Fitzcarraldo
|
List Price: Our Price: $7.99 You Save: $11.98 (60%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $7.75 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Fitzcarraldo
Movie Review: Herzog & Kinski in Wonderfully Mad Accomplishment...
Summary: 5 Stars
The thin line drawn between obsession and faith converges under the notion in something for what there is not clear evidence. Often obsession relates to the external perception of an individual with a persistent motivation to accomplish something that is considered irrational while faith pertains to to be complete trust in something vague that never has been proven. Usually both obsession and faith go hand in hand, as these two characteristics complement each other. Geniuses and pioneers in their own field frequently display both obsession and faith in their ability and in what they try to accomplish, which has often helped mankind to take great leaps forward in evolution. Nonetheless, people displaying the combination of faith and obsession regularly obtain the characteristic of being mad.
Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski), who also is known as Fitzcarraldo, exhibits relentless obsession in regards to opera music, as he tries to convey his faith in building an opera house in a remote part of the Amazon jungle. Most people thinks he is mad, except for Molly (Claudia Cardinale) who might be biased due to her love for him. A previous endeavor has brought Fitzcarraldo into ruin as he tried to build a Trans-Andean Railway, but little support made the gigantic project fall through and it left him stranded in the jungle. Currently, Fitzcarraldo tries make a fortune in creating ice in the jungle, but business is slow. Thus, he tries to design new ideas that could help him get back on his feet while aiding him in his quest to build an opera house.
Through exploring options in business with the help of a rubber baron Fitzcarraldo gets a new vision of how to accomplish his great dream. He quickly acts on his idea, as other prosperous business men begin to bet on how long it would take before Fitzcarraldo would go bankrupt. The Amazon jungle constantly rests in the background reminding the audience about Darwin and his rule of survival of the fittest. Similar notions can be drawn to the business world, as people making bad business deals often ruin themselves. Even though Fitzcarraldo knows about this, he has strong faith in what he is doing, as he continues his obsessive pursuit.
Fitzcarraldo buys a steamboat with the help of Molly, which is in dire need of repair. Before they can take off he hires a captain, Orinoco Paul (Paul Hittscher), whom he lets know that he needs a brave crew, but never reveals the true intentions of his business. The journey does not go downstream as most anticipated; instead Fitzcarraldo, symbolically, takes the Molly Aida, named after his beloved, upstream. They make a brief stop where he once began his railroad project to pick up some railroad track for Fitzcarraldo's secret project. However, if the audience paid attention, they can deduce what he is up to, as they begin to venture up the Pachitea, a river known to inhabit headhunters.
Fitzcarraldo offers a journey into a hellish situation where the protagonist faithful believes that he will accomplish an impossible feat in order to pursue a dream, an absurd dream. Nonetheless, Fitzcarraldo presses the ship forward with death lurking around every corner, as the crew becomes more and more uneasy about the situation. Eventually, the situation becomes very dangerous, but Fitzcarraldo uses his faith and obsession to reach out to accomplish what he came do at the disheartening location.
Werner Herzog's project to make Fitzcarraldo is the second time he visited the Peruvian jungles, as he also did in Aguirre: The Wrath of God (1972). This time Herzog displays a similar hardheadedness that Klaus Kinski's character displays in the film, as he had to endure several difficulties such as beginning from scratch after having already shot 40 percent of the film, a plane crash, and border wars. Nonetheless, Herzog came through with a brilliant cinematic experience that dissects the madness behind the hope and dreams. Klaus Kinski's performance is simply brilliant, as he will make the audience feel as if it was a documentary. In the end, this is one of the films that people should not miss, as it offers much to ponder and reflect upon.
Movie Review: A Gem by Werner Herzog
Summary: 5 Stars
Werner Herzog's masterpiece, Fitzcarraldo (1982), has long been one of my favorite films. Its one of the few films I've seen more than once (with friends, family, and with my cat). Every time, I'm blown away by its sheer audacity and raw power. This is entirely due to Herzog's rather mono-thematic view of the world (MAN MUST TAME NATURE) and the grueling experience one undergoes while watching Klaus Kinski tear up the scenes -- overwhelming us with his stares, his shocking blonde hair, his unusually contorted face.
I recently watched the documentary Burden of Dreams (1982) by Les Blank (who also filmed Herzog eating his shoe after he lost a best with Errol Morris) which chronicled the insanely difficult adventure of making Fitzcarraldo in the Brazilian Jungle. I'll review the documentary eventually -- it's a wonderful addition to the film with some interesting Herzog monologues and accounts of natives threatening the sets (almost forcing Herzog to abandon his project), sequences from the original character's sidekick played by Mick Jagger, and Herzog rants about the horrors of nature.
Plot Summary (limited spoilers)
Brian Sweeney Fitzgeraldo (Klinski) has the life long ambition to bring the opera to the jungle. In order to do so, he procures land in the Brazilian interior to harvest rubber with native labor. However, the land he's purchased is inaccesible because of a series of rapids blocking the main river. Instead, Fitzgeraldo (after a tryst with the delightful Molly -- an aging Claudia Cardinale) sets off down a side tributary and chooses a point closest to the other river (above the falls) to HAUL his river boat across. The majority of the film concerns this monumental task -- moving a massive river boat across a mountain. Soon however, the natives have their revenge!
Final Thoughts
Although the plot is minimal, the visual spectacle and Klinski's force of presence carries the film. In addition, Herzog is cinematographically at his best. The sequences where the river boat peers over the crest of the mountain in the massive carved out trench hauled by a series of capstans operated by Indian labor is gorgeous, momentous, and aw inspiring. And, the last scene is by far one of my favorite -- however, I can't spoil it!
Some other tidbits worth noting -- during the filming of the movie Klaus Kinski angered Herzog so much that the natives offered to kill Kinski for him! Herzog ACTUALLY did haul the boat across a mountain and ACTUALLY did the sequence going down the rapids while ON THE BOAT going down the rapids. Herzog has been attacked for his treatment of the natives in the actual filming -- however, he paid them three times the going rate for many many many months of work and the local missionary checked up on their livelihood (and suggested some controversial methods to keep them happy -- according to the documentary filmed on location) multiple times.
This is a fascinating experience -- visually and emotionally. Herzog's mono-thematic themes can be somewhat overplayed (Grizzly Man for example), however, here it works. This is by far the most famous film I've reviewed yet and it completely deserves its reputation. Watch it!
Movie Review: Obscure history, writ large
Summary: 5 Stars
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!
Movie Review: visual poetry
Summary: 5 Stars
Werner Herzog sure has a soft spot for obsessive idealists engaged in hopelessly enormous tasks (Aguirre: Wrath of God, Invincible, Heart of Glass, and so on...). One need not be a head-shrinker to see why the director identifies with the protagonist of Fitzcarraldo, a man who endows himself with the Herculean undertaking of dragging a steamboat up and over mountain to deliver opera to the savages.
The picture stars Herzog Best Friend Forever (and presumed crazy person) Klaus Kinski as the titular Irish émigré. An aspiring rubber baron and music enthusiast, Fitzcarraldo plots a way to combine his two interests into one profitable endeavor. The scheme: access an untapped forest of rubber trees, farm them, and build an opera house with the profit. Seems reasonable enough except for those perilous rapids that have prevented previous missions from getting there.
His solution is inspired: take the steamboat not over water, but over land. Enlisting the help of the Natives, Fitzcarraldo tasks himself with the impossible. On more than one occasion, we have to ask ourselves - why does the Indian tribe, who know nothing of the white man's goal, assist him in his strange quest? We are never given a direct answer, only left to assume that it is for the same reason so many great things are done - simply to see if we can.
Herzog's film has a wonderful visual poetry to it, something so few directors even attempt any more (let alone accomplish). Despite duplicating many of the same themes (and setting, star, etc...) of his earlier Aguirre, Fitzcarraldo is probably the better of the two despite being a tad on the lengthy side. One can't come away unimpressed by the fact that CGI and model-work are notably absent from this picture - that is a steamboat, that is a South American mountain, and they are actually dragging the former up the latter.
A nice corollary to Fitzcarraldo is the documentary Burden of Dreams, which chronicles the problematic production of the film and Herzog's own genius/madness.
Interesting footnote: Forty percent of the film was originally shot with Jason Robards in the lead with Mick Jagger playing the part of Fitzcarraldo's mentally-challenged sidekick. Robards took ill and was advised by doctors not to return to work. The ensuing production delays caused Jagger to drop out as well due to scheduling conflicts with the recording (and subsequent touring) of the Stones' album Tattoo You. Herzog was forced to reshoot everything (with old standby Klaus Kinski as Fitzcarraldo) and cut Jagger's (presumable substantial) character entirely from the picture.
Movie Review: Outstanding Cinematography
Summary: 5 Stars
I watched "Fitzcaraldo" last night and came away more impressed with the music, sets, costume design, and the magnificent cinematography than the plot itself. This is, I understand, based on a true story so I guess I'll give the plot a bit of leeway. It isn't all that bad; rather eccentric man of the world has a dream to bring the opera to his remote Amazon city, figures out a way to get rich quick in order to finance such a move, buys (with girlfriend's money) a suitable boat, restores boat and hires crew, sets off into remote Peruvian Amazon backwaters, finds a way to haul the ship over a sizable hill and stretch of land, and, well, I won't give away how the film ends up.
The costume design, the opera that we're treated to (in just the right doses so as to appeal to the afficionado without boring the uninterested), and the beautiful rain forest setting give "Fitzcaraldo" a visual and audio quality that makes the 157 minutes pass pleasantly. I thought that the acting, for the most part, was of good quality. I am not that familiar with Klaus Kinski but I recognized Claudia Cardinale in a role that didn't make a lot of sense. There was a bearded priest at a remote mission that I recognized as a character actor from countless movies but I couldn't remember a one of them. Otherwise, it was a new cast of characters for me. The version I saw was VHS and the movie was, I believe, dubbed in English. At times I paid close attention to the movements of the lips in conjunction with the voices and I came away with the conclusion that this was either an excellent job of dubbing or else some of the characters spoke in English while others in whatever other language they spoke. I have this theory that there are 5 people in the world that dub voices for a living. I base that on the common voices I hear in all English-dubbed movies. I heard one of those voices in the voice of the mayor of the town which was my first clue that his lines were dubbed. Whatever, I didn't let that distract me too much.
There is a major part of the film devoted to the transporting of the boat across that stretch of land. I'm no engineer but I found that part of the movie very interesting especially with the involvement of the rather primitive Peruvian tribesmen. I understand that Werner Herzog specializes in remote locations. I caught some idea that there were many problems in the filming of this movie. I can certainly understand that it must have been a challenge although I don't know what the specifics were. I just enjoyed going along on the journey