Tag: klaus kinski

Film by Ezekiel Yu
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A shot from Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo," depicting Klaus Kinski staring over a mountain, as reviewed by poet and film critic Ezekiel Yu.

What the Gods Want: On Werner Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” (1982)

Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo is one of those works that are forced into greatness seemingly by sheer intensity of vision alone—if one can succeed in doing what Herzog determined to do, and haul a 320-ton steamboat up an Amazonian hillside, then one figures everything else ought to fall into place easily enough.

It’s a hyperbolic statement, to be sure, but with Herzog, what isn’t? This is a man whose pursuit of art is marked by such a dogged unwillingness to compromise that, when merged with his own idiosyncratic philosophical bugbears, his films can attain to a kind of ecstatic revelation in their peak moments; imperfect though they may sometimes be (usually as a result of some technical defect), these moments are uniquely “Herzogian,” and the ability to create a niche, an imagistic and/or narrative style uniquely one’s own, in a narrative medium without sacrificing one’s responsibilities to story, character, plot, etc., is one of the hallmarks of a truly permanent artist.

But it is also true that Fitzcarraldo would be significantly diminished, Herzog or not, if its title character had not been portrayed—possessed, even—by an actor of Klaus Kinski’s caliber. Yes, he was by all accounts an extremely difficult personality to work with, but to harp on his offscreen temperament and misdeeds, however nontrivial, would be to detract from the wonderful range Kinski expresses as maverick entrepreneur and opera fanatic Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, colloquially known to his friends and associates as Fitzcarraldo. […]

Film by Jessica Schneider
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Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) confronting his men in Werner Herzog's "Aguirre, Wrath of God". There is bright white text with the film's title against a green background.

Stones & Tears: on Werner Herzog’s “Aguirre, the Wrath of God” (1972)

Of all the scenes most haunting within Werner Herzog’s 1972 drama, Aguirre, the Wrath of God, is the scene when a horse is shoved off the wooden raft and left to die alone in the Amazon jungle. Then, as the camera pulls away at the same pace as the river itself, the horse remains still, standing, and solitary. We never see the animal die, but like the doomed men on the raft, we know that death awaits. Perhaps we must tell ourselves that abandonment is a better fate for the helpless creature than continuing on this ill-fated expedition.

Aguirre, the Wrath of God is a visionary film both in approach and style, as it presents an eye-level realism of what might have transpired among a group of tired, starving explorers in search of the nebulously located ‘gold city’ of El Dorado during each passing day in 1560. Commencing on New Year, they hike down a foggy mountain through the drizzle and toil, and we see their tiredness, their discomfort. They are damp and dirty and running out of patience. In terms of maps, no one knows exactly where they are headed, but their idealism leads them, regardless. The journey treks on without any promise of arrival—do they know they are going in circles? Little do they know that after succumbing to hunger and fatigue, they will grow delusional when nothing presented seems real, be it a poisoned arrow to the body or a boat stuck in a tree. […]