Word: herzog
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Quite obviously, there are allegorical implications here. Finding them is akin to walking behind our metaphorical elephant in Herzog circus. All that is needed to pick up on the symbols is a rather large shovel. What Fitzcarraldo lacks is subtlety and grace. Herzog leaves little to the imagination, and the result is a film that numbs us by its stubborn unwieldiness...
Fitzcarraldo--and through him. Herzog himself--acts out his grand obsession before us, but it remains curiously uninvolving, even alienating. The problem is that rather than drawing us into his vision. Herzog gives us a spectacle of diatribe and gesture...
Unfortunately, Herzog never goes deeper. We hear nothing but his superficial ranting, and his greedy expression as he listens to his records, all of this has about as much resonance as the picture of the RCA dog cocking an ear for "His Master's Voice." In establishing Fitzcarraldo's motivation so haphazardly. Herzog undermines the rest of the film at the outset: instead of being drawn into a grand quest we are forced to watch an overblown whim...
WITH THE GROUNDWORK thus laid out. Herzog sends Kinski and his crew up the river. They chug in a rickety steamship chiristened the Molly-Aida--a name which contains the symbolic kernel of film. The yoking of Molly (Claudia Cordinate), a brothel madame, and Fitzearruldo's mistress, and Verdi's opera is a neon sign for the Juxtapostio of Prostitution and Art. It's Imperialism and the Musc, strolling in hand up into the old Heart of Darkness. Unfortuantely, this potentialty interesting irony is crushed by the film's mass. P>Early in journey upstream. Herzog achieves one scene...
...intended climax, which proves to be its downfull. Contronted with the ridge separating him from his destination. Fitzearruldo decides to cross it by taking the entire boat along with him. This action tries to capture the madness of the quest. But a symbol requires subtlety, and once again. Herzog stitles, all nuances. The ship is indeed dragged across the land with help him the Indians who, having stepped out from behind their ominuos drumbeat, trurn to be disappointingly sullen rather than mysterious. For at least a half hour they pull the creaking ship through the slimy mud. By the time...