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Wheel of Time

Rating: 3.5 stars
By MATTIAS FREY  |  January 25, 2006
3.5 3.5 Stars
Werner Herzog’s hypnotic documentary attends to the Kalachakra initiation for Tibetan Buddhist monks in 2002 in Bodh Gaya, India. Herzog’s work is always preoccupied with exotic and improbable physical undertakings, and despite its spiritual milieu, this film is unexceptional in that regard. He interviews one pilgrim who has walked on hands and knees for three and a half years to the event and whose dialect is so provincial he needs two interpreters in order to be understood. As attendees succeed in erecting a giant prayer mast, one can’t help recalling Fitzcarraldo. The thick German accent of Herzog’s overdub narration both irritates and comforts. The commentary often comes in the subjunctive, speculating on the thoughts of both Buddha and the figures in his images alike. This ironic historiography will be Herzog’s legacy, one to which Wheel of Time does justice.
Related: Meaningful moves, 10 Questions for the Dalai Lama, Renewal, More more >
  Topics: Capsule Reviews , Culture and Lifestyle, Religion, Werner Herzog,  More more >
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