Movie Review: Salt and Fire

Salt and Fire * ½ / *****

Directed by: Werner Herzog.    

Written by: Werner Herzog based on the short story by Tom Bissell.

Starring: Veronica Ferres (Laura Sommerfeld), Michael Shannon (Matt Riley), Gael García Bernal (Dr. Fabio Cavani), Volker Michalowski (Dr. Arnold Meier), Lawrence Krauss (Krauss / Aristidis), Danner Ignacio Márquez Arancibia (Huascar), Gabriel Márquez Arancibia (Atahualpa).

 

It’s been the case for a while now – probably nearly 30 years – which Werner Herzog’s documentaries are usually better than his features. Occasionally, we get something as batshit crazy genius as Bad Lieutenant: Port of Call, New Orleans – but more often than not, we get films either don’t quite capture that crazy Herzog brilliance (Rescue Dawn) or else are nearly incoherent (My Son, My Son What Have You Done?). And yet, until Salt and Fire, I wouldn’t say that I saw a boring feature from Herzog. Yes, he’s made a few boring docs – but his features always contain something of interest, even if they don’t work. Not so much with Salt and Fire, which doesn’t make sense on any logical level, and is dull to boot.

 

In the film, Veronica Ferres plays Laura Sommerfeld – who is travelling with two fellow colleagues to an unnamed country to examine an environmental catastrophe. When she arrives, all three of them are promptly kidnapped – and while their captors force her two (male) colleagues (including Gael Garcia Bernal – I guess doing Herzog a favor) to sit in a room and do nothing, they want something from Laura. It isn’t long before the person in charge of this kidnapping reveals himself as Matt Riley (Michael Shannon), a wealthy CEO of a major corporation, who he says is responsible for everything wrong. He then drives Laura out into the middle of nowhere, and drops her off with two blind local children. They have supplies enough for a week, but no way out. They are in the middle of a giant salt plain (the real one is in Bolivia, where they filmed). And Laura must survive.

 

Logically, nothing much about Salt and Fire makes a whole lot of sense. When Riley eventually does come clean about his motives and why he did everything, it sounds ridiculous. How Laura responds to that monologue by Riley is even more ridiculous. Yet, lack of logic hasn’t always hampered previous Herzog films – who has specialized in telling the stories of people others may think insane. Here though, he presents his characters as the sane ones – and that hurts the film immensely.

 

As a location, the giant salt flats in a great one – and a perfect one for Herzog. He has often specialized in showing us locations on earth that feel like a completely alien planet – and these flats certainly qualify. And yet, there is a numbing, vast sameness to them that doesn’t particularly make them a great setting for a full length movie, where the location is foregrounded. There are moments of Salt and Fire that look amazing. But the whole thing feels so hollow.

 

Werner Herzog is a great filmmaker – and a wildly prolific one. Rare is a year that doesn’t go by that doesn’t bring at least one doc from him. But I almost wish he’d slow down a little – stop trying to make the features, and spend a little more time on the docs. On that side, he’s almost become a parody of himself – and on the feature side, he seems completely lost. I have no doubt that Herzog will make a great documentary again someday – I have huge doubts if he’ll ever make another great fictional feature.