Synopsis for the Film

Light-years ago, a liquid planet along the outer limits of the universe known only as ‘The Wild Blue Yonder’ comes under an apocalyptic Ice Age and the inhabitants have no other alternative but to bid farewell to their homeland and take the long trip through space to the closest inhabitable planet- Earth. They arrived not with the regular extra-terrestrial ambitions of domination and enslavement but with the simplest of migrant dreams- a colony of their own with a housing complex, a shopping center and a memorial to the Galaxy Andromeda. But as the narrator of Herzog’s self-professed ‘science fiction fantasy’- The Alien prefers to tell the story, not only was the journey to Earth boring but they failed even in their simple dreams and that ‘all aliens suck’. A film that defies easy classification, Herzog’s masterpiece is a bizarre amalgamation of eclectic images and sounds- unusual videos of the mysterious space and space-crafts from the NASA archives, otherworldly psychedelic nature footage shot by musician-cameraman-adventurer Henry Kaiser from underneath the virgin depths of the Atlantic, vintage black-and-white educational videos, interviews with modern-day ‘rogue’ scientists, an eccentric ham of a performance from a disheveled Brad Dourif (Lord of the Rings, Child’s Play) and the ethereal sounds of Ernst Reijsiger collaborating with Senegalese vocalist Mola Sylla and a Sardinian shepard choir- into an elaborate narrative that is as much sci-fi as it is vintage Herzog. As an Earth spacecraft undertakes a journey to the Wild Blue Yonder, Herzog not just denounces the rise of civilization (the domestication of the pig is called ‘the first great sin’, followed by what else but Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe) and its relentless consumption and destruction of nature, but with typically deadpan Teutonic swagger, offers the coming apocalypse as the only redemption.

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