This film has been ignored by the mainstream media. Was this review helpful? The film was first of all my first encounter with aborigines, and it made me feel sad on their behalf. Was this review helpful? How could the great German director of Wozzeck, Nosferatu and other Gothic classics concern himself with a very oblique tale of a development project impeded by Aboriginal Australians who contend that disturbing the green ants dreams by ripping up their habitat will likewise rip the fabric of the universe? None of the dialog is improvised though the performances are raw which the previous reviewer might be confusing with improvisation. The Aborigines sit and wait, inspired by deep currents of faith and tradition, and the engineers are always in motion, convinced that success lied in industry and activity. Werner Herzog believes in the voodoo of locations, in the possibility that if he shoots a movie in the right place and at the right time, the reality of the location itself will seep into the film and make it more real. Then we see a group of Aborigines sitting in the aisle of a supermarket, on the exact spot where the last tree in the district once stood; it was the tree under which the men of the tribe once stood to "dream" their children before conceiving them. Was this review helpful? But it's by no means an over-ambitious quagmire like Heart of Glass, and at worst it's occasionally dull or, and I hate to say this for Herzog, too eccentric for its own good. Was this review helpful? 'Where the Green Ants Dream' depicts the clash of two diametrically opposed cultures - that of the white man and that of the Australian Aborigine; the first expresses an attitude of contempt towards the natural world, the second an attitude of respect. Was this review helpful? Was this review helpful? Was this review helpful? What i do know is that a film still with me after almost 20 years deserve a comment. This is the movie: A group of aborigines refuse to budge from a small strip of land when a mining company wants to occupy it for drilling purposes; their reason: `This is the land where the green ants dream'. Verified Purchase. Herzog is a simple man, easy to read. This has to be by far Herzog's worst film to date. 11 out of 12 found this helpful. Immediately I knew this movie would work. At first, "Where The Green Ants Dream" sounds like something really interesting and very intriguing. I honestly don't know if that's good or bad. There are his great, deep, and memorable fictive films- such as Aguirre: The Wrath Of God, The Enigma Of Kaspar Hauser, and Fitzcarraldo, there are his smaller evocative documentary-like films- such as Fata Morgana, Little Dieter Needs To Fly, and Grizzly Man, and then there are his unclassifiable films- such as Even Dwarfs Started Small, Heart Of Glass, and 1984's Where The Green Ants Dream (Wo Die Grünen Ameisen Traümen). Most fans of Herzog are also aware that Herzog's dialog is highly stylized and often surreal which may, to close minded people, be misconstrued as trite or childish. Perhaps it is something one has to get used to or maybe Herzog films are best left to those who are willing to view something out of the ordinary. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism. It's a good film, and can only be that. It's about a controversial topic, that of the rights of the Aborigines and the Australian's seeming right via original British Imperial rule, and it features practically all non-professional actors and some shaky transitions between its sturdy plot and non-sequiters and quintessential Herzogian landscapes. It portrays the futile struggle of an Aboriginal tribe against the needs of civilization. Was this review helpful? I hadn't thought that Herzog was capable of making a good film without Kinski, only some pretentious artsy thing like Heart of Glass. 19 out of 21 found this helpful. These tensions of the human condition, are made so vivid in the land and skies of the Australian outback. Hearing him talk of his films, one gets bored easily. 24 out of 28 found this helpful. Was this review helpful? 5 out of 31 found this helpful. But as time has gone by, and the film still stick I'm no longer so sure. Looking over the cast, you likely not recognize names that most of us who don't follow Aussie films know; some of us may know Bruce Spence from the Mad Max films who plays a geologist, but there are many Australian Aborigines. My one fault with the movie is that you know when Herzog is setting things up for an awe-inspired moment, and it does get a little dry toward the end, but still a grand achievement. Some idiot claims that this movie is horrible but I would argue that this he/she is mistaken. We meet the characters on both sides: the tall, gangly mining engineer, the implacable tribal leaders, the supercilious president of the mining company, and the assorted eccentrics who have washed up on this desert shore.Herzog has said that he thinks in images, not ideas, and that if he can find the correct pictures for a film, he's not concerned about its message. Where the Green Ants Dream- at the least featuring one of Werner Herzog's best titled films as it's one of those amazing visuals one gets out of the strangest of the director's work- is placed in a somewhat minor cannon of the German maverick's work, and maybe rightfully so. We are an amalgam of the characters, the native voice that seeks self perpetuation of tribe and story, the company voice that works for progress and acquisition of wealth, the mediator and thinker voice that comes through the geologist, and the law which strives of order in chaos. 2 out of 2 found this helpful. Second of all, the opening scene with native music and majestic nature, is one of the best ever made. I liked the respect that was offered and given by both the native demonstrators and the geologist. The government solution is to give them an airplane which one of the younger members of their tribe eventually manages to take off with a number of the elders on board. This is not a 10, to the ordinary viewer but to me it gets close. 8 out of 10 found this helpful. One of the strangest things about this film (strange if you are not familiar with Herzog, who is the strangest of all living directors) is that nothing in this movie is based on anthropological fact.