Like a god or an alien, the man in white came to the territory of the Indians, and the latter looked at him with the simple eyes of observing outsiders. Different hair, buttons on clothes, hand-to-hand as a friendly symbol.
The backward Indians are to the modern man (the four crew members) what we are to the aliens with more advanced technology and "more civilized" than we are. Steamboat is a product of the industrial age, which is accustomed to modern people, and is a tool for the male protagonist to achieve his lofty purpose of starting an opera house. But it is also the supreme "artifact" in the eyes of the Indians, and it is also a tool for them to achieve the noble purpose of "repelling evil spirits" of the race. In the end, both the Indians representing primitive civilization and the male protagonist representing modern civilization, because of their strong will and belief, have completed the impossible task in the eyes of ordinary people - boating on land. After this incident, it seems that nothing has changed. The male protagonist failed to build an opera house, and the evil spirits in the eyes of the Indians did not disappear (waterfall rapids). They just went through the thing itself together.
Herzog deliberately used a realistic, documentary-like form to shoot the clip of the male protagonist encountering the Indians and going on a boat on land. The behavior of cutting down trees, turning logs, close-ups of anchors, ropes, etc., as well as the amateur reactions of the Indians without any trace of performance, all make people convince the pictures of boating on land.
The overall impression is that Herzog is so nihilistic. It seems that all the incredible efforts we humans have made since ancient times have in the end changed nothing except the progress of civilization. Perhaps the road to civilization is still a circle, going round and round. [Who will educate us 21st century humans next? ourselves? Elevate human beings! ] Perhaps the artificial intelligence we are developing, the pace of human civilization such as spaceship exploration of the universe, in the eyes of high-dimensional aliens, are just as daily, ordinary, and ordinary as brushing one's teeth.
But it is precisely because of beliefs and goals that we want to accomplish that we can live fully and find our "meaning of existence".
And this meaning, on another level, is meaningless.
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