Fitzcarraldo (1982)
Mutiny for the jungle opera.
Presentation:
Germany makes great cameras, but their films rarely connect with me. There’s always an implicit tone that flies over my head, a perspective that the director cares about that I don’t get. This is an epic jungle adventure of a crazed man (and actor in real life) attempting to bring opera into the jungles of Peru. This ends up being a metaphor for Werner Herzog’s creative ambitions, but an epic of this nature traditionally requires some popcorn flair, otherwise why bother creating such massive production value? Narratively this film goes nowhere and if its goal was to make audiences care about opera, it actually made me like it less.
Conclusion:
The film is basically carried by its location and cast - the natives and the eccentric lead, whom seems to be a terrible person notoriously captured disrupting production on set. But I guess the discomfort of the jungle will bring out the worst in everyone, further proven by Apocalypse Now. The film relies on its splendor of moving an actual ship up a small mountain. But if I wanted to watch a real transportation project, then I could just watch a time-lapsed construction site. At least there might be some narrative purpose to it. This isn’t a terrible film, but I haven’t been this disappointed in a while. Fitzcarraldo is a nothing burger of cinema, which works for minimal plots like Where is the Friend’s House?, but not for adventure epics. Metaphors aside, I don’t understand the motivation for the obsession here at all. Perhaps the social critique on colonialism would be enough if the story had any narrative reasoning other than “this guy’s crazy".
Recommendations
Those that don’t like ballet, just haven’t put on red shoes!