Synopsis
A film that describes the love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the deep trust between the director and the actor, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.
1999 ‘Mein liebster Feind’ Directed by Werner Herzog
A film that describes the love-hate relationship between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski, the deep trust between the director and the actor, and their independently and simultaneously hatched plans to murder one another.
Werner Herzog Claudia Cardinale Eva Mattes Beat Presser Guillermo Ríos Andrés Vicente Justo González Benino Moreno Placido Baron van der Recke José Koechlin von Stein Bill Pence Paul Hittscher Mick Jagger Klaus Kinski Tom Luddy Thomas Mauch Jason Robards Walter Saxer Lucki Stipetić Baronin van der Recke
Café Productions Zephir Film Werner Herzog Filmproduktion BBC ARTE YLE Filmstiftung Nordrhein-Westfalen Little Bird WDR BR Independent Film Channel Zephyr Films
My Best Fiend - Klaus Kinski, Meu melhor inimigo, Mein liebster Feind - Klaus Kinski, Min bäste ovän - Klaus Kinski, キンスキー、我が最愛の敵, Min beste fiende, Kinski, il mio nemico più caro, Ennemis intimes, Mi enemigo íntimo, החבר הכי טוב שלי, O Meu Melhor Inimigo, 나의 친애하는 적 - 클라우스 킨스키, 我的魔鬼, Legkedvesebb ellenségem, Min bedste uven
Werner Herzog hates the world so much I don’t understand how he gets up in the morning.
It’s a great tribute to someone he always had a love-hate relationship with. Herzog is remarkably honest, not letting his own horrible experiences entirely paint the audiences view of Klaus Kibaki. Its not at all a positive portrayal, but it does demonstrate his genius while giving credence to his enormous flaws. A fantastic doc about a fantastic man.
Entertaining documentary about Werner Herzog reminiscing about his off and on again friendship and filming experiences with the late great Klaus Kinski!
Klaus Kinski the enigma no one will truly understand but one thing is for certain.. he was an incredibly gifted actor!
Personally I think Herzog and Kinski were both megalomaniacs! And together they produced some of the best cinema ever caught on film!
Werner Herzog's meditation on Klaus Kinski feels to me more like a savvy piece of brand management than a sincere tribute. A suspicious amount of this movie feels like score-settling (we get a section where Herzog talks about Kinski's "highly fictitious" autobiography and claims -- dubiously, I think -- to have helped with the chapters where Kinski's trashes him), a lot of stories of what a temperamental monster he was, and how he was able to manipulate performances out of the raging Kinski. But because he can't merely be catty for 100 minutes, Herzog occasionally shows us The Softer Side Of Klaus™. At one point he interviews Woyzeck's Eva Mattes, who he describes as "one of the few women who…
It’s hard to think of a working relationship in cinema as sublime as that between Werner Herzog and Klaus Kinski. Together, they made five of the greatest films of both their careers— Aguirre, Wrath of God, Fitzcarraldo, Woyzeck, Nosferatu the Vampyre and Cobra Verde— while pursuing a love-hate courtship that was most productive when it achieved what Herzog describes as “the harmony of…overwhelming and collective murder.” My Best Fiend is a film about that bond, but it’s even more a film about Kinski himself, a pre-medicated, demonic-psychotic speaker of tongues whose destructive fits and manic convulsions led Herzog to place him in the company of Villon, Dostoyevsky’s The Idiot and Paganini, and to even briefly consider murdering him for a particularly trying second during the filming…
For years I've read and heard stories about Klaus Kinski, and almost all of these stories comes from a friend of mine that have a fascination when it comes to this intriguing actor. He's actually not a big fan of his movies, he's just interested in Kinski as a person. And how could you not be? With this said I've known about this documentary for a long time but have never felt the need to watch it, until now.
My Best Fiend is a documentary by Herzog about his experiences working with Kinski in 5 films. It becomes a story about an egomaniac that puts his soul into his acting, but not without risking the life of others on the…
It's really mostly about fear, I think. Those wild pivots in Kinski's personality. As Claudia Cardinale says, "He was afraid of many things."
Fear and self-doubt are what drives ego. And so Kinski's flares of self-importance and over-compensation are like fireworks when confronted by a seemingly fearless individual like Herzog.
Of course Herzog is not without ego, obviously, and so not truly without fear, but his kind of ego/fear is adaptive, sure-footed. Not so Kinski's, and that only triggers the manic-to-rage-to-stillness cycle in Kinski even further.
And we shouldn't fail to mention that Kinski would obviously be diagnosable today.
There's two minor bits in this film that disappoint me. One is Herzog's interview with the actor Justo González. González Speaks…
“Every grey hair on my head, I call Kinski.”
Werner Herzog
An incredibly insightful documentary that examines the fluctuating relationship between Werner Herzog and his five-time collaborator and leading actor Klaus Kinski. We follow Werner as he tells incredible stories of their time together (that almost deserve a movie of their own) — while revisiting a multitude of important landscapes and locations used throughout filming with Kinski. Their rocky relationship eventually escalated to them threatening to kill each other, at one time Herzog could and would have had Klaus Kinski assassinated — thankfully he needed him to finish the picture (Fitzcaraldo (1982)). For most of the first half, we see Kinski’s “infamous temper tantrum’s” and the focus seems to portray…
"Yeah, a lot of these outbreaks of hatred were certainly authentic. And this applies to both of us. Nevertheless we worked together" -Herzog,
AND
"I don't see so much erotic, I see it more full of obsenity...it's just... and nature here is vile, it's base, I wouldn't see anything erotical here I would see fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away... of course there is a lot of misery but it is the same misery that is all around us... the trees here are in misery and the birds are in misery...I don't think they sing they just screech in pain." -Werner Herzog on nature.
AND
"It's the harmony of overwhelming and…
Thought Klaus Kinski was the crazy one until near the end when they showed how tiny Werner Herzog’s handwriting is
Schrei ich oder schrei ich nicht? Und DU sagst es mir nicht! Ja, schrei doch mal nicht, ja leck mich doch am Arsch, Mensch! Der Moment ist überhaupt gekommen, wo ich dir in die Fresse haue! Diesmal schlag ich dir in die Fresse, darauf kannst du dich verlassen, du! Diesmal sitz ich nicht im Kostüm in deiner Scheißkarre in Holland! Aber schleunigst zusammen, du! Wenn du zu frech wirst!
Euer Gewichse mit eurer Freundschaft interessiert mich einen Dreck! Wir brauchen einen Fotografen, verstehst du! Na mach doch deinen Scheiß! Mach doch deine eigenen Sachen! Hast genug zu tun! Es ist ein Schweinefraß! Was sagst du Vollidiot? Was sagst du? Ist ja hier schlimmer als im Zuchthaus da, du Arschloch! Du…
English text below
In MEIN LIEBSTER FEIND aus dem Jahr 1999 spürt Regisseur Werner Herzog seiner Beziehung zu Schauspieler Klaus Kinski nach, mit dem er zusammen fünf Filme gedreht hat, darunter AGUIRRE, DER ZORN GOTTES (aka AGUIRRE, THE WRATH OF GOD; 1972), NOSFERATU – PHANTOM DER NACHT (aka NOSFERATU THE VAMPIRE; 1979) und FITZCARRALDO (1982). Der Blick zurück führt Herzog u. a. zu verschiedenen Drehorten, an denen er von erstaunlichen bis vollkommen bizarren Erlebnissen berichtet und dabei zum Teil phänomenales Behind-the-Scenes-Material präsentiert. Obwohl Kinski (1991 verstorben) selbst nicht mehr befragt werden konnte und einige Erzählungen vielleicht Legende sein mögen, ergibt sich ein wahrhaftiger, hochinteressanter und ausgesprochen unterhaltsamer Dokumentarfilm, der aus subjektiver Sicht das kreative Gespann Herzog-Kinski beleuchtet, in all seiner…