Plot Details: This opinion reveals everything about the movie's plot.

Werner Herzog's 2003 document "Wheel of Time" is the most conventional of any of the Herzog documentaries I have seen. As in all of them there are some breathtaking vistas, fluid camerawork (panning more than tracking), and a focus on some photogenic and interesting individuals, though the ones here are not psychopathological (in contrast to the "Grizzly Man" or Klaus Kinski in "My Best Friend, Klaus Kinski" and in the half dozen fiction films in which Herzog directed Kinski). As usual, Herzog narrates the film and poses some rhetorical questions rather than taking any particular stance. He provides more information about what he is showing than in "Lessons of Darkness," as in many straightforward documentaries.

That is fortunate, since not many would figure out on their own that the occasion for most of the movie is the 2002 (year of the horse) Kalachakra initiation for Tibetan Buddhist monks in Bodh Gaya, India, the site of the Buddha's enlightenment (with the fifth-generation descendant of the bodhi tree under which Prince Siddartha attained enlightenment and became the Buddha) two and a half-plus millennia ago. Half a million pilgrims flowed in, including many who prostrated themselves every step of the way (up to 3000-mile journeys), with wooden clogs on their hands. Herzog shows the slow progress of a couple of such pilgrims, who prostrated themselves even while crossing a stream (being Himalayan, I imagine it was a rather cold stream!). Others prostrate themselves 100,000 times toward the bodhi tree. (There is an engaging shot of a young boy practicing or mimicking what he has seen adults doing.) The event lasts either ten or twelve days (requiring major logistical support).

That is not extreme enough for Herzog, so he also includes dazzling footage of a ritual high-altitude trek of 32 miles (52 km) around the sacred mountain Kailash in Tibet, on which some people die each year. (The peak of the mountain is nearly four miles in elevation). Those managing to make the three-day (or longer) circumambulation believe that doing so wipes clean the sins of a lifetime.

Herzog interviewed the Dalai Lama (in English) and also filmed him on a visit to Graz, Austria. Herzog (through two interpreters) also interviewed a monk who the PRC had imprisoned for 37 years and who was seeing the Dalai Lama for the first time.

Herzog also chronicled the making of very intricate mandalas of colored sand, with the wheel of time of the title in the center. The opening lines are drawn by the Dalai Lama himself, and once it is all done, it is undone (and the sands swept up and dumped into a river that will carry the blessings to the sea). And there is the oral defense of what Herzog dubs a "doctor of Buddhism" that runs late into the night. (BTW, one of the monks working on the mandala corrects Herzog about work going 24 hours a day: it is only 18.)

Reportedly, the only bit that was staged was a long bodyguard left after the Dalai Lama had left Austria and the throngs (about eight thousand) had departed the auditorium where he presided over various rituals.

The documentary shows some rituals never before filmed, so has value as documentation, along with the aesthetic pleasures of the images, and respectful non-proselytizing looks at devotees of Tibetan Buddhism. And the final shot (of "the precious jewel of snow", Mount Kailash and its reflection in a lake) forced my rating to be rounded up from 4.5.

"Wheel of Time" is less "Herzogian" than the other Herzog documentaries I have seen, and is therefore less entertaining, but for those interested in the practices (rather than texts) of Buddhism, "Wheel of Time" is highly recommended.

The DVD has a Herzog filmography (3 screens) and trailers of some obscure movies not by Herzog.

© 2006, Stephen O. Murray

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Other Herzog documentaries I have seen:
Grizzly Man 2005 (see the review by trust12345)
White Diamond 2004 (see the review by Chris Jarmick
My Best Friend, Klaus Kinski 1999 (see the review by d_feinberg)
Little Dieter Needs to Fly 1997
Lessons of Darkness 1992
Even Dwarves Started Small 1970 (not in eps database)

(plus "Burden of Dreams," Les Blank's documentary about the making of "Fitzcarraldo," and in the mockumentary "Incident at Loch Ness" and Herzog's fiction films, often shot in difficult locations).




Recommended: Yes

Viewing Format: DVD
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 9 - 12