Ghost Elephants (2025) is a National Geographic-funded documentary directed by Werner Herzog. For about three-quarters of its length, the movie is one of the best documentary films ever made. The picture's last quarter, involving DNA testing that turns out to be inconsequential is strangely bland and predictable. This part of the movie aims at solving a puzzle as to whether the so-called "Ghost Elephants" of the east Angolan highlands are a distinct subspecies of pachyderms -- unless you are an expert in taxonomy, the solution to this puzzle is relatively uninteresting and the documentation of the scientific means used to distinguish between subspecies is technical, visually inert, and complete lacking the ecstatic charisma that otherwise characterizes this movie. Many PBS and BBC documentaries begin by posing a question and, then, show scientists and experiments directed toward finding an answer. As it happened, the elephant documentary was followed on my streaming service with a show about Stonehenge that exemplifies this narrative strategy -- there is a recumbent stone, the so-called "altar stone" at Stonehenge; the recumbent stone is composed of rock unlike the other parts of the neolithic monument, therefore, begging this question: what is the source of this stone? (It turns out to be rock from Aberdeen in Scotland 500 miles to the north of Stonehenge -- this discovery turns out to have interesting and, indeed, highly consequential implications). Herzog is so uninterested in the question rather formulaically posed by Ghost Elephants that he doesn't even bother to answer it during the film itself -- he relegates the information that the Angolan pachyderms are, indeed, a distinct, hitherto unknown, subspecies to a closing title. So, as is typical with this director, Herzog follows the canonical form of the well-made science documentary only to, in effect, completely subvert that form. A question is posed at the outset but it is mostly ignored until a perfunctory coda tacked onto the end of the movie. The real subject matter of the movie is not the outcome of the quest, which is prosaic, but the lyrical and rhapsodic documentation of the quest itself.
The hero of Ghost Elephants is a White South African naturalist called Steve Boyes. Boyes looks like Indiana Jones and dresses like that character also. He is a typical Herzogian obsessive -- a man with a mission willing to suffer all sorts of hardships to accomplish his aims: in the case to extract DNA from the giant elephants (who may not even exist) in the remote and inaccessible Angolan highlands. Herzog compares Boyes to Captain Ahab, a likeness that the hero accepts with a shrug. Fifty years ago, a monomaniacal obsessive like Boyes would be a true oddity -- but, Herzog, once an unknown German avant-garde director, has become his own climate: he has created the types of men that he chronicles in his movie in real life: Boyes is like Aguirre in Herzog's Aguirre, the Wrath of God or like the grizzly man in Herzog's film of that name or like his doomed volcanologists killed by an eruption that they are documenting or any number of other quixotic figures in Herzog feature and documentary films. It's an open question as to whether Boyes could exist independently of Herzog's celebration of these figures: the viewer has the suspicion that Boyes has seen enough Herzog films so as to be able to convincingly imitate such a person. Boyes enthuses over the size of the so-called Fenykoeve elephant on display as a monumental taxidermy specimen in the atrium of the Smithsonian Institute. This beast is the largest elephant ever recorded, a twelve ton monster that stands 12 feet tall -- the critter's skull alone weighed one-and-a-half tons. Boyes thinks that the elephants rumored to exist in Angola might be even larger. Herzog's narration which is wry and poetic reminds us that the specimen on display rearing over the Smithsonian visitors is almost wholly empty -- the creature's skull was too big to use as an armature for the animal's skin and it's tusks too heavy to support in the exhibit. (Herzog obligingly goes backstage at the Smithsonian and shows us the animal's actual skull and tusks in storage warehouse -- the exhibit animal has been named Henry.)
Africa, pictured as incomprehensibly exotic, is represented by San Bushmen trackers who convincingly imitate the posture and gestures of elephants in an opening scene that is profoundly mysterious. The Bushmen, Herzog tells us, are the most genetically diverse humans on earth -- this means that they are the oldest race in existence. They speak in a language called Ju/"hoansi consisting of syllables punctuated by clicks and popping sounds made in the cheeks. Boyes engages three of these men to serve as his trackers -- they are Xui (pronounced "kwee"), Xui-David, and Kobus (Xui is said to be the last great tracker, the "greatest tracker in the world."). For a few minutes, Herzog treats us to an enigmatic ethnographic study of the San Bushmen. We learn how they make their poison arrows, compounded from grubs they dig out of the ground -- the poison is so deadly it can kill an elephant in a matter of minutes. One old man with grotesquely ancient face knits together some wires and strings on what looks a tin cracker box and strums that instrument wailing in a high-pitched voice. The old man, whose image ends the movie as well, is sitting among a dozen chickens that strut around the village common. Herzog, who is himself obsessed with chickens, says "I don't want to romanticize this -- but here I was with the old man singing surrounded by chickens -- it doesn't get any better than this." The expedition departs Namibia for Angola's plateau, the so-called "Source of Life" or the "Water Tower of Africa", highlands that are full of peatlands, bogs, swamps, and great lakes -- the headwaters for many of Africa's largest rivers. They drive for seven days in Land Rovers, crossing rivers on incredibly fragile-looking bridges -- these scenes seem extracted from Sirat or Friedkin's Sorcerer. The land gets rougher and so they cross desert savannahs on motor bikes. At last, the motor bikes have to be abandoned as they hike up to the highlands, the haunt of the ghost elephants. Herzog punctuates these scenes with images of the bushmen singing and using their shoulders and necks to mimic the elephants; there are rapturous scenes of elephants taken from underwater -- we see them striding through the water, kicking up big pale clouds of dust dissolved in the lagoon; one elephant is rolling on his side totally submerged by the water. At night, the stars in great clouds spin wildly over the camp where the explorers are resting. In the darkness, a huge spider approaches with its back swarming with a hundred or more spiderlets. At dawn, Herzog awakes to see a man embracing crookedly a huge monitor lizard that he has killed; we seem him cuddled up to the lizard. Herzog says that he has no idea what he is seeing. There is discussion of the Angolan Civil War -- one of the translators is a survivor of that 27-year long war. During the war, the combatants went mad, storming through desert and jungle and machine-gunning every animal that they say -- this morbid information is accompanied by images from the Mondo-Cane style film, Africa Addio (1965) of freakish-looking hunters slaughtering elephants from the protection of hovering helicopters. In order to cross tribal lands, the expedition has to placate local chieftains, called "Kings" -- these men, regally draped in leopard-skins sit on thrones in what seem to be quonset huts. Like Judges on the Bench, one must ask to approach. If you wish to hand the King a gift, you must set it on the rug at his feet; a lackey will then pick up the gift and hand it to the King.
Boyes has said that he prefers the elephants to remain figments of the imagination, denizens of his dreams. (One wonders why the National Geographic would fund an expedition whose objective is to not find the Ghost Elephants.) But Boyes is thwarted. The dung of an elephant is sampled for DNA and several tall, long-legged elephants are briefly glimpsed marching in stately fashion through the savannah. (The expedition has elaborate camera equipment but the actual images of the elephants are caught on cell-phones.) Boyes expresses disappointment at seeing the elephants which he believes must be a subspecies. A radiant double rainbow is behind him -- the rainy season is advancing and the expedition must retreat to the film's 15 minute epilogue involving genetic testing. In one valedictory African scene, the expedition encounters another King who tells a story about the origin of his people: a hunter followed a small elephant who took off her elephant-skin to reveal a woman inside. The hunter copulated with the elephant-woman, resulting in the tribe of people over whom the King rules. The King staring in an uncanny way into the camera tells us that, if the elephants vanish, all the people will vanish as well. Earlier we have seen members of the expedition confronting a figure that seems to be a rotund black and white gourd with a plank-like mask for a head -- "The King sent his spirit out to meet us," Herzog says in his dead-pan voice. The King takes the credit for the revelation of the elephants: the "elephants will not appear unless you ask me for their permission to appear." By all means, find this movie and watch it.
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