A hypnotic curiosity by iconoclastic writer and director Werner Herzog, whose fictional features now fly under the radar as his documentary output is highly publicized and his public persona is adored and parodied. The film is a triptych: its first chapter depicts scientists (including Veronica Ferres and Gael García Bernal) who are abducted after flying to Bolivia to conduct an ecological study for the United Nations; the second is an extended conversation shared by the group's female leader and an enigmatic CEO (the always excellent Michael Shannon); and the Gerry-esque conclusion finds her stranded in an expansive, man-made salt flat with blind children, the CEO's adopted sons. It may be argued the film's point is ambiguous, though I am fairly certain of my interpretation: environmental activism often falls short because the general public is intimidated by the scope of the problem and numbed by the graphs, statistics, and test results presented as evidence, unable or unwilling to accept the underlying proposition of adapt or perish as a species. But the real draw (for the select few who engage with this material as most inevitably declare it pure, self-indulgent excrement) is the fusion of cataclysmic dread and wryly quixotic humor hovering in the air above nearly every scene, a concoction unique to Herzog.

B+