A Mystical Trip that's High on Helium

By RICHARD CORLISS

He has made great films (Aguirre: The Wrath of God and Fitzcarraldo) about men who follow their obsessions into the South American jungle. Now Werner Herzog has a real-life visionary in his viewfinder. Graham Dorrington, seated behind Herzog, above, is an English scientist who dreams of building and flying an airship--not a giant Zeppelin but a small vessel shaped like a white diamond. Handsome and haunted, Dorrington has traveled to Guyana to make the damn thing fly.

As his fiction films and documentaries show, Herzog is also an adventurer with a mystic bent. He is both enrapt by this land's riotous beauty and bound to honor its secrets. When the airship finally flies, Dorrington says he is "high on helium," and in a symphony of pristine images and gorgeous choral music, The White Diamond achieves its own ecstasy. Here Herzog proves that films don't need to make things up. The world is full of miracles, if only you know where to look. --R.C.