Shameful #6 - Fitzcarraldo

Fitzcarraldo (1982, Herzog)

Fitzcarraldo is the story of a man in Peru with a dream. Brian Sweeny Fitzgerald aka Fitzcarraldo, is a entrepeneur who loves opera. His dream is to open an opera house in the jungle, but he's currently bankrupt from a failed attempt to build a railroad across the Andes. The other businessmen scoff at him, teasing him about how he;ll go bankrupt next, but he borrows money from his girlfriend, a brothel owner, to buy land to start a rubber business. He gets the land cheaply beause it's almost impossible to get to, but he braves the journey up the river anyway.

Klaus Kinski plays the titular Fitzcarraldo,and it's a really startling performance. I, like everyone, was used to the raving, crazy Kinski that we all hear about (allegedly natives offered to kill him on Herzog's behalf while shooting), but he's so soft and just plain likeable here. He makes it so easy to relate to this guy; he's so in love with opera, so optimistic, so driven that you really want him to succeed, even when he's forcing people to drag a steamboat up a mountain.

Oh, did I forget that part? Yeah, they drag a steamboat up and down a small mountain. And by "they" I mean "Herzog and the crew". Herzog believed that if they used special effects, it wouldn't look real, so he actually did it, and it's just as impressive as it sounds.

Anyway, this is the second in an unofficial trilogy of a sort of 'man vs. jungle' theme, the first being Aguirre, the Wrath of God. Fitz has to brave treacherous waters, and, like Aguirre, he and his crew must deal with sickness, mutiny, and threats of native attack, all of which threaten his chances of achieving his dreams. Unlike Aguirre, however, Fitz succeeds in a way at the end; he introduces opera to the natives (he plays it while going up the river) and, at the end, to the rest of the town, and so while he still isn't rich, he gets a sweet ending. It's weird for me to say that a two and a half hour movie about going up a river to start a rubber business is "cute', but there's definitely an "awww" factor by the time you get to the end.