Fitzcarraldo
Werner Herzog takes another river trip (after Aguirre, the Wrath of God), this time with the impossibly scary-looking Klaus Kinski as an only semi-insane man who wants to bring together Enrico Caruso and Sarah Bernhardt for an opera. (And you only thought it was about an Italian dance.) In so doing, he navigates a Peruvian river in order to harvest its rubber trees, goading a group of Indians into lifting his steamboat over the mountains. If there's a point to this, it's what Herzog's point always is: That obsession can drive you nuts. I'm not sure I needed a freaky German traipsing through the jungle for 2 1/2 hours to drive that point home, but there you have it. The contraption built to hault the boat over the mountains, however, is quite an astonishing thing to behold.
Rating
2.5 out of 5 Stars
- Director: Werner Herzog
- Producer: Werner Herzog, Willi Segler, Lucki Stipetic
- Screenwriter: Werner Herzog
- Stars: Klaus Kinski, José Lewgoy, Miguel Ángel Fuentes, Paul Hittscher
- MPAA Rating: PG
- Year of Release: 1982
- Released on Video: 10/01/1983
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