The White Diamond

Herzog has made a specialty of finding obsessives and eccentrics who push themselves to extremes. “The White Diamond,” wrote film critic Roger Ebert, “earns its place among the other treasures and curiosities in Herzog’s work.” A film about the history of aviation and a British aeronautical engineer, Graham Dorrington, who wants to fly his two-seater airship over the Kaieteur Falls in Guyana, hovering just above the forest canopies. The White Diamond is a record of that expedition. “The film, which includes some breathtakingly beautiful images of the green, wet Guyanese jungle and a monumental waterfall that cuts through it, is driven less by narrative than by ideas and impressions” (A. O. Scott, New York Times).