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The White Diamond

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Germany, Japan, United Kingdom · 2004
1h 30m
Director Werner Herzog
Starring Werner Herzog, Graham Dorrington, Annette Scheurich
Genre Documentary

This 2004 documentary by Werner Herzog diaries the struggle of Grahan Dorrington, a passionate English aeronautical engineer who designed and tested a unique airship during its maiden flight above the jungle canopy.

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What are critics saying?

63

New York Post by

Magnificent shots of waterfalls and other natural phenomena abound, but it's far too late in the history of nature photography to expect anyone to gawk at them.

90

Salon by Andrew O'Hehir

An inexpressibly beautiful and moving film, even though (or because) it seems to be about someone unimportant doing something irrelevant, perhaps something silly, in the face of insurmountable odds and a world that doesn't care.

90

The New Yorker by Anthony Lane

Werner Herzog may lack heroes, nowadays, who seem adequate to his fierce capacity for wonder. When occasion demands, however, he can still turn the world upside down.

80

The New York Times by Dana Stevens

The film, which includes some breathtakingly beautiful images of the green, wet Guyanese jungle and a monumental waterfall that cuts through it, is driven less by narrative than by ideas and impressions.

80

Village Voice by Michael Atkinson

Having emerged from his new German cinema heyday as one of the world's most guileless and original documentary filmmakers, Herzog has slowly been crafting a four-dimensional fresco of the planet, its most human-resistant landscapes, and our dubious dramas in confronting the chaos.

75

Chicago Sun-Times by Roger Ebert

Although The White Diamond is entire of itself, it earns its place among the other treasures and curiosities in Herzog's work. Here is one of the most inquisitive filmmakers alive, a man who will go to incredible lengths to film people living at the extremes.

80

The A.V. Club by Scott Tobias

Herzog also finds extraordinary beauty in what Dorrington is trying to accomplish: Like Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his boat, Dorrington wants to float around the natural world in a reverie, and when he finally does, he experiences a connection with Plage that's genuinely transcendent.

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