Not for the first or last time in Herzogs career opening with a mood-setting mist-scape, the moustachioed Teutonic visionary went off the deep end here.
The early 19th century Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich would seem the big influence in a movie kindly described as, yes, painterly. It looks lovely, very slowly, and the torpor is enhanced by the fact that Herzog actually hypnotised many of the actors as they grimly unfold a mystifying drama of a 19th century glassworks looking to recreate the lost formula of their leading product.