Dr. Nandor Ludvig’s brief, albeit concentrated, opinion on Werner Herzog’s “Theatre of Thought” reflects his cosmological neuroscientist view on this film

Dr. Nandor Ludvig’s brief, albeit concentrated, opinion on Werner Herzog’s “Theatre of Thought” reflects his cosmological neuroscientist view on this film.  Ludvig expresses his admiration for Herzog’s oeuvre, naming him as a genius filmmaker of such – much debated – masterpieces as “Aguirre the Wrath of God” and “The Wild Blue Yonder”.  The film’s many thought-provoking surprises, from Christoph Koch’s “Zen-like” thoughts on the mind through John Donoghue’s examination of the future of deep brain stimulation to Polina Anikeeva’s career bridging the science of communist Leningrad to the engineering heights of MIT, let this documentary also be a high-quality product.  Insertion of the clip from Dovzhenko’s 1930 silent movie “Earth” into this stream of interviews is a detail only the greatest artists can and dare to do. 

Yet, Ludvig doesn’t hide his criticism on the demonstration of bad experiments in Herzog’s film either, like the one suggesting to capture lies with a brain circulation monitoring helmet.  Nor does he fail to mention that “with all the cutting edge neurotech recording systems showed in the film neither was used to measure the control and performance-related neocortical activities of Philippe Petit, the high-wire artist who walked between the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 and now starred in Herzog’s film.”  And Ludvig specifically points out the dark message of the film’s end: the images of a palace guard making his absurd steps as a madman – while Herzog narrates: “Who was the ghostwriter of this?”.

The conclusion of this opinion on Herzog’s documentary is that despite all of the film’s artistic and scientific values it is permeated with the directors’ dark vision on human enterprises so strikingly summarized in his recent memoir’s title: “Every Man for Himself and God Against All”.