Fitzcarraldo is a dreamer who plans to build an opera house in Iquitos, in the Peruvian Amazon, so, in order to finance his project, he embarks on an epic adventure to collect rubber, a very profitable product, in a remote and unexplored region of the rainforest.
06 Jan Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Constrained Frenzy
The invention of modern drama was the birth of twins, and they have been spatting ever since. One of these is the Shakespearean tradition: characters transform, sometimes even extending beyond the constraints of the movie to create themselves or some reality. Situations are complex, sometimes unresolved. An amazing number of films (most bad of course) are part of this genealogy.
Contrast that with Kit Marlowe whose work can be equally abstract and complex. But here, dramatic excess is the rule. Characters come upon the scene made whole, never transforming. Situations operate according to a clockmaker outside the cosmos of the drama. Sometimes cartoony, sometimes posturing. Sometimes richly dramatic and stylish. The other half of films (and all opera) come under this gene pool.
Most filmgoers have intercourse with each of these seductive types, but designing a life is pretty much about which of these you have children with. `Fitz’ is Marlovian, possibly one of the most delicious. To my mind, it is better than the superficially similar Scorsese stuff that styles bombast. Herzog seems to style the restraint of bombast.
By now you know key elements of the story, and those key elements are all there is: this film as opera; a grand obsession of one man seen as enhanced destiny by the masses; stage as temple — temple as ship — ship as god — god as song — song as sex and each of these wound to a compulsive maximum. That maximum is held — barely — by Kinski, who sometimes really impresses with the way he moves as if fortune were tickling him uncomfortably. But energy is not intelligence; being stoned is not meditation; prancing is not dance.
I actually use this as white space to help me see other films of this general type better because it has such pure energy:
‘Apocalypse Now,’ though earlier, some parts of’Mosquito Coast,’ though Ford isn’t in the same class (or even the same building) and ‘Oscar and Lucinda,’ whose floating glass church as an object of obsession is directly overlain on this.
It is a charming visit to a Peruvian whorehouse where one of our twins awaits. But worth a visit (for training) only.
Posted in 2002
Ted’s Evaluation — 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.
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