When Two Filmmakers Make the Same Movie — and One of Them Is Werner Herzog

In 1991, the French husband-and-wife volcanologist-filmmaker team Maurice and Katia Krafft were killed by the flow of ash from the eruption of Mount Unzen in Nagasaki. Inexplicably, Werner Herzog didn’t get around to making a film about them for more than 30 years. These would seem to be ideal subjects for the documentary half of his career, a large portion of which he’s spent on portraits of eccentric, romantic, often foolhardy, and more than occasionally ill-fated individuals who pit themselves...