a present tense term.  The media of course largely sidestepped this reality when covering the conclave naming Pope Francis – either sheepishly describing the scandal as a relic of the past, or just breezily neglecting altogether to focus on the flowing robes.

Father Lawrence Murphy was himself a member of the corporation, running the Saint John’s School for the Deaf in Milwaukee from 1950-1974.  Surrounding him were kids with a physical handicap obviously, and kids who depended on him profoundly (one considers that in the 1950s and 1960s, parents often did not understand or appreciate communication with special needs kids), and kids who were extremely vulnerable marks, if you turned out to be a predator.  Gibney follows four of these children (now grown of course – voiced by actors you all know, but so unobtrusive that you almost totally forget), and we hear their stories in their words.  Murphy abused the kids yes, but he also had established a system much resembling a fraternity.  Former abused students grow into trusted lieutenants, and often abusers themselves.  We hear one of the men talk about offering up somebody else for abuse on an offsite trip – it’s obviously horrible but better him than me.

These were the choices these students had, because they could not communicate with their parents or with other officials – and certainly with the School for the Deaf as the pillar of the community, who could believe them?  Rarely watching a movie have I ever had the sense of loneliness that I got from these stories.  How could the parents have been so blind to their children’s plights?  Where could these kids turn as their childhoods were being robbed from them?  It goes without much saying that these systems totally failed this most exposed population.  This was the stuff that stayed with me, and the strongest parts of Gibney’s film.  Certainly for others, the meticulous case that the Church knew all about these things etc etc etc is a big deal, but being from the Boston area, I knew all about this (hello, Bernard Law).  Where the film works best is a statement on how this failure felt on a human level.  It is a testament to the power of these stories that the simple stuff carries the movie and allows it to transcend some of Gibney’s overly cinematic touches and “dramatic reenactments”.  This is a tough but hopeful story – and one gets the final reckoning won’t take place anytime soon.

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Hoarding: Buried Alive

I am a messy person.  I have always been a messy person.  Note – this is not mean that I am dirty, but clutter?  Laundry that does not make it to baskets?  Mail piling up?  Stuff like that?  Guilty as charged.  I know my parents shuddered at what would become of me as a grown-up (or more accurately, a kid without the legal justification of “hey, I’m a kid”) with my proclivities.  This is the sort of show where my parents can take some assurance – if they were not running in terror from the experience.  Considering that TLC is a channel that portrays wanton copulation, polygamy, and stage mothering, Hoarding: Buried Alive might be the most transfixing hour on television.  Starting with initially discovering the show on some sort of weekend marathon, I have been at intervals horrified, appalled, horrified, bemused, disbelieving, horrified, and hypnotized by the magnitude of the inability of these folks to throw … anything, and I mean ANYTHING, away.  I am not sure if transfixing is a compliment.  Surely there are a lot of “wrong reasons” working here.  Time obsessing over shows like this can rip me away from telling loved ones I love them, or perhaps becoming better at a legitimate life skill – but what can I do but honestly report the truth?

TLC’s show over the hour, follows two different hoarding cases in parallel.  When I mean hoarding as a real problem, I am not sure I can overstate it.  We are talking about cases where entire rooms are unusable – and not just rooms, but things like kitchens and bathrooms.  I have experience working around lacking a working dishwasher for instance, but a sink with a permanent clog (like one of the protagonists suffered) – how do you live?  Somehow, these people do … more than that, they often have families and love ones.

Of the marathon I got to see, all of the episodes were fascinating, but one in particular crystalized what the show could be.  In this episode – the focus was on Berkeley, California and the sort of couple that reality shows in general are made for.  The lady (the hoarder) was this apparent hippie (or not – but given the location I feel like generalizing) who is not a young lady anymore – and decidedly ornery.  The poor home was totally bursting with stuff.  The kitchen was full of stuff, and the living room seemed to be less a room than a giant walk in closet.  Hell, all of the rooms felt like walk in closets.  Her sitting areas seemed like carved out lanes to places.  Her boyfriend was miffed at the condition, though he seemed a bit henpecked on this sort of thing.  She was giving no quarter.  In her defense, she rhapsodized about surrounding herself with things that made her comfortable – such as her collections of BANANAS.  I have no idea if she was oven drying them or just collecting them as-is.  I am not sure what value a 1989 Chiquita winter original would fetch her.  The episode goes through the normal paces.  We learn of her conflict – she doesn’t think there is a problem.  Then she meets with a shrink and we get to some childhood wound or whatnot that has explained her sudden inability to throw anything away.  After that, a professional organizer comes in …

Really, I am not sure if I can recommend this without feeling icky.  But when you take the sheer magnitude of the mess, sprinkle in the psychodrama that is so crucial in reality television, and see how powerfully these people resist the possibility of junk leaving their homes … I can’t turn away.  If you feel a sudden compulsion to dust your entire home after watching, I can hardly blame you.

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An Inconvenient Truth

In some ways the environmental battle, and the battle against global warming, or whatever you want to call it is a bit of a fool’s errand.  After all, the planet does not need saving – it was there well before we were and will be there well after we die off.  Indeed, only when the sun explodes – and it will – does the earth as a biosphere, have any real problems.  Also, there is a pretty significant likelihood that the human species is going to go extinct without a key mutation or three taking place, although hopefully that happens well after our time is up.  (although us being the chosen ones for The End would be kind of neat)

However, while we are here, we might as well try putting off extinction for as long as possible.  The phenomenon of global warming seems pretty airtight.  That it is even controversial is actually pretty amazing.  Al Gore has made this his life’s mission since losing the 2000 election – of course a version of the speech he has given comprises Davis Guggenheim’s 2006 Oscar winning documentary An Inconvenient Truth.  What is particularly impressive about Guggenheim’s film is how it takes what should have been a very very dry format – basically, one dude lecturing – and makes it a very very entertaining engaging piece.

The film uses some fairly conventional wrap-arounds to make sure we are not just staring at Gore lecturing the entire time.  We get cuts of Gore talking about how he came to this as his self-chosen vocation – some behind the scenes thoughts about why he is doing this speech.  This places some human interest in Gore’s mission and effectively breaks up the natural chapters in his oratory.  Gore himself is not a dynamic speaker.  He is miles more emotional than he was as a Vice President or as Presidential candidate, but it is largely still a recitation of facts.  However, the film’s use of graphics keeps the words lively.  Gore uses gigantic graphics, so as we see the charts of temperatures in Antarctica since time infinitum the recent trend is staggering.

Indeed, the temperature trends are ALL staggering.  The climate changes are real – it seems fairly bulletproof.  The idea that there is a controversy seems to be driven by forces that are not working with pure science in mind – whether they be think tank funded people or whatever.  Indeed the peer review stats Gore cites are amazing.  There is a lot of money in denying the problem.  The film with its stark examples and graphs and exhibits, show tons of anecdotal circumstantial evidence, too much to ignore.

Where the film is weak is that there is a lot of evidence, but the human connection to it is largely a matter of faith.  Gore mentions it once, but the movie sidesteps the “what do I have to do with it” question.  It gets a bit more beyond the political ambitions of a blog like this to speculate on the policy.  However, as a film, An Inconvenient Truth forces us to stare at global warming and the implications of what is happening.  Are we the cause?  Who knows – but it feels like we have to be part of the solution, if for no other reason than to put off the inevitable extinction of the species.

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams

The circumstances surrounding the preservation and subsequent discovery of the Chauvet Cave in Southern France is the stuff of legend.  Imagine a cave used by primitive man (for whatever reason) some 32,000 years ago, and then sealed shut in a landslide about 7,000 years later – indeed how these folks accessed the cave to begin with would be a film in itself.  The cave remained shut until 1994 when French scientists searching the hillside for evidence of a cave – one pictures them using a stud finder or knocking on the rocks intermittently (a classically Herzogian image if it were true) – happened upon an alternate entrance.  This entrance was guarded by the narrowest of openings – barely narrow enough to squeeze through.  We are touching discovery and truth at the edge of human discovery – and when we are at the edge of such things – there is a pretty good chance that the great Werner Herzog will be nearby.

In Herzog’s Cave of Forgotten Dreams, we get a sense of the remoteness of the caves as he and his crew follow the French scientists studying the cave in.  We feel the claustrophobia as he squeezes into the opening and see the drop in elevation from this entrance to get to the cave itself.  He and his crew are only allowed to stay on the installed aluminum walkway, a walkway so narrow that Herzog and his crew cannot escape appearing in many of their shots.  To avoid damaging the inside and the paintings only four battery operated light panels can be used to shoot.  But when we get there … what we see is awesome – cave paintings, paintings of surprising detail, paintings that date as far back as 32,000 years ago – the oldest paintings known to exist.

To underline the paintings and the cave itself, Herzog shoots in 3-D – the best use of the medium I’ve ever seen.  Normally I complain about 3-D as a gimmick that muddies up what we can see, but here the 3-D and the ability to manipulate depth and space is crucial.  Herzog is not just adopting it so he can make $4 more per ticket, but so that we get a real sense of the z-axis, the contours of the walls, the real sense that we are staring over his shoulder at the painting.  When we an image of horses, we can see how the rock bends inward and out (like a little bowl sort of effect) and its effect on the image.  When we see the feet of the painting it suggests movement, and you can’t help but picture the horses moving.  Other paintings suggest movement more firmly – as if it were a cel in a flipbook or something.  The most striking example of the 3-D at work for me is when we see an image with a bison and a woman.   Due to the restrictions in the room, Herzog cannot shoot close to the painting, but he can put a camera on a string.  We see a part of the image initially (and more with the string) but with the sharp sense of space, I found myself straining a bit trying to look around to see where the drawing extends to on the other side.

We also see evidence of the people inside the caves so many years ago.  In one great sequence we notice a handprint near the front, with a crooked finger – and that same distinct handprint a few minutes later – we’ve followed the person’s path.  We see handprints and sculptures – artifacts which match stuff in caves found well up the road.  One of the scientists plays us a familiar tune with a flute rescued from there.  We also get a sense of how the people then hunted.  Slowly, with all of these facts, we get an image of what life could have been like for these people in that time and place.  Granted, much conjecture is necessary.  Will we know what these people hoped for, what they dreamt about?  They have been gone a long time, and no carbon dating can capture that.  These sorts of thoughts are what sail through one’s head when such a perfect time capsule as these caves are unearthed.  Definitely pay the extra $4 this time – it is worth it.

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Man on Wire

Really, Man on Wire have might as well not existed if Philippe Petit himself were not available for it.  Of course, this seems obvious – Petit’s achievement of walking across the twin towers is a staggering feat of human achievement, however trivial.  In fact the story of the achievement itself might have been made into a skillful documentary – something you’d stop the clicker on if it came on the History Channel – but director James Marsh accomplishes so much more, and it is almost completely traceable to the boon of having Philippe Petit himself providing narration about the the adventure.

First of all of course, Petit’s story is pretty amazing.  As most of you probably know, Petit walked back and forth across the space between the World Trade Center towers in 1974.  But how did he get up there?  How did he get the wire across?  How do you get past security?  That Petit was able to pull all this off was incredible, involving trespassing, lying, conning, getting people on the inside.  All of this is the stuff of a thriller.  To Marsh’s credit, he creates suspense, using dramatic recreations for scenes that could not have been filmed.  With all the participants describing what happened, the experience they had rivals any decent caper movie.

Intercut with the film footage and the dramatic recreations are unsurprisingly interviews, voice overs, the typical stuff of documentaries.  But here we get the interviews with Petit himself, and he is spellbinding.  He is French but has a terrific command of the language – and is so poetic in his descriptions of what happened and how his team worked.  Philippe talks enthusiastically how he became obsessed with climbing things as a child, how he started performing climbing in public places (like Notre Dame in Paris).  He is poetic describing “appetites of the flesh” when describing the spoils of victory, and just funny recalling the adventure.

And then finally, there is the site of a man walking across the twin towers.  What must it have been like to be down on the ground.  It had to be a real “it’s a bird, it’s a plane” thing.  The sheer wonder of it all, seeing a speck turn into a man or something.  There is poignance there, touching the void – something Werner Herzog might have appreciated.  Especially realizing what is in the skyline now, it is a staggering image.

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King’s Ransom

Peter Berg’s King’s Ransom made sense as the first of the ESPN 30 for 30 documentaries – an accomplished filmmaker examining one of the era’s defining stories.  It is actually amazing to think that it has been twenty years since Wayne Gretzky got dealt.  It is even more amazing to ponder that he could have been.  How can the Bulls deal Michael Jordan – and not just Michael Jordan, but the Jordan AFTER winning the titles?  THAT was the magnitude of Edmonton dealing Wayne Gretzky.  That he was traded to Los Angeles added a spin – Gretzky as a true hockey ambassador, while Edmonton had to lose their boy, to a warm weather team!

Berg’s film spends equal time discussing the machinations that got the trade to happen – as well as examining the impact in California, turning the Kings from a local afterthought into THE glam entry in the NHL map.  But we start at the beginning – the idea of Gretzky and the Oilers changing how hockey was conceived.  Their 198x average of 5.9 goals per game is unfathomable.  Wayne Gretzky had seasons of 217 points, 92 goals … 92 goals is nearly twice what the elite guys score now.  The Oilers were a high flying act, but they won 5 titles – the substance was there with the sizzle.

Edmonton is also a small city.  Edmonton is a very small market.  At some point, Gretzky wanted to make a bit more money while Edmonton’s ownership became cash strapped.  He became more valuable as a trade asset to their franchise than as a player.  As such – what we get is them finding a deal for Gretzky and asking him to help.  Berg’s film is very strong here, assembling the documentary footage, showing what a phenomenon Gretzky was.  We see what a state event his marriage was (to some chick from the Police Academy movies), and how big a deal he was.  When Gretzky wipes tears away when announcing his move – the tears were real.

However, the hole in Berg’s movie is Gretzky himself.  I am not sure why Gretzky agreed to the deal.  He wipes the tears away.  In fact, he has chances to reverse things and stay with Edmonton once the trade rumors start.  However, he accedes.  Why did he do it?  In a lot of ways, Gretzky’s view of things is the angle that is the most fascinating – but Berg cannot really unpack that.  This is compounded by the fact that Berg and Gretzky are friends, and Berg interviews Gretzky on camera.  Alas, we just get some vague answers from Gretzky.  It does not prevent the story from being good documentary, but it prevents the film from rising up further.

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Muhammad and Larry

The hero falling is one of the harder sites to see.  Moreover, the star whom we remembered as great, now a shell of that figure.  It is sad.  Certainly none of us have a right to tell someone what to do, but we all have the right to shake our heads when he suffers the consequences.  Really, it is hard to watch the Muhammad Ali who Albert Maysles documents in his entry into ESPN’s 30 for 30 set, Muhammad and Larry without thinking about the beloved man as he is now.  Fortunately Ali is still sharp and vibrant, but his body has rebelled against him – and it would be dishonest to say that it doesn’t take away from what he should be.  Maysles’ film documents the fateful fight between Ali, coaxed out of retirement, and his former sparring partner and champion at the time Larry Holmes.  If the Oscar winning When We Were Kings successfully captures the feel of the “Rumble in the Jungle”, this smaller sized feature effectively captures the elegaic tone of Ali’s last shot.

It is in no way a spoiler to say that Holmes crushed Ali on that night in 1980.  You can look it up, and Maysles starts his film with some of the disturbing highlights – the entire story has to be seen in context to these moments.  He intercuts it with footage that he has had for years (because of a documentary that he was to film that never got released) of behind the scenes in the training camp.  In the early moments, we get to visit Ali’s camp.  As is well known (and if you don’t the talking heads will tell you), Ali’s camps were always a cacaphony.  Unlike the secretive, manicured press management of today’s athletes, Ali ran his camps wide open.  It felt like anyone was invited and could get an audience with the champ.  Ali is forever on stage – no athlete since has been so magnetic.  But even in the early scenes, we can hear words slurring.  The charm is there – the old warhorse talking about riding again – but you see the slowing down, although it is subtle enough to not see – if you didn’t want to.

In contrast to the hoopla of the Ali camp, we see the much smaller scaled side of Larry Holmes.  Holmes had the bad luck of being the guy between Ali and Tyson.  He did not have the outsized personality of either and his skillset was more workmanlike than shock and awe.  Like almost every Ali opponent, Holmes was the straight man.  We see old interviews of Larry, as well as new footage and interviews.  The Holmes Maysles finds is a man at peace.  He has hit bitterness – like all fighters, he thinks he is the best who ever lived – but he laughs a lot, and is still close to his Easton, PA roots.  He had a thankless role tonight – as the guy to cut the hero down to size – but what can you do?  Larry seems to be handling it about as well as one can ask.

The movie is at its best tracking the camps.  You get a sense of the personalities involved – although I’m not sure even less familiar viewers will learn about the Ali persona.  He is slower.  He does the magic tricks for the children, he is still funny (although the movie’s one weakness is that we never get past the Ali persona – but it might be impossible to find time to see what the private man is thinking in his case).  But the sparring sessions – he can’t move – he’s being teed off on.  Even those who don’t know boxing could sense something was wrong – and Maysles does a nice job showing these things without laying on the schmaltz.  It’s a sad story – and some of Ali’s fans feared for him and the circumstance – but Maysles is not going for anger here, just sadness.  Even at the end Larry Holmes wants to spare him, but he would not go down, and the referee was not going to take Ali’s chance at history away – and that’s too bad.

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Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL?

In a lot of ways, the big takeaway from Mike Tollin’s Small Potatoes: Who Killed the USFL? is that Donald Trump has been a giant douchebag for a really really long time.  Also, his hair has largely been the same for 30 years – which is remarkable in its own right – I mean, even Jon Bon Jovi changed his look.  He may or may not have singularly responsible for the downfall of the USFL – Tollin does not exactly offer an impartial take – but he is such a juicy villain that I’m willing to go with it.

With a jerk like Trump bringing down the league, Tollin could have made a bitter screed about the death of an interesting concept.  Fortunately though, Small Potatoes is a loving look back at the three plus year history of the United States Football League and an excuse for Tollin to show all this footage he, as sort of the league’s Ed Sabol, had been sitting on for eons.  Really with the ubiquitous nature of the NFL, the idea that a semi-comparable football league could exist in the 1980s is almost inconceivable.  However there it was, a goofy league that had weird promotions, brought in a couple of innovations and brought us some really really talented dudes.

The USFL started as a 12 team league running in the springtime.  The markets had varying attitudes towards player acquisition.  New Jersey signed a Heisman winner in Herschel Walker taking advantage of his leaving after his junior year, while the Tampa Bay Bandits (introducing Steve Spurrier to the world) ran as much more of a “small market” outfit.  The league tried to fill a perceived market gap for football in the spring (considering how ESPN shows spring practices for college teams, this is not the leap one might think) while being more “fun” by allowing coordinated celebrations and serving as a laboratory for new concepts (indeed, the Houston Gamblers brought the run and shoot into the football vernacular).  The ratings with ABC and ESPN in the spring were shockingly good.  Granted, not all 12 markets were doing well at the same time, but that describes any sports league – but clearly it seemed like there was some substance there.

Tollin’s film luxuriates in the substance.  As viewers we are surprised at just how many guys we know were in the USFL.  Whether it be Charley Steiner on the radio, Jim Kelly, Steve Young, Reggie White, Anthony Carter – all sorts of people fans have heard of, Burt Reynolds in the owner’s box, the innovation of instant replay – the USFL was clearly some sort of factor in the football landscape.  It looked like it was actually decent football.

Tollin also luxuriates in Trump’s acquisiton of the New Jersey Generals, and his entry into the league.  He started throwing more money at the team – getting people to cross over from the NFL.  He wanted to be THE face of the league – and his signing of NFL guys helped accelerate an arms race that precipitated a spectacularly fast expansion to 22 teams.  The sheer number of teams started to create a lot of rinky dink outfits – the story Rick Neuheisel tells of the San Antonio team’s ability to make payroll was right out of the worst stories of the American Basketball Association.  Trump, in an interview with Tollin, seems to have put this in a box the way neocons now might have put their incorrect opinions about war in some dark recess.  His Donaldness in stark contrast with the other owners makes for clear protagonists and villains.

The main protagonist becomes John Bassett, the principal partner of the Tampa Bay team, who has run the team in a smaller manner – who resists the Trumpification of the league.  He is trying to do things organically and wants the league to stay a spring option and grow.  The tug of war between Bassett and Trump, especially as the league wants to try to compete directly with the NFL, becomes where Tollin’s film is its angriest.  When Trump swoops in and gains stature in the league, it is as Bassett starts to succumb to a brain tumor.  Tollin lays it on a bit thick here – but the Donald is such an asshole!

Ultimately, Tollin tells the story of the USFL with a light touch.  He still holds Trump responsible, but the film seems over the whole thing.  The movie is more of a comedy than a parable or a morality tale.  A fun league with a fun history – and yeah, it might have been fun to still have it around.

 

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Beyond Ipanema

For those of us who have no knowledge of Brazilian music, Guto Barra’s Beyond Ipanema is a very effective survey course.  Like a dutiful PBS documentary, it starts from Carmen Miranda, who brought Brazilian music into the American pop culture lexicon, and works its way to the present day.  We get a flavor for the entire lexicon, and the amazing contribution Brazilian song, whether it be the samba or the bossa nova – is clearly apparent.  However, like many survey courses, it tries to squeeze a ton of information into a fairly short run time – and as a result, stuff does feel rushed and one cannot help but think there is a much deeper dive possible into this material.

There is Carmen Miranda’s career for instance.  The movie touches on her importance.  She insisted that she get to sing and perform in Portuguese at least briefly during each of her films.  She was a Hollywood star, but she made American fans aware of her culture.  Of course, her life and career would be sufficient for a movie of itself, and the movie really only probes her impact for the music and as a vessel to get the Brazilian culture into the American lexicon.

Then there is the bossa nova.  At the time the bossa nova came into focus, the Big Band Era of swing was heading out, and the American Jazz form was hitting a fallow period.  The film dutifully records the fallow period and the collaboration of Bud Shank and Laurindo Almeida.  Indeed, the story of the now illustrious “Girl from Ipanema” and the amazingly coincidental way that the ubiquitous vocal track was created is remarkable.  However, this is fairly undistinguished as a “feature” documentary goes.

What is most memorable however, is the discussion of Brazilian music along the same time of the flower power and rock and roll revolution period in the United States.  Along the time of psychadelic rock in the 60s and 70s, in Brazil, something very similar was happening.  This is the most engaging part of the documentary.  First there is an interview with underground hero Tom Ze, who is completely zany.  Like Os Mutantes, his music was basically years past its peak date when David Byrne discovered it and wanted to bring it to the masses.  Suddenly this very hip hop, acid, wild music got a second life.  Really of all the sections of this survey course, this is the one I’d want to take an advanced course in.

While it is hard to wholly justify Beyond Ipanema as a theater documentary, its merit is significant, and its entertainment value is substantial.  It definitely makes me want to hunt down some Os Mutantes.

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La Soufriere

How did they get up there?  I am not sure how.  I still am not sure how.  In 1977, for German television, Werner Herzog and his erstwhile camera crew managed to get onto the island of Guadalope.  This trip became interesting for Herzog when he heard reports that a volcano there was about to erupt.  The island has been evacuated by the time Herzog shows up – one would surmise that law enforcement was prominently involved in getting people out of there.  It seems like how Herzog and his crew got there would be compelling – a film in its own right.  However, leaving those questions aside, we are left with La Soufriere, Herzog’s extraordinary doc short of what IS there.

So, what is there?  Nothing.  Well, virtually nothing – as far as human goes.  It’s eerie, as Herzog’s camera explores – the town has been completely abandoned.  At that point, we are looking at an actual ghost town – an apolcalpytic from where a George Miller-esque post-apocalyptic vision might have emerged or somesuch.  We see a traffic light, as it is dangling over an intersection where there are no cars – in broad daylight which of course adds to eerieness.  Herzog looks around and what has been left.  He checks out the caldera with the steam and sulphur are almost palpable through the film.  We see an eerie shot of what was spaghetti apparently burned to a crisp – actually it looked like noodles with black bean sauce, but never mind.  We get the sense of nature’s force – and you realize with a start how Herzog was risking he and his crew’s lives by doing this.

If he is risking his life, what about others?  Indeed when I say there is virtually nothing left in terms of people – that does not mean that EVERYBODY left.  In particular, Herzog hears of a man who stayed.  In fact, Herzog finds more than one – somebody who wants to save animals for instance.  But the  one who etches himself in the memory is a man who just feels resolved that this is his place, and is at peace with the volcano taking him.  He discusses his life, how he is satisfied and is ready to face whatever.  He has had children, they will be fine.  One wonders how he is fighting the instinct of self preservation (and if he will be so brave when the lava comes) – but the poignancy is there.  Of course, Herzog IS narrating this – so take it for what you will.  And finally, the film has its ironic ending … which Herzog notes with great bemusement.