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The White Diamond | 
 enlarge | Director: Werner Herzog
Studio: Fox Lorber
Category: DVD
List Price: $19.95
Buy New: $12.65
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Rating:  14 reviews
Sales Rank: 21908
Format: Color, Dvd-video, Ntsc
Languages: English (Original Language), German (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 1
Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 90 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.1 x 5.4 x 0.6
MPN: 5469
UPC: 720917546926
EAN: 0720917546926
ASIN: B000AQ68XC
Theatrical Release Date: 2004
Release Date: October 25, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: BRAND NEW Factory Sealed - Ready to be shipped within 24 hrs from California - Average 5 workdays delivery time - Excellent customer service - Buy with confidence!
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Amazon.com
It's a good bet there are no directors who float between feature and documentary filmmaking as smoothly as Werner Herzog. The White Diamond (2004) is a companion piece of sorts to his well-received Grizzly Man. Both are about eccentric dreamers who travel to harsh landscapes following their dream with tragic consequences. In other words, perfect "Herzogian" fodder. Two important differences: White Diamond is filmed in the standard way (not piecing together another's videotape) and the tragedy occurred years before cameras rolled. Dr. Graham Dorrington is a man driven to fly. The Cambridge scientist creates new types of airships to explore the canopy of tropical rain forests. Herzog and his crew follow Dorrington to Guyana to see if this new-age dirigible can bring us closer to this fragile and important ecosystem. The film is less about what those discoveries might mean and more a portrait of a man. This is not Dorrington's first attempt to go to the jungle. A haunting accident a decade earlier in the forests of Borneo nags at him and Herzog prods Dorrington's recollections. The 90-minute film has some very rich side trips well worth taking: a legend of the gigantic Kaieteur Falls, the diamond mines of the area, and getting to know one of the hired porters. Herzog injects his own thoughts and gets into the action (he's on the initial flight, much to the chagrin of some of the team members) while delivering a satisfying, gorgeously shot film. --Doug Thomas
Description
Acclaimed filmmaker Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man ,Aguirre: The Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo) follows enigmatic airship engineer Dr. Graham Dorrington as he embarks on a trip in the heart of Guyana to test his new helium-filled invention above the rainforest. Dubbed the "white diamond" on account of its unique teardrop shape, the expedition begins with some early mishaps but is soon airborne high above the treetops. With every success though, Dorrington is haunted by a similar expedition twelve years ago that killed his friend as they were testing an airship much like the "white diamond." Herzog magnificently captures Dorrington's struggles to atone for what he calls "a stupid, meaningless accident" while at the same time presenting stunning never-before-seen images of the true beauty of nature.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 9 more reviews...
Beautiful scenes of the jungles of Guyana May 15, 2008
Kid Kyoto
I had the pleasure of living in Guyana for 2 years and visited Kaiteur Falls where most of this was filmed. It perfectly captures the beauty of that remote place.
I read other reviewer's concerns about how true some of the scenes with the professor and the director were, and they are valid fears.
That being said the drama between them and the beauty of the images make this an entertaining film to own.
 WHITE DIAMOND March 29, 2008
W. A. Lowry (Sacramentoi)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had not heard about this film prior to seeing it on Amazon. It is very much a Herzog film in style but the usual Herzog imprimatur of borderline outrageousness is not there. This is a documetary not really an adventure.
 poetic ecstatic truth? August 7, 2007
Linda O'Carroll (UK)
1 out of 2 found this review helpful
Werner Herzog has been talking about poetic ecstatic truth recently. I'm not sure quite what he means, but it seems to be something in the space between (a) his willingness to stage or set up the subjects of his documentaries in the manner of a feature film to get his point across, and (b) the fact that some people in the audience can receive epiphanies of a secular sort, from his work.
There is truth of a kind in the fabulous beauty of the photography in his documentaries, of course - and there's a lot of that in this film. Especially moving are the night shots of the balloon lit up like the moon, and the day shots of continuous circling movements of birds over water. These circular movements echo previous scenes - in Nosferatu there's a wonderful shot of eddies in a stream; in Heart of Glass a painting of a tavern interior seems to come to life, with people endlessly turning circles to return to their original poses. I once met a German film director who knew Herzog, and he told me that he thought that water in Herzog's films probably signified transition. Get an ephiphany off that lot, if you can.
And what about the much-discussed exploitation/misrepresentation of the eccentric/non-eccentric scientist? He doesn't look too eccentric to me, but perhaps that's because we see him next to Herzog. But he does get to be ecstatic. True or staged? You decide.
The White Diamond is as beautiful as all Herzog's films are - and I reckon if I'm lucky it will take me a lifetime (and some) to feel the true depth of it. Some films get into your soul - and I think this may be one of them.
poetry meets documentary May 9, 2007
Freston (USA)
4 out of 4 found this review helpful
Though I've only seen a handful of films by Werner Herzog, I found every one of them adroit and powerfully arresting in unexpected ways.
Exquisite and moving, "The White Diamond" (2004) is no exception, being representative of Herzog's recent approach, at least as a documentarian. What he seems to do is pick a subject, a guy who's either fiercely dedicated to or unusually accomplished at some offbeat occupation, and then take a musing, unhurried look his life and philosophy, taking no particular pains to absent either himself or his interpretations from your consideration.
I especially like the way he allows his films to be finally edited together, frequently allowing dialogue to trail off, scenes to linger, and sequences to end on unexpected notes. His style has a look and feel all its own.
Anyhow. The "White Diamond" in this film is a specialized airship, a one-man dirigible which resembles a diamond on its side. The engineer, Graham Dorrington of London University, has specially designed it to be highly maneuverable and as quiet as possible. Thus it could accomplish its purpose: exploring one of Earth's last unexplored biospheres: the canopies of rain forests (Guyana in most of this movie). Only the most gingerly engineered ship could explore these impossible delicate, life-teeming regions, and most of the film records Dorrington testing his prototype.
But there is a darkness that lurks behind Dorrington's efforts: his close colleague, Dieter Plage, the original mastermind behind the project, died in a similar balloon during a previous expedition to the rain forest of Sumatra. In the shadow of this tragedy, Dorrington is determined to successfully see through the creation and successful usage of the improved balloon.
The film starts with a brief black-and-white history of dirigibles, then takes us into a windtunnel to witness the airship's design. Finally we see the balloon in action.
What I liked about this movie was the slow, poetical approach that Herzog adopted while exploring his subject. It seems to me he's saying something about life.
Say you're walking through Paris. You're going to remember the Seine, Notre Dame, the Eiffel Tower, etc. But often what looms most in the memory of the traveler are minor things that caught the eye: a street vendor, a bird, a sewer grate, the rustle of a dress, a shoot of ivy. Later these memories loom even larger in your mind than the monuments you expressly went to see.
Herzog seems to capture this in his directing style, lingering curiously on extranea that, while at first blush appearing irrelevant to his presumed purpose, soon swell to assume a power over the viewer that is hard to describe.
Thus when this film is over, the things you remember most wondrously and tenderly are not the airship, but the cave of the swifts, the lonely motion of the dancer against the waterfall, and the Rastafarian who has been torn from his family.
Isn't this how we travel through life? People and events we think unimportant at the time later seize our imagination with a force that can scarcely be credited. Herzog is on to this and deliberately, I submit, incorporates this insight into his filmmaking style, thereby suggesting the beauty and importance of small things.
Unfortunately, the same thing that makes the movie so charming and so unusual is the same thing that stops it from being truly great: large chunks of it simply do not cohere. It would appear there is a price to be paid after all for not observing the unities, whatever other insights you may bring to the table. Shame this didn't get a bigger release, though.
By the way, this DVD is fullscreen only; there is no director's commentary track, no extras, and no subtitles in English or any other language.
with werner in guyana January 25, 2007
Daniel B. Clendenin (www.journeywithjesus.net)
3 out of 4 found this review helpful
A documentary by director Werner Herzog (cf. Grizzly Man) is never as simple as its plot and subject first suggest. In 2004 Herzog joined the quixotic British aeronautical engineer Graham Dorrington who traveled to remote Guyana in South America to fly his two-seater contraption over the rain forests, ostensibly for scientific research. But filming that quest is really a side show to Herzog's broader interests. He pokes and prods at the eccentric Dorrington, especially the guilt he tries to assuage over a fatal accident that killed his friend Dieter Plage in Sumatra in 1993. He trains his camera on the spectacular scenery, especially the thousands of swifts who nest there. In one phenomenal close-up of a single tiny rain drop he captures the reflection of the thundering Kaieteur Falls in the distance. Like an anthropologist he explores the lives of the bare foot Guyanan locals who slop through the mud to help Dorrington, like Mark Anthony who loves his pet rooster and epitomizes Rastafarian harmony. In other scenes we see the appalling environmental degradation of the diamond mines, a teenage boy beside the Falls moon-walking to the reggae from his boom box, and Dorrington's tear-dropped dirigible meandering over the river and forests. Herzog demonstrates how even the simplest plot lends itself to rich explorations.
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