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Aug 16, 2016 By Charles Steinberg Web Exclusive

In his new documentary about the pervasiveness of the Internet in modern society, Werner Herzog employs his familiar unfiltered treatment of subject matter. That Herzog is a luddite of cyberspace makes for soliciting without interpretation, of the accounts of those whose lives have been somehow consumed by their relationships with the Internet. Nevertheless, traces of subtle mocking are felt underneath Herzog’s intrigue towards a revolutionary phenomenon.

The tone is decidedly one of warning—virtual connectivity can lead to actual alienation along with a wariness of the innate virtues of fellow man. Herzog locates the seminal message that over facilitation from the Internet lures us away from our instinctual autonomy to a point of unquestioning reliance on its services. While we don’t want to question that which provides us our luxuries, we have to think about these things.

Questions posed in a Herzog film tend to linger afterwards, and the central one here is: have we already gone too far down the rabbit hole to be able to resurface as a culture were the Internet to collapse? Ultimately, interconnectivity may represent the largest Pandora’s box of all.

www.loandbeholdfilm.com

Author rating: 8/10