Echoes from a Dark Empire

Echoes from a Dark Empire - 2002-12-14. Director: Werner Herzog. Germany, 1992, color, 91 minutes. Werner Herzog's nightmarish documentary provides an authoritative look at the essence of madness, tracing the dark legacy of Jean-Bedel Bokassa, a lesser-known counterpart to modern dictators like Idi Amin and Saddam Hussein. Bokassa ruled the Central African Republic from 1962 to 1979, establishing a regime based on crime and torture, spending all the resources of the Central African Republic on meaningless luxury ceremonies, fathering over 50 children, and declaring himself emperor, with reports suggesting he consumed the flesh of some of his enemies. The host of this hellish tour is journalist Michael Goldsmith, who himself was a victim of Bokassa's medieval tortures. Throughout interviews with Bokassa's wives and children, as well as discussions with survivors from Bokassa's notorious prisons, Goldsmith gradually tunes the film's solemn and calm tone, replacing anger with a sense of astonishment and disbelief, as if he himself cannot yet believe what has happened. The archival footage of Bokassa's regime, which glorified its pomp and grandeur, has the quality of a bad nightmare.