This is a hugely ambitious film about a hugely ambitious man. Fitzcarraldo is an obsessive, an engineer and trader in Peru who wants to build an opera house so that he can invite Caruso to perform, as he has done in other South American cities. He doesn't have enough money for the project, and, unsurprisingly, can't find backers for it, so he conceives a money making plan - he'll buy the rights to an as yet unexploited area of land that is rich in rubber, and use the proceeds from that.
This land is inaccessible as it's beyond the rapids on the main navigable river, and the other side of a mountain from another river, so his plan is to sail a steamship up the second river, through an area with hostile natives, then drag the ship over the mountain to the first river, where it can be used to ferry the rubber.
Klaus Kinski, Herzog's long time collaborator, plays Fitzcarraldo with the energy and mania you expect, and which is appropriate to the character. The shoot itself was as extraordinary as the film - the ship was dragged for real over the mountain, there were the usual bust-ups between director and star, and accusations of exploitation of the natives used in the film, which Herzog denies.
Herzog's films are always about people on the margins of society - the eccentric, or mad, or excluded - and through these he hopes to either illuminate what it is to be human, or just to show great passions. In Fitzcarraldo he definitely does the latter, showing how the grandeur of human endeavour can be magnificent, just for its own sake. And, typically, there are some wonderful shots, particularly one of Fitzcarraldo and his assistants atop a tree in the jungle, surveying the land he wants to develop.
Imdb
This land is inaccessible as it's beyond the rapids on the main navigable river, and the other side of a mountain from another river, so his plan is to sail a steamship up the second river, through an area with hostile natives, then drag the ship over the mountain to the first river, where it can be used to ferry the rubber.
Klaus Kinski, Herzog's long time collaborator, plays Fitzcarraldo with the energy and mania you expect, and which is appropriate to the character. The shoot itself was as extraordinary as the film - the ship was dragged for real over the mountain, there were the usual bust-ups between director and star, and accusations of exploitation of the natives used in the film, which Herzog denies.
Herzog's films are always about people on the margins of society - the eccentric, or mad, or excluded - and through these he hopes to either illuminate what it is to be human, or just to show great passions. In Fitzcarraldo he definitely does the latter, showing how the grandeur of human endeavour can be magnificent, just for its own sake. And, typically, there are some wonderful shots, particularly one of Fitzcarraldo and his assistants atop a tree in the jungle, surveying the land he wants to develop.
Imdb
No comments:
Post a Comment