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Film connects to the web

Vernon Film Society is showing Werner Herzog’s documentary Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World.
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Buddhist monks use their smart phones in a scene from Lo and Behold.

For the second film in the winter series, the Vernon Film Society is showing acclaimed director Werner Herzog’s documentary Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World Monday at the Towne Cinema.

Filmgoers have enjoyed Herzog’s documentaries such as Grizzly Man and Cave of Forgotten Dreams in past showings and will find his latest film intriguing and timely as it explores the world of the internet.

Working with Netscout, a world leader in real time service assurance and cybersecurity, Herzog leads viewers on a journey through a series of provocative conversations that reveal the ways in which the online world has transformed how virtually everything in the real world works. Through interviews with researchers, scientists and entrepreneurs at the cutting edge of digital technologies – and taking time for his trademark, often wonderfully comic digressions – Herzog considers the new possibilities in health care, robotics and transportation opened up by the internet, and speculates how humanity and the world will be impacted by these developments.

The film ultimately strikes an ambivalent tone, and refrains from any final judgements on the assimilation of the digital sphere into our daily lives, instead leaving the viewer to consider the implications on their own lives and and hopes for the future.

“This is one of Herzog’s best – it’s thoughtful yet entertaining, amusing yet heartbreaking and sometimes simply beautiful,” wrote Jeffrey M. Anderson, in Commonsense Media.

Lo and Behold will be shown at the Towne Cinema Monday, Jan. 23 at 5:15 and 7:45 p.m. The film is rated PG (coarse and sexual language). Tickets are $7 (cash only) available one week in advance at the theatre box office and the Bean Scene.