Based on a true story! The boldest most ambitious project launched by Werner Herzog has become his worst nightmare! It was literally Herzog's "Apocalypse Now". Everything that could possibly go wrong went wrong! It's as if the film was cursed right from the get go! Like Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog dives into the deep end of a mind numbing obsession!

Behind the scenes Klaus Kinski goes on one of his legendary rampages and irks the natives to the point one of the chiefs goes out of his way to tell Herzog he would kill Kinski for him! There is no doubt about it Klaus Kinski and Werner Herzog were both out of their ever lovin minds and the camera captured this…

Those of you who are unfamiliar or only recently acquainted with director Werner Herzog, you may only know him for his later work as one of the most interesting documentary filmmakers working today or for his eccentric and endlessly fascinating, well publicized personality. However, Herzog was made famous back in the day for being a frontrunner of the German New Wave film movement, making non-traditional narrative films that pushed the envelope of the cinema language. He has made a wide variety of films over the years and is often noted for the recurring theme of man’s relationship with nature and an intense reverence and respect for it, some might even say a fear of it. Fitzcarraldo is one of Herzog’s…

As blood is spilled in Fitz's quest to do something no one has ever done (nor would ever do again), it became clearer than it ever has been before. There are no manmade wonders not built with blood. Perhaps this is why the Grand Canyon is said to be so magnificent--no one suffered to make it. It simply is, a vast stretch of land ripped out of the landscape by God, nature, or both. But manmade wonders have all been crafted by slave or serf labor, exploitation or oppression, blood money, or other ruthless contracts. Fitz's quest is predicated on blatant exploitation (of the religion of his workers, no less) and dangerous obsession. I don't know what wage Herzog paid…

76/100

Dragging the ship over the mountain occupies a much smaller percentage of the film's running time than I'd remembered—an hour and a half elapses before Fitz even announces/explains the plan. Nor does Herzog make this remarkable feat of engineering as visually spectacular as it might have been in the hands of a stronger formalist. Doesn't really matter, though, as there's plenty of awe to be mined from ordinary, everyday laboriousness. It's easy to forget, but utterly crucial, that nothing Fitzcarraldo does in this movie directly serves his ultimate purpose, which is to build an opera house in Iquitos; though he blares Caruso from the ship at key moments as a sort of self-motivational tool, his entire scheme is just…

"The arrogance of man is thinking that nature is in our control, and not the other way around." -Dr. Ishiro Serizawa, Godzilla (2014)

Werner Herzog's exacting precision regarding the realism and scale of his films makes them truly enduring beauties. The old saying "the more fun something was to make, the less fun it is to watch" finds its ultimate inverse proof here in Fitzcarraldo: production was a disaster, but the result is a treasure. Klaus Kinski fought so often over such trivial matters that members of the crew offered to have him killed, and the dangerous nature of Herzog's audacious stunts and set pieces left at least two cast members dead. But from these hardships grew unprecedented cinematic art.…

"The jungle plays tricks on your senses, it's full of lies, demon, illusions. I have learned to tell the difference between reality and hallucinations" - Scary Expedition Leader
AND
"I told you I need men, not milquetoasts who will shit their pants" - Don Fitzcarraldo.

- Herzog Ranked: boxd.it/3MAT6
- 5x5 Director's Challenge (Herzog 2/5): boxd.it/3IUJC

Feeding money to a fish is as baller as it gets. Seriously, that is some first class douchebaggery.

I love this film because it's batshit crazy that they went through the process to do all of this in real life. In Fitzcarraldo, a man hustles his way into the rubber industry in order to fund an opera house in the middle of the Amazon…

Some films transcend the medium to become a spectacle. Fitzcarraldo is one such film. Vast and mesmerising, truly an endeavour both in narrative and what it took to get the thing made! The film pits dreams against reality as our hapless hero endeavours to bring the opera to the jungle but has to move mountains to do so. This is exemplified in the truly insane image of a steamboat traversing over a hill. Everything about the film feels real because it is. Everyone went through hell and that ship really did go over the hill. The film is anchored by a maverick performance from Klaus Kinski. We get to know the character very quickly and he really drives the narrative.…

This is an incredible filmmaking feat. The determination of Herzog and his crew reaped great results.

The story is crazy; a wannabe rubber baron finds that the only unclaimed land is this large swathe which is unclaimed because it’s far too dangerous to get to. Nobody can defy the rapids, so he decides to have his boat hauled over a hill to get there.

It takes some liberties with the true story; for example, IRL Fitzgerald made the indigenous people pull the boat up under threat of violence. In the film, they choose to do so on their own volition as they believe he is some kind of saviour or Holy figure. He is still exploiting them, but his actions…

I vaguely knew about the plot because it was mentioned in the documentary Desolation Center which, instead of putting opera onto the river, put industrial music of the 80's into the desert.

Okay, so going in, I went in purely with: "Cool, I love opera, so this is gonna be interesting." and it was. It is a complete absurdity, mostly because of that ship. The second I saw the ship I thought how it was filthy and muddy and that someone should at least re-dye it before sailing out and as the film went on, it just kept on getting filthier and filthier. I draw the parallel with Fitzcarraldo's clothes, pure white, almost blinding white that keeps getting filthier as…