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The trailer for 'Lo and Behold,' Werner Herzog's new filmThe hook of Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World, which premiered earlier this year in Sundance, is that it sends Herzog into uncharted territory—the virtual no-man's land of the internet. This is a massive topic for a single movie, and the degree of difficulty is compounded by the fact that Herzog, for all his cred, doesn't seem to be the ideal man for the job. At age 75, the director is clearly of a different generation. He famously made his first phone call when he was 17 years old, and in an interview with TechCrunch, he admitted that he doesn't carry a cell.And yet for all his skepticism, he doesn't overplay the part of the anxious Luddite. Instead, Herzog's curiosity—always his greatest resource as a documentarian—shines through. Determined to condense the history and implications of the internet into just under 100 minutes, Herzog covers a lot of ground. He dutifully visits the primal scene of host-to-host communication on the UCLA campus, and also some more contemporary computer labs, where he seems amazed by the possibilities of technology developing exponentially by the day. In one interlude, Herzog meets with programmers developing robot soccer players, which strikes him as amusing; he's less entertained by the idea that computers could one day direct their own films.
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For some, this benign demonstration will seem a frightening image out of sci-fi literature—the implacable AI out to replace us. And yet the strange, awkward delicacy of the automaton's movements recall the weirdo outsiders of Herzog's other movies. This benign white humanoid could be kin to the demented penguin in Encounters at the End of the World, which leaves the flock and rushes hell-bent toward the horizon. Are we looking here at a cool usurper, or a mirror image of our own frailties?In Lo and Behold's best scene, a scientist calmly explains that the most sophisticated AI in the world is still operating below the level of a cockroach, which exercises choice about where to go and what to do. It's as if Herzog, whose fear and loathing of nature has always been underwritten by a healthy respect, is reminding us—and maybe himself—that Mother Nature still has the upper hand, at least for now. Whether or not the unfinished country of the internet will render everything else prehistorical remains to be seen.Lo and Behold plays at Toronto's Hot Docs festival on April 28–29 and is planned to play in theaters later this year.Follow Adam Nayman on Twitter.