‘Theater of Thought’ Film Review: Werner Herzog Offers a Baffling Guided Tour of the Brain
When Werner Herzog makes a new documentary, you can always count on one of the most satisfyingly strange occurrences in nonfiction filmmaking: the dulcet Germanic tones of Mr. Herzog making odd connections and going deep into the mystic, even when he’s talking about science.His new doc, “Theater of Thought,” doesn’t contain anything as wonderful as Herzog’s musings on prehistoric radioactive crocodiles in “Cave of Forgotten Dreams” or his dismissal of dogs too stupid to know about geologic history in “Fireball: Visitors From Darker Worlds.” But letting the 80-year-old Herzog loose to explore the human mind is predictably fertile territory, in which serious scientific inquiry must make room for questions like these, posed to various scientists and researchers by our director and interlocutor:“Do fish have souls?”“How stupid is Siri?”“Does a mouse suspend disbelief?”“Could a dying man send a message (through a computer-brain interface) that there is a heaven?”Those questions, for the record, are typically met either by laughter or by variations on “I have absolutely no idea,” but that’s fine with Herzog: His goal isn’t to get answers, it’s to make the exploration as wide-ranging, philosophical and off-the-wall as possible.