In his spare time, away from being shot , eating shoes, facing plane
crashes head on and hunting tigers,
Herzog actually directs films. Shot with a camera stolen from his film school
and set entirely in a Peruvian rainforest in the 1700s; Gonzalo Pizarro sets
out with his merry men to find El Dorado with the promise of gold, power and
some native biff.
After a scene where a real horse is sent on an actual wooden
raft, things quickly get awkward when the protagonist Aguirre (Klaus Kinski) gets
all worked up as the men give his daughter the look.
The film then mainly focuses on atmosphere and relies heavily on Kinski’s
performance as you see his mental demies unravel in the form of failed
calculations and frustration.
Behind the scenes, so mad does Kinski become that he
threatens to quit the film in only a way a German would: shooting a rifle
blindly into a tent and de-digitising a crew member. Hence forth, after a brief
struggle with the gun, Kinski and Herzog became the very best of friends.
Forgetting for a moment that they’re meant to be speaking
Spanish, it is thankfully the German cut that made it to our screens. This
allows the actors to be more natural and concentrate on their performance which unfortunately was the main weakness
in Fitzcarraldo. Most scenes were in fact unrehearsed and some reactions genuine to the evolution of the plot.
Measured camera
shots reminiscent in places of an earlier film Fata Morgana, cleverly draws you in with the sense of utter
isolation.Close ups of character’s faces are utilised throughout to
express the damned destiny of the explorers and tense madness seeps from almost
every scene which has you on the edge throughout. This is without a doubt one
of the greatest films in history and Herzog’s true masterpiece.
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