Fitzcarraldo PCI Film Series Review (2016).docx

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Fitzcarraldo (Werner Herzog, Germany, 1982)

Synopsis:
Werner Herzog is hailed as one of the most talented director and auteur to come out of the New German Cinema movement. In 1977 Herzog ventured deep into the Amazonian jungle of Peru for his surrealist-adventure film Fitzcarraldo (1982). Based on the life of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald (Klaus Kinski), an opera-loving, Irish, madman, who spends his night dreaming up new schemes and ways to make money in the Amazon. The blonde haired, white-suited, flamboyant Fitzgerald (whose name is simplified to 'Fitzcarraldo' because the local Amazonians cannot pronounce his name correctly), dreams of building the greatest opera house the Amazon could ever imagine, so he could bring his operatic hero Caruso to the wilderness. After already failing to build a trans-Andean railway and establish an ice factory in Iquitos, as part of his many 'get-rich-quick' schemes, Fitzcarraldo lacks the financial funding to build his great opera house. Fitzcarraldo offers to travel upriver on a steamboat purchased from the profits of his mistress Molly's (Claudia Cardinale) brothel profits. Fitzcarraldo will venture deep into the Amazon to reclaim the land from the Pongo das Mortes to Ucayali, and make his fortune off fourteen million rubber trees. Fitzcarraldo takes his steamboat up the Amazon River, through the harsh Otherness of nature to access the virgin territory. Due to the treacherous waters (too dangerous for his men and his steamboat), Fitzcarraldo finds this one geographical point where two rivers meet and one river system goes into the other, with only one or two miles of mountain terrain dividing them. Fitzcarraldo has the light-bulb moment of enlisting the local Indians (who believe Fitzcarraldo is their long promised white God) to heave the three-hundred-and-sixty-ton steamboat up the muddy mountain, up a steep forty-degree slope. However, the Indians had their own ideas; once the steamboat is hauled over the mountain and before Fitzcarraldo could exploit the rubber trees, the Indians untied and released the white vessel loose into the rapids. The battered boat survives, and is now back below the rapids. Fitzcarraldo's plan had failed. All his work was done in vain. Fitzcarraldo's dream was over.

The search for "the deeper truth, the ecstatic truth"
In a conversation with film critic Roger Ebert, Herzog notes the climax of getting the steamboat over the mountain could not have been captured and produced with special effects and a miniature plastic model boat (2005a). Herzog reveals, "It was really risky, […] I wanted to have the audience know that at the most fundamental level it was real. […] I wanted to put the audience back in the position where they could trust their eyes" (Ebert, 2005a). Audiences are in pain alongside the characters and Indian workers, as they haul the three-hundred-and-sixty-ton steamboat: "There is a certain quality that you sense when you move a ship over a mountain. […] I knew that it would create unsightly things that no one would expect. […] [M]any of [the] things that you see in Fitzcarraldo were created by the events themselves. I've always been after the deeper truth, the ecstatic truth," (Ebert, 2005a). Herzog's desires to keep Fitzcarraldo as 'truthful' and aseptically pleasing as possible, resulted in filming on location in the Amazonian jungle, five hundred miles from the nearest city, for the films verisimilitude and mise-en-scène. Herzog felt the location would "bring out special qualities in the actors and even the crew" (Ebert, 2005b). Herzog demand for visual authenticity resulted in a lot of physically demanding aspects, while presenting this exotic, rural, uncivilised part of the world. Herzog and this crew risked everything for the verisimilitude of the mise-en-scène, to create powerful and realistic cinematic images that no audience has ever seen before.

New German Cinema and cultural politics
Film scholars have called the topic of colonialism into question when discussing Hertzog's feature film. Professor of German, Film and Media Studies, Lutz Koepnick, argues that Hertzog's Fitzcarraldo "deconstructs colonial practices of vision, imagination, and representation on the textual level, only to re-inscribe and reinforce those very practices on the level of film production" (Ames, 2012: 394). Koepnick focuses "on the textual contradictions between the expression of political critique and the impossibility of transcending the terms of one's culture and epistemological context" (Ames, 2012: 394). John Davidson's argues that Fitzcarraldo is part of a 'neo-colonialism' context (a new phase of Western domination operating primarily by economic means), which shapes both the production and the reception of Herzog's film (Ames, 2012: 394). Davidson sees this as a common thread in New German Cinema and its cultural politics, arguing that Fitzcarraldo works "to support his claim that Herzog uses the appearance of colonial criticism in the service of continued domination" (Ames, 2012: 394). To Eric Ames, it appears that Herzog might be 'doing' one thing while 'saying' another, and audiences must therefore consider "the interesting possibility of performance as a framework for analysing Herzog's films and their relationship to cultural politics" (Ames, 2012: 395). Ames sees the relationship with performance and cultural politics as a strategy of political expression. Ames argues that this relationship can be seen clearly in Les Blank and Maureen Gosling's documentary Burden of Dreams (1982).

Burden of Dreams
Burden of Dreams follows the production of Fitzcarraldo, to witness the extreme lengths and dangers involved in the production. As the trailer of Burden of Dreams connotes, Blank and Maureen were invited by Herzog to shoot the documentary, "as if [Hertzog] were afraid the documentary might be the only record of his epic adventure […] as they risk their lives and their sanity" (Mendocino Film Festival, 2011: 00:55). The documentary observes the making-of Fitzcarraldo from "a critical distance and 'reveals' the psychology of its overreaching director" (Ames, 2012: 395). Ames argues that this is 'somewhat odd' "especially given the fact that Herzog invited the American filmmakers on this particular occasion, helped secure advance financing for their project, and negotiated with them through every phase of the project" (Ames, 2012: 395). For those reasons, Ames sees Burden of Dreams as the best way to understand the "relational performance engendered by the interaction of various filmmakers and social actors, who are each served by the film in different and sometimes conflicting ways," (Ames, 2012: 395). Herzog stages himself as a means of provocation.
In an interview in Burden of Dreams, Herzog claims that Fitzcarraldo will be "one of the last feature films with authentic natives in it," because they are falling victim to American-style consumerism and culture homogenization (Ames, 2012: 395). Herzog continues, "they are fading away very quickly, […] and it's a catastrophe and a tragedy that's going on. And we are losing riches, […]; we lose cultures, and individualities, and languages, and mythologies, and we will be stark naked at the end" (Burden of Dreams, 2005: 40:00). As Hertzog speaks, the image track shows the native Indian actors "posing for the camera in their historical costume, followed by a set worker who is wearing a 'Micky Mouse Disco' t-shirt, which reads (in Spanish) 'Don't Stop the Music'" (Ames, 2012: 395). Herzog sees Fitzcarraldo as having a 'culturally sympathetic vision' and 'ecstatic truth', arguing, "the images of the Peruvian Indians undermines the status of historical memory even as they rely on that memory for authentication" (Ascárate, 2007: 486). Herzog is using these native South American Indians for the verisimilitude of his film, and he too, as Richard John Ascárate argues, "succumbs, if involuntarily, to the tradition stereotypes of more primitive media that he attempts to transcend" (Ascárate, 2007: 486). Herzog is highlighting the issues with globalisation; however, he is ironically bringing these cultural issues and clashes with him, as he destroys part of the Amazon jungle, while exploiting local native Indians for his feature film.

The Orient: the Amazonian Indians
Fitzcarraldo arguably does not progress much further than Edward Said's theory of the Wests construction of the Orient as a means of "dominating, restructuring, and having authority over the Other" (Ponzanesi, 2012: 2). The Western Germans are placed firmly within the binary of the superior Empire, as the Peruvians and indigenous Amazonian Indians are inherently "barbaric, criminal, and, dangerous, set outside the time frame of modernity, poised in a timeless space" (Ponzanesi, 2012: 2). Ames argues that Herzog not only "idealizes native peoples and trades in cultural stereotypes, but also recites the very argument that critics used against him in protesting the production of Fitzcarraldo and its impact on local cultures" (Ames, 2012: 395). On set Herzog divided his crew into two halves: The Western European, film crew, and the native Amazonian Indians. When Herzog was asked why he decided to create two clearly marked off separate camps on set between the cast and the Indians, Herzog comments, "I did not want to have them too much 'contaminated' by Western culture. They should be among themselves. They, for example, would not like our food and it would have caused problems" (Burden of Dreams, 2005: 51:45). Herzog continues, "these two camps mark a very clear distinction that I never tried to conceal. There is a highly technical form of groups here, from a different continent, with a different history" (Burden of Dreams, 2005: 52:00). While Herzog is trying to come across as being culturally sensitive, he is arguably continuing these Orientalist stereotypes, while exploiting and invading native and heritage land. Herzog is repeating well-established colonial binaries: construction a civilisation like 'ours' verses civilisation like 'theirs'.
Herzog's 'exotic' and remote choice of location is ideologically charged, conveying once again the Western thoughts of superiority and entitlement. Notably, on December 1st, 1979, shortly after Herzog and his crew begin filming in the jungle, "their camp was burned to the ground by an armed group of Aguruna Indians" (Ames, 2012: 395). These Aguruna Indians saw the camp "within a longer history of foreign invasion and occupation" (Ames, 2012: 395). The subaltern Indians are exerting their rights and dissatisfaction with the Western film crew invading their land, and Herzog ignores their cries. Herzog is exerting epistemological violence on the Other, as he invades their land, creating his own alternative world, a utopia of Western wealth and protection in the rural jungle. The subaltern native Indians voices are ignored and silence by Western authoritarianism, which later becomes detrimental to Herzog and his crew.
During filming Herzog had to employ 'watchmen of the night' after an incident where his crew were attacked by arrows (Burden of Dreams, 2005: 42.00). Herzog reveals that one of the cast members was hit with an arrow through his neck, throat, and leg, and his wife was hit three times in the hip. This attack and protest happened in complete darkness, but Herzog reassures audiences that "they were lucky they had [our] doctor here and paramedic who operated on them immediately" (Burden of Dreams, 2005: 43.00). Herzog is fearful that there will be a 'raid' on their camp and film set, and there is always a "feeling of terror" when talking about the unknown Other (Burden of Dreams, 2005: 43.40). Hertzog's depiction of the fearful Other, is exactly what Said is critiquing in Orientalism. Herzog and his film crew could 'luckily' save the lives of his crew, who feel victim to the uncivilised, mysterious, exotic and dangerous Indians, who fall outside the civilised framework of modernity, and Hertzog and his European crew. Herzog continues, "I can't stop them here, it would be impossible. I would interfere in there, how do you say it… in their habits, in their space of living. […] There might be a more serious incident and it will be all on my shoulder" (Burden of Dreams, 2005: 44.35). Herzog comments, "I can foresee a lot of trouble. And we've had enough trouble. I am running out of fantasy, I don't know what else can happen now" (Burden of Dreams, 2005: 45.05). Hertzog is clearly aware of his unwanted presents in the jungle, but he is sitting in his ivory tower, exerting his authoritative, white power over the subaltern. Not even the possibility of his crew dying and being attacked with prohibit Herzog creating his film. Furthermore, Herzog is propelling Orientalist stereotyping of the unknown, 'unpeople' and their barbaric 'habits', echoing this cultural Othering that is still present in today's cinema, politics and society.

Bibliography
Ames, Eric. (2012). The Case of Werner Herzog: Re-Opened. In: Prager, Brad. A Companion to Werner Herzog. West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing. pp.393-415.
Ascárate, Richard John. (2007). "Have You Ever Seen a Shrunken Head?": The Early Modern Roots of Ecstatic Truth in Werner Herzog's "Fitzcarraldo". PMLA. 122 (2), pp.483-501.
Bahng, Aimee. (2008). Extrapolating Transnational Arcs, Excavating Imperial Legacies: The Speculative Acts of Karen Tei Yamashita's "Through the Arc of the Rain Forest". Study of the Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States. 33 (4), pp.123-144.
Ebert, Roger. (2005a). A Conversation with Werner Herzog. Available: http://www.rogerebert.com/interviews/a-conversation-with-werner-herzog. Last accessed 24th Feb 2016.
Ebert, Roger. (2005b). Fitzcarraldo Movie Review. Available: http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-fitzcarraldo-1982. Last accessed 24th Feb 2016.
Ponzanesi, Sandra., Waller, Marguerite. (2012). Postcolonial Cinema Studies. Oxon: Routledge.
Filmography
Fitzcarraldo. (1982). [DVD]. Werner Herzog. West Germany: Werner Herzog Filmproduktion.

Burden of Dreams (The Criterion Collection). (2005). [DVD] Blank, Les., Gosling, Maureen. Hollywood: Criterion.

Mendocino Film Festival. (2011). Burden of Dreams Movie Trailer. [YouTube]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FYOYi9WLLVU. Last accessed 24th Feb 2016.
Melanie Moran, MA
Research Assistant for the Postcolonial Studies Initiative, Utrecht University