This was my second time seeing this film so I focused more on the visuals than the plot and gained a deeper appreciation of the totality of the piece. Aside from an evocative and emotional delivery of the environmental message (which I'm sure has been discussed to death already elsewhere); I'm intrigued by the way the director imbues the bag, basically a non-articulated puppet, with a real sort of breathing, moving life.
The bag drifts along gleefully (and sometimes sad and aimlessly) and the camera work follows. Movements become lighter and more fluid and the bag floats along, its handles sometimes flapping like wings. I find myself wondering how much of the bag's movement was staged specifically to reflect the script and how many lines were written after the fact to reflect a lucky gust of wind captured on camera that gave the bag a life of its own. I wonder if the bag was ad-libbing, as it were?
Aside from the voice of Werner Herzog, the director had to rely almost entirely on shot composition, lighting, and camera movement to convey the bag's thoughts, actions, and moods. There's something to be said for a filmmaker that gets a better performance out of an inanimate object than some directors can get out of a multi-million dollar major Hollywood star.
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