Shrouded in sulfuric mists Herzog’s La Soufrière exists outside of time
Seeming almost post-human, this town has been abandoned, left to its fate of being reduced to ash by the volcano that sits atop the island.
Herzog’s films starts with the sight of fissures exhaling a thick mist from within. Appearing almost like clouds this white curtain descends onto Guadeloupe the volcano sanctifying the land in preparation for some kind of biblical purge. The population has abandoned this place, the disaster is imminent, we are told only a few scientists remain. Streets are left deserted, flanked by empty displays and shop windows, the contents of a shoe shop are shown scattered across the pavement. A traffic light signals red, not to oncoming cars but to the only souls left to see it.
Repeatedly Herzog reminds us of the imminent danger and the certainty of catastrophe as he and his film crew encroach yet closer to the toxic gas. That gas which appears to protect and obscure the volcano's true nature. It feels almost pervasive as we watch these foreign men stride through the smoke, confidently, cheerfully towards an unseen peak. We see, through the camera, plumes and clouds of gas depart from the belly of the mountain forming and releasing themselves through and around its own geometry. Panning the camera around this lower peak all that in the distance becomes obscured, as if all the world has ceased, unable to return to.
There appears a outline, silhouetted, a land, an opposite mountain somewhere in the mist, unreachable, untouchable, not truly there. As we look out to a yet unknown horizon Herzog recounts the 1902 eruption of Mount Pelée on neighboring Martinique, one where, on the advice of local government, people did not evacuate, inadvertently leading to some 27,000 deaths.
The silence around La Soufrière grows ever deeper, the eruption will happen either in this moment or the next. Herzog describes the fear which rooted itself within him as anonymous, hidden to be afraid of something seemingly unknowable, unstoppable.
On this day where fear feels the greatest they come across a man, in the image of Adam, lying among the mountain garden. He tells the film crew he lies
here as it is gods will, it is here he will await death, await his return to god’s bosom. “Like life, death is forever” this man shows no fear or regret no desire to escape or to return to another time he sees life as eternal and in death he sees no reason to fear. He lies on his back, palms upturned.
Another man is interviewed, this time found among the silent streets of the town. He too, at first, says he refuses to leave. He talks about La Soufrière like an old friend, “it is always above us, above the town”. As they continue their conversation, he expresses a desire to leave, to see he daughter one more time yet affirms he is not afraid of death. He changes his mind, now expressing that he can leave here, even suggesting to the film crew to take him with them, but in the next moment he threatens to walk up to La Soufrière.
The events of La Soufrière (1977) happen in the moments before falling asleep or the days before a nation crumbles. These pivotal points in time where one must either resign themselves to fate, or hold on to the possibility of hope.
The volcano did not explode.