Echos aus einem Düsteren Reich

For this documentary, Werner Herzog joined the English journalist Michael Goldsmith on his journey back to the Central African Republic, where he spent many years in prison on suspicion of espionage under dictator Jean Bedel Bokassa’s reign of terror. This despot is the proof that absolute power leads to absolute corruption. According to some reports, Bokassa fed his opponents to crocodiles, while his political friends, such as the French president Giscard d’Estaing, were placated with diamonds. After Bokassa’s regime was overthrown in 1979, people even alleged that he had perpetrated cannibalism. Herzog alternates images of the trip with archive footage and interviews with Bokassa’s relatives. Bokassa became a captain in the army when he was twenty-three years old, he was a great admirer of De Gaulle and Napoleon, and he pretended to be a descendant of the pharaohs. In Herzog’s documentary, the tyrant is portrayed in many ways: as a marionette, as a symbol of evil, as a great mystery, and as proof of Herzog’s assertion that man is an animal in clothing.