‘Lessons of Darkness’: The movie Luca Guadagnino calls “an astonishing vision of destruction”
Filmmaker Luca Guadagnino has become a vital name in the industry over the past decade, earning acclaim for his nuanced and psychological exploration of his characters.
He released his first movie, The Protagonists, in 1999, starring Tilda Swinton, before sharing an erotic drama, Melissa P., four years later. However, it wasn’t until the release of his 2015 movie, A Bigger Splash, inspired by Jacques Deray’s La Piscine, that he gained further widespread acclaim.
Guadagnino followed the movie with Call Me By Your Name, which proved to be a breakout role for its star, Timothée Chalamet. It won ‘Best Adapted Screenplay’ and earned a ‘Best Picture’ nomination at the Academy Awards, losing out to The Shape of Water. The director found further success with his take on Suspiria and the cannibalistic love story Bones and All, released in 2022.
The director has moved through genres, from psychological drama to romance and horror, proving that he is capable of incredible range. He once told The Independent: “I choose not to have a style. The language that a movie speaks is more important than the style. It needs to be understood in its individuality. I never start with the mise-en-scène. I start with the people.”
Guadagnino takes inspiration from a wide selection of directors, such as Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Ingmar Bergman and Nagisa Oshima. He also loves Werner Herzog, the German director known for making fiction and documentary films, which Guadagnino has also accomplished. Beginning his career in the 1960s, Herzog rose to prominence with movies such as Aguirre, the Wrath of God and Nosferatu the Vampyre.
According to Guadagnino, “Werner Herzog made some of the greatest films in the ’70s, but his documentaries, such as one about the death penalty, On Death Row, and the one about the grizzly bear man, Grizzly Man, or the one on the Iraq War, are amazing.”
He cites Herzog’s 1992 documentary Lessons of Darkness as one of his favourite movies, telling Le Cinema Club how the film is an “astonishing vision of destruction”. Shot on 16mm, Herzog’s film explores Kuwait’s oil fields after the Gulf War, capturing the devastation through rich, visually striking imagery. The movie opens with a quote by Pascal, “The collapse of the stellar universe will occur – like creation – in grandiose splendour.”
After it was screened at the Berlin Film Festival, Herzog was accused of essentially romanticising war and destruction. However, the film has since been widely acclaimed – held in high esteem as one of the filmmaker’s best documentaries.
Watch the trailer below.
