Und So Weite: Fitzcarraldo and the Trinity of Madmen
September 8th 2008 23:36
Yesterday, I reviewed Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo", an epic film that smacks the viewer in the face with the raw power of the production; Herzog tells the tale of an Irish merchant who pulls a 350-ton steamboat over a mountain, in order to access the rich rubber plantation on the other side.
Roger Ebert's review of the documentary "Burden of Dreams" shows his enthusiasm for the material:
"The whole production was moved twelve hundred miles, to a new location where the mishaps included plane crashes, disease, and attacks by unfriendly Indians. And all of those hardships were on top of the incredible task Herzog set himself to film: He wanted to show his obsessed hero using teams of Indians to pull an entire steamship up a hillside using only block and tackle!"
Herzog believed in the 'voodoo of location', according to Ebert, that the location of the film was just as important as the source material. He could have used other, safer locations, but he insisted on shooting in the middle of the rainforest, which allowed him to take fabulous aerial shots of the savage, undeveloped jungle.
Klaus Kinski, playing Fitzcarraldo, notes his frustration, and his skill with languages, with the location:
Famously, "Fitzcarraldo" is the production where, after Kinski behaved in his typical spoiled-brat manner, the natives offered Herzog to slaughter him and, I imagine, turn him into a shrunken head idol. Kinski had an incredible ability to fly off the handle and scream at everyone around him.
A very tempting proposition for Herzog, I bet - he must fantasize about having a Kinski shrunken head that he could yell at, and it'd just stare silently back at him.
Danel Griffin's review of "Fitzcarraldo" brings an interesting point about the film: the titular character is obsessed with bringing the opera to a small jungle town and plans to pull a steamboat over a mountain. Naturally, it is absolutely insane - but Brian Fitzcarraldo appears as a madman in the film.
Who better to play this would be- rubber baron than Klaus Kinski?
It wasn't always to be Kinski, though... Herzog originally had Jason Robards, an English actor, play the role of Fitzcarraldo, and Mick Jagger as his assistant. Herzog filmed about four months of the film when Robards got amoebic dysentry and was 'forbidden by his doctors to return'.
Herzog convinced Kinski to play the role, brought him to the jungle, then shot the scenes with Kinski all over again. As Roger Ebert notes:
"Kinski was a better choice for the role than Robards, for the same reason a real boat was better than a model: Robards would have been playing a madman, but to see Kinski is to be convinced of his ruling angers and demons."
Some footage of the Robards original are still kicking around, and none show the difference between Robards, a satisfactory actor, and Kinksi, an obsessed lunatic, better than this clip, where Kinski puts everyone else to shame:
In the film, Fitzcarraldo seems insane for wanting to pull a boat over a mountain, and Kinski plays him with the right kind of instability. What, then, of Herzog? After all, he's a man that actually did pull the boat over the mountain?
Yes, Herzog was the source of the madness, a director driven by unnatural urges to take a film crew into the jungle and pull a boat on dry land with some rope and pulleys. Fitzcarraldo is nothing more than a fusion of Kinski and Herzog, affecting the physical appearance of the blue-eyed, unblinking Kinski, but containing the drive and obsession from the German director, who would brave tribal wars and strict warnings from engineers not to try this stunt.
Now, more than 20 years after the release of the film, "Fitzcarraldo" still remains one of the most momentous achievements captured on celluloid, and puts the stunts of modern Hollywood movies to shame. Herzog, able to relax after the filming, wryly noted that no one would ever bother trying to match his achievement and that he was the "Conquistador of the Useless".
*images are from Roger Ebert's review.
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