The White Diamond (free on Youtube) is a unique documentary about the building of a non-flammable airship and it’s first flight in Guyana.

Herzog finds the most amazing people and just puts the camera on them, letting them shine in their own way. The two standout characters are the builder of the ship, Dr. Graham Dorrington, and a totally unforgettable local Guyanese man Mark Anthony. The film has a few themes you might expect from Herzog: achieving the seemingly impossible, the chance to peer into an abyss, transcendence in meeting one’s fervently sought goal.

Unexpectedly there’s a running theme of grief and loss. It reminds me of the scene in The Dark Glow of the Mountains where out of nowhere Herzog is interviewing one of the mountaineers, who totally spontaneously breaks down sharing the story of his brother who died climbing a mountain, and how the mountaineer had to tell their mother. It’s an incredibly unexpected and one that takes the film to a whole new deeply profound level. Grief, running through our thousands of years of our human story keeps us connected to a cycle of remembrance and achieving our goals in honor of our dearly departed.

This is yet another film where Herzog finds and films chickens, which at first thought I can think that he films ostriches in “My Son, My Son,” and hypnotizes a chicken in “Signs of Life.”