The Wild Blue Yonder

The Wild Blue Yonder ***

Last year, film maker Werner Herzog directed "Grizzly Man" which was one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. It was haunting, creepy, and left me with an unsettled stomach in the end. I left the theatre a little scared to move, it was that powerful. "The Wild Blue Yonder" is a story, but it works like a documentary to the point where you can't even tell the difference anymore. It is not for the faint of heart. In fact, there are only a select few that would find this film more than simply "a waste of time." People need to learn to observe sometimes, and to just let yourself be washed up by the visuals, the music, and the experience of the film, instead of complaining about the lack of story, or the lack of any depth. "The Wild Blue Yonder" is a film that demands to be accepted, and it demands that you watch it and let yourself be pulled into the hypnotic trance that it has the power of pulling you into.

"The Wild Blue Yonder" is the story of a alien. We never hear his name, and he is credited only as The Alien. The Alien claims to be from Andromeda, or as his people refer to it, The Wild Blue Yonder. The Alien tells the story of the aliens journey here, one that took billions and billions of Earth years, but only a short amount of time for his. He describes how far it really takes, in a brilliant scene where he describes that he is light years away from Earth. He breaks down how long it would take to take to get to the closest star from Earth, and that if you start from the very beginning of recorded history, up until this present moment, you would have only journey a mere fifteen percent of the voyage. He then describes how the humans decide to go and visit his planet, to see if there is any hope at colonizing this far away planet. These images of the spacemen traveling to "The Wild Blue Yonder" are actual archive footage of past space people traveling, as well as actual images of deep sea divers in the Arctic.

I can see how easy it is to hate "The Wild Blue Yonder." The film has so many sections, five minutes here and then another ten here, of nothing by animals in the water, or the spacemen having fun in the spaceship, that sometimes you ask yourself if you are simply wasting time. But if you let the visuals wash over you, and listen to the music by avant-garde cellist Ernst Reijsiger in the background, you will easily find yourself in a trance, creating this simple film into a truly memorable experience. As the alien, Brad Dourif is absolutely genius, yelling at us about how he is an alien from another galaxy, but at the same time giving off the look that he could just be an insane drunk with nothing better to do. In any case, his rantings make us listen. His posture, mannerisms, and attire draw us in. One can't but help to look into The Aliens eyes, and take everything that he has to say with careful consideration. And you believe him. There is no way that he is simply a drunk. He must be a being from another planet. In its short eighty one minute running time, "The Wild Blue Yonder" does leave quite an impression on you. It manages to take some truly haunting and breathtaking visuals, ala documentary style, and turning it into some kind of plot. Patience will help you out alot if you want to enjoy this, as will keen observation skills. Not all films need an in-depth story to be affective. Sometimes they just need to be in the hands of a truly gifted film maker. "The Wild Blue Yonder" is a special film, which will find its audience, and the rest will just miss out.