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Film: Woyzeck
Year of production: 1979
UK Release date: 2nd September 2002
Distributor: Anchor Bay
Certificate: 15
Running time: 80 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Eva Mattes, Wolfgang Reichmann, Willy Semmelrogge, Josef Bierbichler
Genre: Drama
Format: DVD
Country of Production: West Germany
Language: German
Review by: Rob Joy
Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski’s collaborations are now infamous, and their third, Woyzeck, the adaption by the director of Georg Büchner’s 1837 unfinished play, is an interesting addition to their partnership. Both Herzog and Kinski tend towards extremes and this adaption is no exception, director and actor handling Büchner’s themes of poverty, class, society, love and madness.
Woyzeck (Kinski) is a poor soldier living a relatively penniless existence in a small military town. The film begins with his exercise regime; he is dressed in an ill-fitting military tunic that is to be his costume throughout, being kicked to the ground with each incomplete push-up by a faceless superior. It’s immediately apparent from the look on his face that Woyzeck isn’t simply tired, but almost worn away. Along with his captain, who belittles him for his lack of morals due to his poor living circumstances, Woyzeck carries out extra tasks for the doctor, being restricted to only eating peas for four months as a medical experiment to earn enough money to support his family. The experiments have already taken their toll on Woyzeck, weakening him physically and mentally.
Woyzeck’s partner, Marie, with whom he has a child out of wedlock, constantly flirts with the drum major. We see them first as he parades around the square looking up to her at a window, then later at her home, after they meet, while she is accompanying Woyzeck and their son to a carnival show. Herzog implies in this scene that the two sleep together, the drum major initially being rather overt and forceful. As Woyzeck’s condition worsens, he discovers Marie’s infidelity and attempts to confront the drum major in an inn after he sees the two dancing together.
These storylines play out interspersed with scenes of Woyzeck and his colleague Andres. These are used to further show Woyzeck’s decline into paranoia and madness: his nervous disposition; his language - poetic, cryptic and pessimistic. Andres offers little advice other than to visit the infirmary, but Woyzeck is set on stopping the drum major and Marie from being together, and his madness leads to drastic measures, the climax played out in a beautiful but harrowing slow motion shot, the speed of which is repeated at the finale where we briefly hear the authorities take on Woyzeck’s ultimate actions...
Büchner’s play was fragmented and incomplete, more a set of scenes to be compiled and finalised. It has been interpreted on stage, film and in song with each artist rendering their own order of the final piece, though they share many similarly sequenced sections. Herzog certainly makes a cohesive story from the fragments and stays faithful to much of the dialogue, but he transcends the original text. His additions, including the drum major’s strong, violent advances on Marie (in the play, the affair is a fiction, delivered to torment Woyzeck by his captain and the doctor to push their experiments on him even further and tease him for his lower-class background) help the film move along and change the focus a little.
Poverty and the treatment of the poor by other classes are big pre-occupations of the play, but Herzog, or more obviously Kinski, renders this version more clearly about the descent into insanity due to the circumstances and less about the circumstances themselves. His performance is equally intense and fragile. His panicked, desperate look contrasts wonderfully with the arrogance and confidence of almost all of the other characters, the only exception being Marie (an excellent Eva Mattes), who is at once a strong and weak woman, aware of her failings to remain faithful to Woyzeck, but desperate to supersede her class and income, the drum major being her potential ticket up the social ladder.
Production began just several days after the star and director finished work on the remake of Murnau’s Nosferatu, and Kinski’s tired appearance lends itself excellently to his portrayal of the tormented title character: sunken, worried eyes, and a hollow look about his face. The pace of the film owes much to its use of long takes in many scenes, in keeping with the theatrical origins, Herzog uses the camera’s potential: allowing characters within a shot to make good use of their space, approaching the camera, giving the audience a close up for dialogue, while action takes place behind them. The camera is often in motion, albeit invisible on the whole, and the action on-screen captivating enough to surpass the need to cut, tightly choreographed to fit into the shot. The advantages of producing the film like this were apparent to Herzog, who shot and edited the film in under a month. It’s economy works in its favour stylistically, presenting an incredibly objective viewpoint for the audience, never showing a character’s point of view and never cutting within a scene to a close up, but always to another shot to continue the action.
The picturesque town (Czech, doubling for German) and surrounding countryside are not akin to the usually more extreme circumstances that Herzog tends to shoot in, particularly in his work with Kinski, but they provide a more sleepy setting, striking in its quaintness and natural beauty, for the horrors that the film contains. A beautiful sequence with Kinski running, out of breath, through a poppy field about to break out into bloom before he hears voices, coming from the ground, from above, within, is striking in its simplicity and beauty, as well as its portrayal of something that could have, in the hands of another actor or director, quickly descended into parody of sorts and certainly diverted from the distressing nature that Kinski fills the scene with.
The score is provided by Fiedelquartett Telc and is very apt for the setting - an almost off-key string quartet with a heavily Germanic sound - it elevates certain scenes and jars intentionally and effectively in others and, along with the setting, gives a more authentic feel for the era.
The supporting cast are exceptional. As mentioned above, Eva Mattes brings a duality to Marie; her guilt at her natural flirtatiousness alongside the misery of her penniless position comes across, and she embodies well the frustration of being unable to suppress her behaviour. One scene in particular of her telling a story to a group of children before Woyzeck leads her off is particularly touching, the loneliness she talks of clearly being the loneliness she feels, isolated by her own actions and class.
Contradictions are written in to almost all of the characters. The captain (Wolfgang Reichmann) excels, extolling his own virtues and morals one moment, while being entirely uncertain of his place in the world the next, and all the while making sure Woyzeck knows his (much lower) place socially and mentally. Both the captain and the doctor (Willy Semmelrogge) use language with an air of authority. Their moralising and scientific justification for everything gives them an unfulfilled existence: while checking his own pulse to calm himself after an outburst, the doctor says: “Anger is unhealthy, unscientific,” despite having spent the scene telling Woyzeck that mankind is free, able to as he wants when he wants. Woyzeck’s use of language on the other hand is far more poetic, colourful and rich.
Kinski delivers with a determination and seriousness (though there are notable inclusions of humour, both light and dark) which is relentless, pulling the audience deeper into his character. He often references the class struggle he is part of, feeling that he is doomed to a life of work and toil, telling the captain early on: “If we ever got to heaven, they’d make us work the thunder.” The final fifteen minutes in particular really allow Kinski to shine, the emotion in his expression and actions really carrying the longer takes, his visceral actions and appearance during the climax cementing Woyzeck as one of his finest performances.
Herzog delivers an unusual film for him. Despite Kinski’s performance, it’s a little more subdued and understated than some of Herzog's other efforts. In part this may be due to the adaption from a stage-play and some of the restrictions that entails, or possibly the approach taken to its filming and structure. It is certainly not ‘typical’ Herzog, if there could be such a thing. The cast excel, and although Woyzeck is not universally loved, it’s a fine literary work in its own right, and Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski cast a slightly different light on its conventional perception, bringing a new depth and intensity they have become acclaimed for to Büchner’s tale of class, madness and mayhem. RJ
Film: Aguirre, Wrath Of God
Release date: 28th February 2000
Certificate: PG
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Ruy Guerra, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Peter Berling
Genre: Adventure/Biography/Drama/History
Studio: Stonevision
Format: DVD
Country: West Germany
Largely viewed as a cornerstone of New German cinema, this was the film that, as it was being made, saw director Werner Herzog’s life unfold before him. Ten years after the completion of this film he made another, Fitzcarraldo (1982), which he claimed he would live or end his life by. That film will be what Herzog is most remembered for. So, in a sense, his visions of “destiny” while making Aguirre, Wrath of God were correct. In other words, Werner’s filmmaking journey has been the overriding passion and priority in his life, largely due to the martyr-like commitment he has made to his films. And while that film making odyssey peaked at Fitzcarraldo it was with Aguirre... that he really began his journey.
In the aftermath of the defeat of the Inca Empire, a Spanish expedition begins its quest for the legendary city of El Dorado. For the promise of gold and fortunes, the expedition battle all manner of environmental obstacles in search of this place, constantly motivated by the restless energy of second-in-command Aguirre.
While their quest is difficult enough, the perilous cause is handicapped by infighting and differences of opinion. As Aguirre’s ego and obsession slowly threaten to consume the mission whole, the expedition seemingly evolves into the search for a mirage....
Although it is true that there are numerous parallels between this film and Fitzcarraldo., Aguirre, Wrath Of God is much darker in tone. Whereas Fitzcarraldo made you think that almost anything is possible, despite being dominated by the exploits of a man who teeters on the edge of control - not to mention sanity - Aguirre... is much less joyous. Aguirre... tells us that nature will decide what is possible for man to achieve and that man is his own worst enemy. It is the story of an individual’s insatiable desire for wealth, power and fame, irrespective of the damage and misery it incurs for those around him.
Herzog’s film has its roots in the genre of the historical drama. These roots are manifested to some extent in the narrative, which, for the first two acts, revolves around the struggle for dominance of the exploration troop. On one side is Lieutenant Ursua and on the other is Aguirre. Through his use of various devious tactics, Aguirre attempts to manipulate the men around him in order to gain control of the troop and the overall expedition. Even though the titular character has been instructed to act as second-in-command, Aguirre is fascinating in his determination, and his methods often take the audience by surprise. What is particularly of interest to the audience is his unwillingness to visibly take the lead, preferring instead to manipulate via his persuasive skills. In this portion of the film, Aguirre intrigues us as a mysterious, brooding figure, who nonetheless has the strength and will to command the troop in any manner he wanted, if he chose to do so. This is all anchored, of course, by Klaus Kinski’s masterful portrayal of the protagonist.
While the narrative developments concerning the exploration of the Amazonian wilderness and the balance of power are involving, these traditional aspects of historical drama are not the main emphasis of this film. Herzog’s true aim is to disorientate the viewer, who is ostensibly there to watch a story unfold but actually sees something altogether different. It begins with the viewer being arrested by the plodding pace of the film, which, combined with the ghostly beauty of the ethereal soundtrack by Popol Vuh, opens the viewer up to receiving the various undercurrents of the film. These undercurrents projected through the director’s visual focus on the natural environment, such as the early slow-motion shot of the river flowing in full force, are Herzog’s way of communicating the ruthlessness of nature and the role this will play in the film. This concept is one that repeats throughout the filmmaker’s work, including Fitzcarraldo. However, inAguirre, Wrath Of God, we are witness to a group of characters being unable to overcome the power of nature. Apart from the disconcerting scenes demonstrating the suffering endured as a result of their ill-advised venture into the wild, there is an almost indescribable presence of nature itself in the film, permeating it from start to finish. Enigmatic and chilling, Herzog weaves these elements into a film of strange and surreal yet somehow edifying qualities.
Ultimately, this is a film driven by the endeavours of man, and the man depicted here is insane. Like other Herzog protagonists, Aguirre is consumed with desire and has no regard those around him. In the final act, the film effectively conveys the grinding process of reaching the inevitable in this doomed mission, as the troop begin to waste away. Even as Herzog subjects his audience to the draining reality of this degenerative situation, he still captures quirky details in and amongst the wilderness that surrounds the men, and shows the environment to be an unflinching foe that stares back callously at the weakness of these mortals.
Authentic, captivating and stultifying in equal measure, Aguirre, Wrath Of God is a visceral portrait of an indomitable, relentless character. Whether that character is Aguirre, the natural wilderness or both only makes Herzog’s film more mind-altering and unsettling, and is all the better because of it. BN
Herzog combines his gifts as a conjurer of unforgettable images, explorer of forbidden landscapes and poetic philosopher to illuminate and celebrate the earliest recorded visions of humanity. The Chauvet Cave, which contains the earliest known cave paintings, was discovered in 1994 and is considered one of the most significant prehistoric art sites. Hundreds of cave paintings depict at least thirteen different species, including horses, cattle, lions, panthers, bears, rhinos and even hyenas. The artists used techniques not often seen in other cave art making the Chauvet Cave an important record of Palaeolithic life in all of its savage detail.
Fear of damage from exposure to light and even human breath has meant that only a tiny handful of researchers have witnessed the paintings in person. Herzog finally managed to get permission to shoot there, with access strictly limited to a few hours per day and to a two foot wide walkway, using specially designed 3D cameras and battery-powered lights that emit no heat.
With his long-time collaborator, Director of Photography Peter Zeitlinger, Herzog had to rebuild and design radical adaptations to the available 3D cameras, with specialized equipment shipped from both the United States and other parts of Europe. Overcoming other setbacks and complications, including a volcanic eruption, Herzog and his team endured several weeks of intense production in March and April 2010. This is third of his films produced by Erik Nelson and Creative Differences.
Film: Cave Of Forgotten Dreams
Release date: 25th March 2011
Certificate: TBC
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: N/a
Genre: Documentary
Studio: Picturehouse
Format: Cinema
Country: Canada/USA/France/Germany/UK
Film: Fata Morgana
Running time: 79 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Lotte Eisner
Genre: Drama/Sci-Fi
Country: West Germany
This film is available as part of the Werner Herzog Box Set 2, but has also been released as a bonus DVD with Herzog’s Lessons Of Darkness.
Existing in cinematic terms somewhere between 2001: A Space Odyssey and Koyaanisqatsi, Werner Herzog’s Fata Morgana is an ontologically metaphysical trek through the Sahara. Armed with only a camera, Herzog utilises his pitifully shoestring budget to capture a series of short thematically linked sequences in unashamedly surreal fashion as he blurs the line between documentary and science fiction in a typically cynical manner.
Fata Morgana opens with a lengthy vignette: a montage of planes coming into land at an unidentified airport in North Africa. The cycle of aircraft landing continues for roughly ten minutes, as the fumes emitted from these lumbering craft is seemingly layered one on top of the other in a pollution collage.
After the cessation of the landing segment, the viewer is catapulted into the crux of Herzog’s creation. Bracketed into three separate subsections - creation, paradise and the golden age, respectively - the director journeys through the Sahara desert collecting a variety of visual compositions, from widescreen landscaping through to hand-held footage of human existence.
The scenes interchange between panoramic vistas of the desert to snippets of the creatures, humans, debris and isolated vastness that the Sahara has to offer. As the film progresses through the three chapters and reveals its ethereal nature, German historian Lotte Eisner recites passages from the ancient Mayan creational text the Popol Vuh…
Derived etymologically from the supernatural Athurian sorceress Morgan Le Fay, Fata Morgana is one of the most complex forms of mirage, as it contorts and distorts the horizon in a rapidly changing manner to confuse and bewitch the onlooker. Herzog’s attempts at making his visuals synonymous with his film's beguiling title are nothing short of successful, as we venture through a bizarre and bewildering sequence of esoteric imagery that will have the art house aficionado salivating with the sheer scope for interpretation and discussion.
The opening segment is warning enough for those not usually disposed to Herzog’s occasional penchant for layering his philosophy under layer upon layer of cryptic imagery to disregard immediately. The ten minutes of aircraft landing on the same landing strip, and from the same point of view, is an exercise in stamina, and can be ponderous to say the least. Herzog is making it abundantly clear to the viewer that he has no interest in raising our heart rates, as not a single one even threatens an uncomfortable landing, and uses the introduction as a means of sifting out those brave enough to switch on their minds and comprehend his thought process. As the plane tally ratchets further upwards, the distinction between them and the surrounding area seems to lessen, the imagery dissolving into one hazy vision; a fusion of the natural landscape and the man-made creations blurring into the film's first notable mirage.
In a style resembling that of a Greek epic, Herzog introduces us to 'Creation', the first of his chapters, and the hauntingly poetic narrative of the Popol Vuh, which resonates over pictures that have no linking narrative, themselves. As the Mayan text describes an ordination of man by God(s) as the rightful inhabitants of the planet, Herzog unleashes his sardonic opinion as counterpoint. We are presented with images of burnt out planes and vehicles, broken shells and the carcasses of rotting animals. Desolate villages provide minimal shelter to disheveled and disheartened families, imprisoned in the desert that surrounds them. As the religious text recalls a more pure time in human history, a young boy is filmed holding a desert fox by the throat, posing nonchalantly for the camera - an iconographic representation of man’s imposing will on nature.
'Paradise', the second segment, leads to more of the same hallucinatory imagery, the hallmark of which is the most bizarre interview of a goggle-wearing biologist describing the difficulty a monitor lizard has in catching prey in the scorched landscape, while also stating the difficulty he has in catching the lizard for his own purposes. Difficulty in coping with the desert is a recurring theme in paradise, the name ironically noted, as the sun beats down relentlessly on the creatures that have dared to survive in this harsh habitat, punishing them, while extracts from Mozart’s masses provide further mockery: its beauty counterbalancing the beastly terrain.
The final installment, 'The Golden Age', is the most reminiscent of any previous or subsequent Herzog work. Being presented with a collection of the deserts most bewildering eccentrics and loonies would normally instill a feeling of insecurity, yet because of the stark and foreboding messages of the earlier chapters, 'The Golden Age' is homely and comforting. Allowing his camera to roll those extra minutes beyond the traditional call of "cut," Herzog captures moments that others wouldn’t, as participants blur the line between acting and sincerity. The most apt description of this being an oddball couple who, interchanged with extracts from Leonard Cohen, make up the soundtrack for the latter stages with a perplexing polka-number, and who end their performance in discomfort and unease at their obvious lack of enjoyment.
It is unsurprising Herzog feels more comfortable behind the camera when surrounded by the humorous madness of what he is accustomed to. While arguably the opening two segments are the most engaging intellectually, making the third seem almost puerile in comparison, they possess a distinct lack of consciousness. It is as if the director ventured into the desert aiming to capture everything in sight and edit a sequence at a later date, to fit with the Mayan text.
For all the discussion of Fata Morgana’s original incarnation as an idea for a science-fiction film, it works better when aimlessly lilting from thought to thought rather than lingering on one. When Herzog loiters on the man-altered landscape in the opening airplane montage, or the less apocalyptic scenes of redemption in 'The Golden Age', Fata Morgana loses its impetus. Fata Morgana is not a documentary, and never could be, so when the contemplative nature, that comprises the heart of this film, goes absent, it suffers for it.
Definitely not a documentary, and only debatably science fiction, Fata Morgana is cinematic Zen-Dadaism – a desire to rectify the perceived wrongs using film as the tool.
While there is a lot of obvious negativity directed towards humanities’ impact on the environment, the message is not entirely misanthropic. Its twisted sense of humour, in the climactic passages, hints at ability for new life to spring forth from the ashes of the old. However, the recurring mirage of a lonely car driving across the landscape seems to represent Herzog’s underlying bitterness, as he is resigned to undertaking this revival single-handedly. BL
Film: My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done
Release date: 27th September 2010
Certificate: 15
Running time: 93 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Michael Shannon, Willem Dafoe, Chloe Sevigny, Brad Dourif, Udo Kier
Genre: Drama/Mystery/Thriller
Studio: Scanbox
Format: DVD
Country: USA/Germany
This is an English-Language release.
Germany’s Werner Herzog (Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo) teams up with David Lynch to reunite many of his cast and crew from 2009’s Bad Lieutenant to produce My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done. Grossing just £6815 in the UK, and opening on only two screens, is the film an experimental psychological profile of a real crime or a Lynch wannabe that misses the mark?
After returning from a tragic white-water rafting trip in Peru, Brad McCallum’s over-reliant relationship with his mother ends in violence as he murders her with a sword in a neighbour’s home. Homicide detective Hank Havenhurst (Willem Defoe) arrives on the scene with his partner Detective Vargas (Michael Peṅa). They carefully scrutinize the crime scene before realizing Brad has holed himself up across the road with two hostages and a shotgun.
Shortly after, Brad’s fiancée Ingrid (Chloe Sevigny) arrives, along with Lee (Udo Kier), the director of a play the couple have been starring in. The police interview the pair and delve into Brad’s past in an attempt to ascertain his motivation, while trying to maintain control of a dangerous situation that can only get worse…
After the unpredictable brilliance of Bad Lieutenant, Herzog’s second character study of 2009 has a lot to live up to. It is, of course, an entirely separate entity, despite sharing members of the cast and crew, as well as thematic similarities. Unlike Bad Lieutenant, however, My Son, My Son, What Have Ye Done struggles with poor characterisation, lacklustre performances, a lack of originality, and the unavoidable expectations that accompany the Lynch attachment.
Herzog’s focus on character development relies heavily on the actors’ performances, which in this case are, unfortunately, severely lacking in depth. Shannon’s dull performance in particular belies the tension and shell-shock his character is supposed to be experiencing. The monotony of his performance permeates the film with a feeling of flatness, accentuated by the stark, digital video used to frame the production. The flashbacks of Brad in Peru show a man with a severe lack of emotion, which continues throughout his supposed breakdown, and culminates in his mother asking the titular question. This emotionless tedium could be construed as characteristic indifference, but it is at odds with how the rest of the cast react to him.
Ingrid, Brad’s mother and Lee all seem to accept his bizarre behaviour as acceptable, only picking up on key points when probed by Defoe’s detective. Defoe offers a slightly better performance, although his grizzled cop has little development other than acting as the audience’s anchor throughout proceedings, asking the questions that the audience needs to know in order to advance the plot. Brad Douriff’s Uncle Ted brings a much needed comedic character to lighten the tone, as the eccentric ostrich farmer struggles to understand Brad’s interpretation of Sophocles and the flamboyant Lee’s motivation behind his amateur play, a Greek tragedy where the lead kills his mother with a sword.
It is impossible to ignore the inspiration Herzog has taken from the directorial output of executive producer David Lynch, which, in this instance, occasionally borders on parody. The main narrative focus of the police investigation into the murder is based firmly in reality, framed by stark digital camera work and minimal flair, while the flashbacks offer a richer palette of colour and thematic development. The absurdity and uncanny nature of Lynch’s work is mirrored in the dinner scene when Mrs McCullum forces a serving of jelly on Brad (much to Ingrid’s distaste) and the accompanying silences, and too when she continually barges in on Brad and Ingrid in the bedroom. The positioning of the actors in a faux freeze frame feels so forced and awkward that it is impossible not to feel like Herzog is merely trying to mirror Lynch’s style instead of conveying an artistic message.
The heavy symbolism throughout Mrs McCullum and Brad’s home is impossible to ignore. Pink flamingos are prevalent (forming the basis of the film’s twist, glaringly obvious from the beginning) standing tall in the garden and ornamentally throughout the house. These ornaments are to American lawns what the garden gnome is to the UK, but the extreme to which they are used in the house only exacerbates the sense of surreal Herzog adds to the grittiness of the main story, while placing the characters perfectly at odds with the ‘white picket fence’ ideal of suburban America.
Ernst Reijseger’s eerie, foreboding score is the perfect foil for the fractured character of Brad, and is a highlight throughout. The dark music successfully offsets the film’s eccentricities, such as the laughable amateur dramatics of the play, and Brad’s insistence that he has found God - and that he is the man on the porridge oats can. These juxtapositions add to the sense of division between Brad’s mental state and the real consequences of his actions.
Herzog combines a psychological profile of a broken and desperate individual with absurd, Lynchian surrealism to create a film which, unfortunately, fails to deliver. The performances are too weak and the characters too one-dimensional to really allow the audience to sympathise with them, and it is this sense of apathy that dominates the film. The pairing of two legendary filmmakers of this calibre should have been something truly special and unique, but this falls rather flat. RB
Film: Fitzcarraldo
Release date: 21st May 2007
Certificate: PG
Running time: 151 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Claudia Cardinale, José Lewgoy, Miguel Ángel Fuentes, Paul Hittscher
Genre: Adventure/Drama
Studio: Anchor Bay
Format: DVD
Country: Peru/West Germany
Over the years, there have been many actor/director collaborations of note: Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese; and Toshirō Mifune and Akira Kurosawa are a couple of the better known examples. However, few have been as intense and impassioned as the work undertaken by director Werner Herzog and actor Klaus Kinski. Continually at odds with each other, with Herzog allegedly having to direct Kinski at gunpoint for parts of their first collaboration Aguirre, Wrath Of God (1972), they managed to make four more films together. Of the five films – including a remake of the silent classic Nosferatu with Kinski as Dracula in 1979 – the most infamously arduous, and perhaps most rewarding is their penultimate effort, Fitzcarraldo.
Set in the Amazonian jungles of Peru, European entrepreneur Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Kinski) – referred to as Fitzcarraldo by the locales – dreams of bringing his foremost love of opera to the town of Iquitos by building a grand opera house, and having the work of his favourite tenor Enrico Caruso play there.
Being the owner of the defunct Trans-Andean railway company, the town’s tycoons – many of whom enjoying success in the booming rubber industry – are quick to ridicule and dismiss Fitzcarraldo as an eccentric dreamer. Only successful brothel owner and lover Molly (Claudia Cardinale) believes in him.
To raise the capital required, Fitzcarraldo investigates setting himself up in the rubber business. With the help of rubber industrialist and friend Don Aquilino (José Lewgoy), Fitzcarraldo finds a section of land unclaimed by the rubber companies because of its inaccessibility - cut off from boat travel because of a treacherous stretch of rapids. With Molly’s financial assistance, Fitzcarraldo buys a three storey steam boat from Aquilino, and assembles a crew to venture out to the unreachable part of the jungle with an unorthodox plan…
Despite the innumerable problems with the film’s production (unpredictable weather; losing original lead actor Jason Robards halfway through due to a bout of dysentery, and having to start the film from scratch with Kinski; getting caught in the middle of violent disputes between the local Amazonian tribes being used as extras; not to mention dwindling morale from a disheartened crew), Fitzcarraldo miraculously manages to disguise these destructive elements, and presents a serene and frequently beautiful journey about one man’s unflinching obsession.
Regardless of the fisty-cuffs that may have occurred off-camera with Herzog, Kinski easily delivers one of his finest performances – based on real-life rubber baron Carlos Fitzcarrald – with a quiet intensity that never gets too hammy or pretentious. His Fitzcarraldo is a man with a seemingly indestructible spirit, whose determination in realising his dream peaks during the film’s famous centrepiece, where hundreds of native tribes people drag his 300 tonne steamboat over a mountain to avoid the perilous rapids.
Lewgoy’s Don Aquilino and Cardinale’s Molly also stand out lending the film an ensemble feeling, as opposed to it being merely a vehicle for Kinski’s occasional scenery chewing, which is very much restrained here.
Kinski’s subtle yet energetic performance ensures that the film’s languid two-and-a-half hour run time, whilst obviously long, never drags. Fitzcarraldo’s steamboat drifts serenely through miles of unspoilt jungle; a small beacon of civilisation in an otherwise savage world, creating a sense of isolation and foreboding that simply could not be achieved in a slapdash ninety-minute edit. Herzog manages to create a strong sense of a journey being undertaken, with the film’s length allowing such progression to evolve unhurried.
Herzog’s camera is simultaneously passive and active; lingering on an image the one minute and exploring as much as possible the next - revealing inherent beauties that would otherwise go unnoticed. Fitzcarraldo’s steamboat (christened Molly after its benefactor) becomes a character in itself; a clear symbol for man’s impact on nature, especially when Fitzcarraldo and his army of tribesmen – eager to assist who they mistake to be a white god travelling on the divine vessel – cut down hundreds of yards of jungle to clear a path for the boat’s slow journey over the mountain, which is achieved through building a complex network of winches made from the cut down trees.
The iconic boat pulling sequence – the scene that is synonymous with the film – is indeed very impressive to see unfold - from clearing the path to dragging the ship up through the mud hillside. It may be interesting to note that this was all done for real by Herzog and his cast and crew, with a bit of motorised assistance. In fact, the entirety of the film was done for real. Everything was shot on location in the Amazon, and on a real boat giving the story a weathered realism that simply couldn’t be replicated on a sound stage. This, coupled with Herzog’s vérité style camerawork, suggests an almost documentarian execution that makes the transpiring events even more engrossing to watch. We want Fitzcarraldo to succeed against the obstacles placed before him, making the film’s eventual denouncement all the more involving and emotional.
Fitzcarraldo is proof positive that you don’t need large scale battles for a story to feel epic. Sadly, this kind of filmmaking is a rarity nowadays; moving an entire cast and crew out into the jungle for the best part of a year is a prospect that most modern studio financiers would balk at, but, as a result, you feel as though you’ve been on a very real journey.
Herzog’s quirky humour is also present: the steamboat’s captain working out which tributary they are sailing on by tasting the water, and the image of an opera being transported on a fleet of small boats compete with instruments, performers in costume and false battlements crammed on (and hanging off the sides) are but two of the film’s stranger moments, providing welcome light relief. There are magic realist touches in the form of Fitzcarraldo’s beloved gramophone playing his idol Caruso for all the jungle to hear, with events turning to his favour each time the record is played.
In a way, Fitzcarraldo has some similarities to the positively nightmarish Apocalypse Now (1979) filmed a few years prior, or better still its literary source: Joseph Conrad’s Heart Of Darkness. Both works feature a group of people travelling up river through unfriendly lands (the Amazon in Fitzcarraldo and the African Congo in Heart Of Darkness) led by a man driven by obsession.
Its dreamy pace may dissuade some viewers, but Fitzcarraldo is a terrific and rewarding cinematic achievement, and a testament to Werner Herzog’s determination to realise his vision, rivalled only by the determination of the film’s eponymous lead. Despite the frequent, sometimes massive setbacks during the film’s production (painfully captured in Les Blanks’ making of Burden Of Dreams, which is included in the 25th Anniversary set), the film is wonderfully executed and remains coherent and interesting until its final satisfying moments. MP
Film: Aguirre, Wrath Of God
Release date: 28th February 2000
Certificate: PG
Running time: 90 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Ruy Guerra, Helena Rojo, Del Negro, Peter Berling
Genre: Adventure/Biography/Drama/History
Studio: Stonevision
Format: DVD
Country: West Germany
Aguirre, Wrath Of God was chosen as one of Time magazine’s 100 Best Films Ever, describing it as “an examination of madness from the inside.” Aguirre’s influence spread to Hollywood, a clear inspiration for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now and Terence Malick’s The New World.
1560, Peru. An exhausted group of one thousand Spaniards and captured native Incas, led by the conquistador Gonzalo Pizarro (Alejandro Repulles), search for evidence of El Dorado, the legendary City of Gold.
After much struggle through the Amazonian rainforest, Pizarro orders a group of forty men to travel onwards downriver on rafts to search ahead. The small expedition is led by Don Pedro de Ursúa (Ruy Guerra), with Don Lope de Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) as second-in-command.
The group set off downriver on four rafts. One becomes caught in eddy currents, and, after being forced to return to rescue the soldiers the next day, the remaining explorers discover that the entire raft of soldiers have been murdered.
Aguirre takes the opportunity to lead a rebellion, which results in the leader, Ursúa, being shot and imprisoned. Aguirre manipulates the situation to elect Don Fernando de Guzman (Peter Berling) leader of the expedition, although Guzman is hopelessly inadequate. Aguirre, as the real leader behind Guzman, systematically kills any members of the expedition not pliable to his demands.
The expedition continues on a single, larger raft, although danger increases, as they encounter groups of Incas. Guzman is killed and Aguirre proclaims himself leader of the expedition, continuing to lead his gradually starving band of explorers downriver, towards increasing danger and madness…
Filmed entirely on location in the Amazon rainforest over the course of five weeks, Aguirre had a troubled shoot. While the director, Werner Herzog, felt that Aguirre should be portrayed as a quiet, menacing figure, Klaus Kinski insisted that the character should be a ranting madman. Kinski’s tantrums have become the stuff of legend; although the story of Herzog forcing his lead to act at gunpoint has been refuted by the director, Kinski did shoot off the top of one extra’s finger after a squabble. As in Fitzcarraldo, his later film portraying a madman’s struggle, Herzog blurred the line between film shoot and fiction. After a real-life flood destroyed the rafts built for the film, Herzog incorporated the rebuilding of the rafts into the film itself.
The film was initially produced with an English soundtrack (the common language of the multinational cast, and the language that Herzog felt would benefit the film commercially), but the commonly screened version features a higher-quality soundtrack rerecorded in German. Kinski demanded a huge amount of money for the rerecording session, so Herzog hired another actor to dub his German lines, resulting in oddly unsynchronised dialogue, which only adds to the unsettling atmosphere.
The film has a nightmarish documentary quality; droplets of water mark the camera lens, and scenes appear hurriedly framed (Herzog didn’t storyboard any scenes, preferring to react instinctively to the environment and performances). It’s often difficult to accept the bruised, terrified-looking participants as characters in a work of fiction or the rusting armour as props. In the initial scenes, showing the group struggling through the Amazonian undergrowth, the extras playing Peruvian guides seem perplexed and afraid of their armour-clad companions and their foolish expedition.
Kinski’s performance involves a rat-like posture that he would later employ to great effect in Herzog’s remake of Nosferatu. Added to this is a simian, scuttling walk - a man not entirely stable, even before his eventual descent into madness. Even at the start of the film, Aguirre is a pessimistic and toxic presence among the explorers, but, as the plot unfolds, he becomes more and more unpredictable, lurching between quiet meditation and frenzied outbursts.
The soundtrack is fixated around two themes: the panpipe refrain played by one of the captured Incas on the raft, and Popol Vuh’s strange Moog and choir arrangements, described by Roger Ebert as A “haunting, ecclesiastical, human and yet something else.” Both elements are calm but, used sparingly and accompanied by Herzog’s images, become deeply unsettling.
Much of Aguirre is what you might call ‘pure cinema’. Scenes showing the soldiers struggling to cope with their environment (one studying a captured Inca, one examining a butterfly landed on his finger, one staring forlornly downstream) are of equal or greater importance as scenes involving dialogue. Herzog, filming events in chronological order, documents a real journey and captures dazzling and unexpected moments along the way. However, Kinski’s final speech, in which he gazes down the camera lens as he expounds his vision of the new world, is one of modern cinema’s most arresting monologues.
Werner Herzog would continue to work profitably with Klaus Kinski, particularly in the thematically similar Fitzcarraldo.
If part of the joy of cinema is its ability to act as a window into another time and place, Aguirre succeeds magnificently, somehow authentic and honest, despite its fraught production. TM
Film: Nosferatu: The Vampyre
Release date: 23rd October 2006
Certificate: 15
Running time: 107 mins
Director: Werner Herzog
Starring: Klaus Kinski, Isabelle Adjani, Bruno Ganz, Roland Topor, Walter Ladengast
Genre: Horror/Fantasy
Studio: Anchor Bay
Format: DVD
Country: West Germany/France
The Vampire is one of literature’s greatest monsters. Born out of legend and fear of the dark, they have entered our collective subconscious and transcended their beginnings as horrific villains to become the tragic heroes of modern fiction. Cinema’s lust for all things vampiric began 88 years ago with FW Murnau’s 1922 classic Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens. Werner Herzog reckons it’s the greatest film to ever come out of his native Germany. So in 1979 he remade it.
Estate agent Jonathan Harker journeys from Wismar, Germany to Transylvania to close a deal with the eccentric and elusive Count Dracula. En route, he is advised by local gypsies not to go. He goes anyway, and is eventually held captive. The Count agrees to purchase a property in Wismar and travels to take Harker’s wife, Lucy for his own. Upon his arrival, Wismar is gripped by the Plague, and the residents are picked off one by one.
Meanwhile, Harker escapes from Castle Dracula and attempts to make his way home. But is he too late?
Murnau’s seminal shocker was famously meant as an adaptation of Bram Stoker’s 1897 masterpiece. The Stoker estate, however, wouldn’t sell the rights. A few tweaks later and Nosferatu became the story of Count Orlock, and went on to become arguably the most important vampire flick in cinema history.
Skip to 1979, and Stoker’s copyright had long since entered the public domain. Not to mention that a plethora of other adaptations had been produced in the interim.
Herzog’s remake manages to keep the icy eeriness of the original in tact, while adding more to the story and characterisations. Count Dracula (the name reverting back from Orlock – do keep up) is portrayed with pathos by Klaus Kinski (who seems to require little makeup to transform into a monster), his world-weary eyes saying so much more than his minimal dialogue. Kinski’s portrayal isn’t like your modern Anne Rice/Stephanie Meyer emo vamp, though. Kinski doesn’t, at any point, seem to regret what he is or what he’s done; he just doesn’t necessarily want to do it anymore. It’s a complex performance that gains sympathy without ever asking for it.
If anything lets this interpretation down it’s the tale’s over-familiarity. After all, it is essentially just another retelling of Dracula. Admittedly, Herzog’s quasi-documentary style adds a grim realism that stands in opposition to other adaptations’ lavishness’s. This is largely down to the location-shot, semi improvisational nature that he is renowned for (see Aguirre, The Wrath Of God and Fitzcarraldo).
Herzog and Kinski are one of the more renowned director/star tag teams in history, their partnership on a par with that of Scorsese and De Niro or Kurasawa and Mifune. This was their second collaboration, and it could very well be their most accessible as well, what with an English language version shot concurrently to avoid an obvious looking dub (the actors would do a take in German followed by another in English). Critics often assert that the German language version is the more successful, as it showcases better performances from the actors, as opposed to the awkwardness that comes from them not knowing what they’re saying in the English version.
What is most impressive about Nosferatu is the unending darkness that permeates its every aspect, from the cinematography and production design to the performances and music. At no point is the audience given a moment of joy or a feeling of ease. The only times characters smile is either when they have resigned themselves to death (the “last supper” in plague-ravaged Wismar) or when they are completely insane (French artist Roland Topor’s giddy Renfield). The darkness continues all the way through to the climax, and not a single character gets a happy ending. Harker’s enigmatic final words hinting that the story is far from over. And judging by our current fascination with vampires, he might just be right.
Germany’s own bona fide enfant terrible effectively remakes one of the eeriest and greatest incarnations of Stoker’s opus to ever grace the big screen. It’s grim, it’s dark and it’s not easy on the eye; much like the eponymous antihero himself. SEAN
