A mostly voiceless pictorial depiction of the aftermath of Persian Gulf War in Kuwait. Balletic cinematography, a good deal of it aerial, encompasses infernal horizons and devastated landscapes hardly recognizable as earthly, sweeping oil drenched, smoke filled distances, to the adagio strains of Verdi, Schubert, Prokofiev, and others. The images, for all their grotesque beauty, speak the truth, like moving paintings.<br /><br />We witness the detailed drama of an out-of-control burning oil well being tamed and capped, see vast lakes of oil, some of them boiling, and fly for miles over the charred remains of buildings and the discarded refuse of war. Heavy equipment plods like prehistoric dinosaurs; men in their fire suits stumble about like aliens from outer space. Otherwise there are no living things, not even plants, anywhere.<br /><br />We visit a torture chamber and examine blood stained instruments of torture neatly laid out on tables, then hear two mothers' testaments of unspeakable brutality, so unspeakable that one mother, who watched as her two sons were tortured to death, literally lost the ability to speak coherently, so unspeakable that a little boy whose head was stepped on and father killed by the invading Iraqi army has refused to utter a word since.<br /><br />But these are the only two instances of intimate human contact. The rest of this brief 53 minute documentary watches from afar. Herzog inserts some narration here and there, some of it overly literary, but for the most part we are left to peer out through the camera lens at a world far more fascinating and compelling than anything any film maker could contrive.<br /><br />Astonishingly, this scratchy print, a remarkable historical document, is the only one in existence, and this is its first theatrical screening (it has been seen at various film festivals previously).