Review of Fitzcarraldo (1982) by Zach L — 03 Jan 2017

Another grand vision from Werner Herzog, Fitzcarraldo deals with some of the same themes of Aguirre, This time, the opera fanatic, Fitzcarraldo, played by Klaus Kinski, who also played as Aguirre, wants to buy a 500 acre piece of land to begin a chain of wealth by building his own opera house.

The plot is more sophisticated than Aguirre, but Herzog is still more interested in his wonderment of visuals it is as unpredictable as Aguirre, especially when it comes to the moments where they have to pull his ship up a mountain.

It is done, not by models,,, but literally pulling an actual ship up the mountain. Herzog states that the audience will be able to tell a model from an actual ship. The whole set became troublesome and is shown in the masterful documentary, Burden of Dreams.

Other sequences include the meeting of the natives and how they admire the mad drive of Fitzcarraldo. This is not a perfect film, because the last passages are anti-climactic, completely unlike Apocalypse Now and Aguirre.

Those two movies composed an evocative and haunting conclusion. Not so with Fitzcarraldo, but how can you top the sequences with the ship going up the mountain? A lesser film would probably have a better ending, but certainly not the visionary experience from Herzog, so the climax is almost inevitably anticlimactic.

Still, Fitzcarraldo is a film like no other and continues to be transcendent. The performance by Kinski is little more likable than Aguirre much in part to the opening passages with his girlfriend. She stands by him and gives him a certain drive to build on his mad vision.