Into the Inferno

INTO THE INFERNO journeys from the Vanuatu Archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean to Indonesia, East Africa, Iceland, and North Korea as it investigates the phenomenon of volcanoes. Director-narrator Werner Herzog, a German filmmaker noted for his uncompromising movies about unconventional heroes and humanity's clash with its natural surroundings, makes this film as much about the people who are affected by the volcanoes as it is about the volatile peaks and their history. The guide is Clive Oppenheimer, a young Cambridge University scientist who takes the audience to villages, cities, deserts, and jungles, all of which lie in the shadow of volcanoes, alive and dangerous. We meet tribal leaders, local volcanologists in research facilities, and world experts in a variety of scientific endeavors. These are not simply "talking heads," but active men and women who bring the audience into their worlds. A stunning example is Tim White, a University of California, Berkeley, paleontologist with whom we spend time actually finding pieces of bone from the first human fossils unearthed after 74,000 years covered in an African desert.