Fitzcarraldo

Rating:
Summary: Obsession and dreams in the surreal beauty of the Amazon.
Review: A riveting film set in the surreal beauty of the Amazon. Fizcarraldo is about obsession, motivation, will, and the realities that block the realization of our dreams -- or is it the dreams that block the realization of our reality?

Fitzcarraldo (an amazing performance by Klaus Kinski) is obsessed with bringing Grand Opera to the jungle and having Caruso himself open the premiere of a new opera house. The only problem is he hasn't the money to do it. So he schemes up a plot to get rich by mining rubber trees in an untapped and dangerous region of the jungle. His contagious madness and determination are unflappable as he and his crew attempt the impossible.

Anchor Bay has been giving Werner Herzog the deluxe treatment for his DVD releases -- picture quality is excellent and the director's commentaries on this (and "Nosferatu") are manna to Herzog fans like myself.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating
Review: I caught this on British television about 5 years ago, it also incuded a documentary on German director Werner Hertzog, and this being one of his creations, played Fitzcarraldo after the programme.

To be quite honest, having seen how he directs, he would even make James Cameron wince at the demands he makes of his cast and crew. Poor Klaus Kinski nearly lost it during production, and watching the film it's not difficult to see why. The concept, pulling a boat up a hillside and taking it to a river on the other side is frankly bizarre. Bear in mind we're not dealing with a canoe or inflatable boat here either, noooooo that would be TOO easy, try thinking more along the lines of a mississippi style paddle steamer.

The actual film is staggering in it's power to make you ask 'what the hell is going on!' but for some reason is strangely compelling.

Let's face it we've all seen the film about the boat hitting the iceberg (hint..Titanic) but pulling one over a mountaintop (no models or cg helping out here effects fans) is frankly a bit disturbing.

So, is it worth it? well I guess it's definitely maked under the category of 'different' but it shouldn't be classed really...it sort of defies classification! give it a try...you'll probably be just as exhausted after watching it as the 100 odd natives were when they lugged the boat to the top of that hill.

Rating:
Summary: Obscure history, writ large
Review: Among the things that distinguish Werner Herzog as a film-maker are two qualities that he shares with William Shakespeare: he knows the human heart better than most dramatists, and he never lets the facts get in the way of telling a good story.

Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (called "Fitzcarraldo" by the natives) was a real guy, who really loved opera, and really did drag a ship over a piece of land to get it from one part of a South American river to another. He did it to bring opera to middle of the jungle. That's history. What drove this guy to do such a frankly outrageous thing in the name of art? What kind of fever siezes a visionary and brings him to the brink of insanity to attempt such a thing? That's the stuff of drama. Herzog knows the difference, and his choices in bringing the story to the screen were flawless.

Fitzcarraldo, like all of Herzong's films (even Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht), uses the theme of cultural clash as a macrocosm of the conflicted human mind. So what if the real boat was much smaller than the one in the film? Who cares if the real act of dragging it across land - though arduous - was not nearly so grand as the film depicts? The resultant images are what count, and they would not have the stunning effect Herzog pulls off in this film were it more "historically accurate".

All film directors do things for effect. What separates the good ones from the great is their reason. The once-great Frances Ford Coppola seems to be aiming for empty aesthetics with his last few films; Herzog wants nothing less than to illuminate the soul. It's a grand, quixotic goal; prone to failure - much like dragging a boat through the jungle. But he seems to pull it off time and time again. You remember the images, yes - they're hard to forget. But you also remember the passion of the characters - their desparate dreams, wild fantasies, great achievements, and devastating failures.

Klaus Kinski perfectly embodies the obsessive madness of the title character - albeit in a far less sinister way than in Aguirre: The Wrath of God. His performance is no less brilliant. Claudia Cardinale plays his love interest, the kind of woman whose heart every visionary dreams of winning.

In most treatments of this kind of story, one would expect things to end badly. They do for Fitz, but somehow it does not matter. He finds grace and dignity in the struggle, rather than the outcome. He is a brighter vision of Don Quixote, and the feeling of surviving his ordeal is, miraculously, more like that of triumph than defeat. Fitzcarraldo ends in exuberance rather than despair. How can a man lose everything and still raise his head so high, as Kinski does in the last scene?

Without a hint of sappy, artificial feel-good-ism, Herzog has pulled off one of the most authentically moving surprise happy endings in recent cinema.

Failure never looked so good!

Rating:
Summary: " Life without music would be a mistake"---Nietsche.
Review: Documentaries have been made about the love/hate relationship between the greatest German director and the greatest German actor of the twentieth century. Kinski claimed that he kicked Herzog during the making of this film and that "Herzog groveled." For his part Herzog claimed that when Kinski threatened to walk off the set, Herzog took a high powered rifle and swore to Kinski that he would shoot him as his motorboat passed around the bend.( They were filming in the The Amazon ) Kinski stayed.

Only these two superbly talented megalomaniacs could have pulled off this tour de force of directing and acting.

Fitzcarraldo is, quite simply , one of the greatest films of all time. No other actor could have played the lead as well as Klaus Kinski, and no other director could have conceived eschewing props and actually hauling a 300 ton steamship over a mountain, or, for that matter, hiring warring tribes of headhunters as extras.

It works.

The story is set in the late 19th century when rubber (and robber!) barons created great wealth in the remote jungles of South America, built on the monopoly of the rubber plant. We moderns know that this artificially created civilisation will soon collapse, when the plant is smuggled out; so what better setting than these ephemeral cities of gold and palaces of opulence to tell this tale of man's capacity to dream?

Here is a world where elegance mingles with crudity. In one scene, a millionare, proud of his collection of rare carps, tosses them them large bills, while he jokes in front of an impoverished Fitzcarraldo about how fond the fish are of the taste of money.

Fitzcarraldo has a passion for opera. If the viewer does not share this, the film can still makes sense, provided the viewer has a passion for SOMETHING. If not, forget it. It'll be incomprehensible to anyone without blood in his veins. Just the story of a nut.

Not that Fitzcarraldo is not er . . .speculative in his business schemes. When he announces to his lover, a successful brothel keeper, (Claudia Cardinale) " I have an idea! " She responds with: " Oh, no! Not another one! "

But she bankrolls him, nevertheless. Now all he has to do is--well, as Einstein once eloquently said, to achieve the impossible, we must attempt the absurd.

Rating:
Summary: Amazing!
Review: This film is an amazing example of the power of lunacy. The story is slow, and may turn many viewers off, but if you don't mind allowing a plot to slowly meander it's way around the point, the end result is spectacular, and it's visual strength will astound you. The shot of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Fitzcarraldo) winching a gigantic steamboat up the side of a mountain in the middle of the Amazon while blasting his favorite Caruso opera from the deck in the midst of hundreds of native indians that may want to help, or may want kill him... well, it is like nothing else you have ever seen. And you don't need to suspend your disbelief, because director Werner Herzog actually did this feat live, while filming. Apparently a plot was hatched during this film to kill lead actor Klaus Kinski for Herzog, to put an end to their constant feuds and battles. It never came to fruition, but it is only one of the myths that surround this film. Documented in the film The Burden of Dreams, which I have not seen yet.

Rating:
Summary: Tremendous and Monumental
Review: I can safely say I have rarely seen anything approaching Werner Herzog's 1982 masterpiece "Fitzcarraldo." This opulent cinematic oeuvre about an obsessive man with a dream to build an opera house in the wilds of Peru often challenges modern American conceptions of filmmaking, namely MTV style editing and grating special effects. Clocking in at an expansive 2 1/2 hours, "Fitzcarraldo" requires patience and an appreciation for imaginative subtlety on the part of the viewer. The film certainly required patience on the part of Herzog and the cast: the movie took three years to make, and the original leads dropped out of the project (Jason Robards was one of them, who might have made an effective Fitzcarraldo when one thinks about it). One imagines hauling an enormous boat over a mountain in the Amazon had much to do with this long filming schedule. But why not use a real boat? A movie about obsession ought to indulge in it behind the scenes as well. "Fitzcarraldo" is an epic film about an epic idea. I cannot imagine any American director pulling this off even half as well.

Klaus Kinski plays Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, called Fitzcarraldo by the natives in his home base of Iquitos, Peru. Fitzcarraldo is one of those archetype figures present wherever big money rears its head, the eternal dreamer who cannot quite pull of an idea. In this case, the locale is the rich rubber producing regions in Peru and Brazil in the early part of the twentieth century. When Enrico Caruso performs in Manaus, yet another grand plan strikes Fitzcarraldo's fancy. He will build an opera house in Iquitos and have the famous Caruso perform on opening night. There is only one problem with this scheme: he isn't rich and must rely on wealthy rubber barons to foot the bill, which they are unwilling to do. A small scheme to produce ice for the local people goes nowhere, so Fitzcarraldo must secure other means to realize his dream. The answer, and for our hero there is always an answer somewhere, comes when he discovers an area of untapped rubber reserves along a river that just happens to house a tribe of dangerous Indians with a penchant for attacking outsiders. Fitzcarraldo borrows money from his girlfriend (played by the charming and beautiful Claudia Cardinale) and buys a boat from a rubber baron in order to launch an excursion. The fact that this boat must be hauled over a mountain in order to bypass a dangerous set of rapids means nothing to Fitzcarraldo. The opera house will exist no matter what the cost.

I think that gives you a good introduction to the film, and I don't really want to give away much about the river trip, the monumental task of moving the ship over the mountain, and the subsequent results of these adventures. I will say the conclusion of the film had me misty eyed with a dopey grin on my face, as Fitzcarraldo triumphs (but not in the way you might think) and therefore wins for all of those hopefuls whose dreams seem impossible. This movie is really quite affecting, with an ending I never saw coming in a million years. It is beautiful, as is the entire film. If you are in no way moved body and soul by "Fitzcarraldo," you have probably watched to many trite American films and sitcoms.

Every scene is pure eye candy. The lush atmosphere of the Amazon River basin provides the perfect backdrop for Fitzcarraldo's rambling quest. Herzog managed to hire two warring tribes of headhunters to serve as extras for the film, and these natives add an authenticity to the film in many ways. I loved the wildly expressive contortions of Kinski's hair, his coif often reflecting the inner emotions of this driven figure. Further scenes of note involve Fitzcarraldo sailing down the river blasting Enrico Caruso from a record player while he scans the riverbank with maniacal fervor, Caruso again blaring from the deck of the ship as it grinds up the side of the mountain, and Kinski banging a bell in church belfry while roaring about his opera house. I could list dozens of equally effective scenes. Herzog often lets his camera simply rest on the scenery or characters for minutes at a time, a form of cinematography that takes some getting used to in this day of fast edits and ten second commercials. I should make special mention of the soundtrack by Popol Vuh, a musical group Herzog used in several other films. Their talents lend incredible depth to "Fitzcarraldo" through vistas of sweeping arrangements that wonderfully match the expansive backdrop of the Amazon rain forests. All of these elements come together to make Herzog's film a majestic experience.

The DVD includes a trailer for the movie, text background on Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog, and a commentary by Herzog and producer Lucki Stipetic (who is apparently Werner's brother). While these extras seem rather thin for a classic of this magnitude you don't want a bunch of lesser trailers for other films, although the addition of some trailers from other Herzog films might have been nice.

"Fitzcarraldo" definitely inspires me to watch other Herzog films. Even if his other projects are only half as good as this one, they will be well worth the effort. Sometimes it is easy to get caught up in the nihilistic mind frame so common in today's films without realizing there are truly beautiful and inspiring works of art sitting on the shelf at the local video store. "Fitzcarraldo" is an affirmation of the beauty of running after a dream no matter what the cost.

Rating:
Summary: Who Is the Most Obsessed Person?
Review: This was the big question after viewing this film. Was it the character of Fitzcarraldo played by Klaus Kinski who insisted on hauling his ship over a mountain to try and realize his dreams or Werner Herzog, the filmmaker, who insisted on doing the same so his movie would be authentic in every way? Let's just say that both men, fictitious and real, are about as obsessed as people could be and in need of the strongest OCD Rx in existence. However, the imagery is gorgeous and haunting and Kinski himself is ethereal and fleeting before us here. Is it better or worse than "Aguirre, the Wrath of God?" I can't answer that. Neither film could have been made by anyone other than the Herzog-Kinski duo and come out looking and feeling like this. I can't imagine not seeing both films and being mesmerized throughout.

Rating:
Summary: Towering!!
Review: What can one say about this unique film experience. Herzog takes the viewer along for the great "ride" and we must pay attention.

The love of opera here is manifest in a way that is so compulsive and thereby so compelling that we have to take breaths often during this film.

All you F(x) experts can stay home and ponder your next bit of software on your bland and insufferable computers which dole out dreams as emotional as Hexadecimal!! Everything you see here is real and the passion of the vision is evident with Mr Kinski giving one of his Dr. Pretarious performances.

Hollywood bean counters and executives beware..This is a real film, this is cinema not the pap you have been shoveling the last 24 years. Finally, I would like to quote a,line by Paul Scofield in " The Train" to Burt Lancaster...and transpose the thought to those same hollywood bean counters " Letting you look at this film is like showing a " String of Pearls to an Ape"!

Fitzcarraldo a Rare film experience

Rating:
Summary: Funny trivia about the film
Review: I just had a brief comment about this film, which is more a piece of amusing trivia about the making of the film for those movie trivia buffs out there. But it's worth mentioning just by itself. There's a scene in the movie where you can see the Amazonian Indians standing in back of Kinski, looking angrily his way. Kinski was famous, or infamous, perhaps, for his bad temper, and he'd lost it more than once working with the Indians and had harangued them several times. So It's hilarious to know that only the day before they had gone to director Werner Herzog to ask his permission to kill Kinski. Apparently Kinski got the Indians so [angry] that they wanted to do something about it. Well, I guess Herzog didn't give them permission, since Kinksi managed to at least stay alive long enough to finish the movie. Anyway, as I said, just a funny piece of trivia that I thought I'd mention for the movie trivia buffs (like me) out there.

Rating:
Summary: An Achievement in Artful Cinema
Review: This film, directed by Werner Herzog, is a beautiful film, that's imagery, music, and characters will stick with you. The DVD itself is of good quality, as are its extras. Klaus Kinski is magnificent, as are the other actors. I would recommend this film to people who enjoy a movie that makes them think differently about life, and can appreciate this grandiose film.