{"id":12671,"date":"2016-10-19T09:01:22","date_gmt":"2016-10-19T16:01:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/?p=12671"},"modified":"2016-10-19T09:24:35","modified_gmt":"2016-10-19T16:24:35","slug":"to-see-or-not-to-see-fitzcarraldo-fearsomely-and-fantastically-unfaltering","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/2016\/10\/19\/to-see-or-not-to-see-fitzcarraldo-fearsomely-and-fantastically-unfaltering\/","title":{"rendered":"To See or Not to See<\/em>: Fitzcarraldo<\/em> fearsomely and fantastically unfaltering"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Fitzcarraldo <\/i>(1982)<\/p>\n

5\/5<\/p>\n

Werner Herzog\u2019s Fitzcarraldo <\/i>(1982) is a film so bizarre that there are scenes <\/i>that, in retrospect, I feel I must have dreamed. There is an untenable wild\u2014a musty creeping of fortune and disaster\u2014at the heart of this film. There\u2019s an omnipresent sense of dread and unease that captures the viewer and slowly pulls them in like a sentient vine. And, although defining Fitzcarraldo <\/i>is like pinning down a flapping trout with the back of a spoon, there are three aspects of the film that are undeniably integral to its most singular vision.<\/p>\n

Set in the depths of the untamed Amazon rainforest, the events of Fitzcarraldo<\/i> unfold in the jungle\u2019s palm. There is never a moment when the wild of nature is not pressing in on all sides, suffocating. Herzog and crew shot on location, thousands of miles away from civilization, in areas only accessible by plane. The brilliant making-of documentary Burden of Dreams<\/i> (1982) shows Herzog and the crew struggling to cope with the unforgiving nature of the jungle and suggests that only a crew who understood the hardship that the film\u2019s characters undergo could accurately portray their undertaking.<\/p>\n

Nowhere do we see the effects of the forest more than in the eyes of star Klaus Kinski, who plays Fitzcarraldo: a haunted, sunken, brooding that isn\u2019t quite able to hide the trapped-animal fervour that burns inside them. Fitzcarraldo <\/i>is similar to Apocalypse Now<\/i> (1979) in the sense that both films\u2019 protagonists are slowly destroyed from the inside out by the looming jungle. Kinski\u2019s greatest strength is his ability to embody this destruction while also using it to his advantage, like riding a rockslide down a mountain. Without Kinski\u2019s human embodiment of the Amazon\u2019s wrath, Fitzcarraldo <\/i>might have become an unintelligible mess.<\/p>\n

The real hero, though, is Herzog himself\u2014really, who else could make a film like this?\u2014whose presence commands the film from start to finish. Certain directorial choices make Fitzcarraldo <\/i>what it is. For example, letting the jungle\u2019s sounds act as a soundtrack instead of drowning it out with an orchestrated score allowed the jungle\u2019s omnipresence to be fully realized (although there is an unforgettable scene in which Fitzcarraldo attempts in vain to fight the forest with a gramophone and Bellini\u2019s I Puritani<\/i>). Even when sheltered by colonial mansions, or when on board a glorious steam ship, the jungle can be heard and sensed; it\u2019s never forgotten.<\/p>\n

That said, Fitzcarraldo <\/i>never gives the jungle the satisfaction of victory, which is what keeps the film alive. Indeed, the brilliance of the film lies in the fact that Fitzcarraldo\u2019s pristine and unwavering dedication to his ludicrous dreams (in this case, building an opera house in the Amazon) is never exceeded by the forest\u2019s unwavering dedication to crush them. And it is in this that Fitzcarraldo <\/i>becomes\u2014remarkably\u2014a defiantly human film. While it\u2019s easy to lose sight of that fact, it\u2019s just as easy to be inspired by it.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Fitzcarraldo (1982) 5\/5 Werner Herzog\u2019s Fitzcarraldo (1982) is a film so bizarre that there are scenes that, in retrospect, I feel I must have dreamed. There is an untenable wild\u2014a musty creeping of fortune and disaster\u2014at the heart of this film. There\u2019s an omnipresent sense of dread and unease that captures the viewer and slowly […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":12672,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,173],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-columns","category-october-19-2016"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12671"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12673,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12671\/revisions\/12673"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}