Horst_In_Translation Review of Echoes From a Somber Empire

Echoes From a Somber Empire (1990)

Documentary about really scary character

[6/10 · 31 July 2016]

"Echos aus einem düsteren Reich" or "Echoes from a Somber Empire" is a French/German co-production and this film actually includes both languages and English parts as well. This is very fitting as the writer and director is Werner Herzog who has made films and documentaries in all kinds of languages. It runs for approximately 90 minutes and was released back in 1990, so already over 25 years ago. Herzog may be the big name here, but the real core character is Michael Goldsmith who has directly experienced the terror by Bokassa. Sadly, the Austrian-born Goldsmith still died the very same year that this film came out. I already mentioned Bokassa in here and you can check google or Wikipedia if you want to find out who he is exactly. There are many parallels to Idi Amin in my opinion, in terms of character, in terms of how he got to power and in terms of how he committed thousands of terrible crimes and still managed to get away and die from a natural death at an old age. Oh well.. now you know vaguely who is the central character in this film, even if it is mostly people talking about him and not him talking to people. You guessed right that press and neutral reporting just isn't his thing. But he was still alive when this film came out and it actually appeared at times that Herzog could interview him. Anyway, we see interviews with many people instead that had an impact on Bokassa's life or that Bokassa had an impact on their lives. One of them would be one of Bokassa's many wives, of course he also had many children with these many wives. So we find out first-hand basically as you could not really have gotten any closer to him than being married to him. Also pay attention to how the film includes the word "düster"/"somber" instead of "dunkel"/dark". I don't know if this was done intentionally, but I guess it is okay as some people really smell racism everywhere. For me personally, this was not one of my favorite Herzog films, also because you don't see or hear Herzog for large parts of the film (even if Goldsmith is interesting too) and I just love the man. But it was nonetheless a solid watch and a good documentary. Go see it.