Fitzcarraldo
There are a few opera tourism things I want to do. I want to see La Scala, La Fenice and the Opéra Garnier from the inside, and attend Glyndebourne, but most of all, I want to see the opera house in Manaus. For someone like me who has never been to South America, Manaus is a great representation of everything that fascinates me in one. To be honest, I watched “Fitzcarraldo” just because of that (and because I feel ashamed that I had never seen a Werner Herzog film before when 6451 is a fan).
I am seriously disturbed by Klaus Kinski and that is why he works amazingly in this role. He is totally not likable, and manages to create a character that we find sympathetic and repulsive at the same time. There is something fascinating about how this character walks the thin line between passion and obsession – I think it’s an intriguing kind of madness, and puts “Fitzcarraldo” into a string of films with more or less lovable outsiders who would be absolutely unbearable in real life, but work great as protagonists in a film because such people simply are interesting. He overshadows Claudia Cardinale in a mostly boring but rather pleasant role, and I was positively surprised that she is not treated as a sex object here. I can accept that.
To be honest, some aspects of the film (mainly due to Klaus Kinski’s crazy face) made me uncomfortable, but the end was so utterly satisfying and grand that I realized the movie is a big feat. If I were ever to fail in life, I would want to fail this way.