Ghost Elephants (2025)
Genre: Documentary
Duration: 98 minuten
Country:
United States
Directed by: Werner Herzog
IMDb score:
7,0 (1.048)
Releasedate: 27 August 2025
Ghost Elephants plot
For ten years, Dr. Steve Boyes has been searching for a mysterious, elusive herd of ghost elephants in the Angolan Highlands, a forested plateau that is virtually uninhabited, yet the size of England. He sets out with masterful trackers from Namibia, the best remaining in the world. However, there's a profound underlying question: wouldn't it be better to regard these gigantic elephants as a dream, as ghosts, as the White Whale, rather than actually find them?
Reviews & comments
De filosoof
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- 2519 messages
- 1725 votes
I have written before that Herzog is not my kind of director, and as far as I am concerned, this film fails to live up to the hype. The film begins with a disclaimer from Herzog himself: it is not a wildlife documentary but a sort of Moby Dick adventure in which an elephant's fantasy is chased. As the obsessive scientist in the film says: it is simply human nature to chase dreams. That dream involves a giant species of elephant supposedly living on a largely inaccessible plateau in Angola, an area that is also presented as magical. That all sounds promising, but ultimately it is a moderately interesting tracking exercise where finding the elephant feels almost like an anticlimax, because, as the scientist explained earlier, it is better if they don't find the elephant, as then the search—and with it, the dream—lives on. The documentary manages to touch upon interesting matters – such as the ancient culture of the Bushmen in Namibia, where the journey starts, from which all the people are said to descend, and who are now participating in the search armed with mobile phones – but it all remains superficial.
The film's central question is how we can preserve biodiversity—including this new elephant species—since humans kill everything in their path. In that regard, one also wonders why the obsession is directed specifically at these enormous animals, while 200 new species have already been discovered in the same area. This must have to do with the animals' majestic size, which symbolizes the grandeur (and thereby the mystery) of nature itself, much like the whale in Moby Dick: where precisely that grandeur spurred Western man to kill animals (so that the hunter could also feel grand—conqueror of mighty nature), it now spurs man to respect and protect animals and nature, just as indigenous peoples have always done.
Translated from Dutch · View original
mrklm
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- 11931 messages
- 10217 votes
Conservationist and explorer Steve Boyes acknowledges the similarities between himself and Captain Ahab from 'Moby Dick' on his expedition to Angola. Although the elephant population on the African continent continues to dwindle, Boyes believes he will find the largest existing land animals (the 'ghost elephants') on the Huila Plateau. In his commentary, Herzog acknowledges that he is romanticizing the culture of the Namibian Ju'hoans and filled the soundtrack with indigenous chanting. That romanticization and the soundtrack make this less palatable than his earlier nature documentaries.
Translated from Dutch · View original
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