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更新时间：2023-09-03 00:53
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20世纪初南美秘鲁。痴迷歌剧的白人菲茨杰拉德（克劳斯·金斯基 Klaus Kinski饰）被当地人称为空想家“菲茨卡拉多”。菲茨卡拉多经常做出一些令人无法理解的举动，尤其当他在巴西的亚马逊大剧院欣赏到世界著名男高音卡鲁索的演出之后，居然萌生出要在秘鲁小镇上也修建出一座宏大剧院的疯狂念头。为了获得足够的资金，菲茨卡拉多接受了当地橡胶大亨向他提出到神秘恐怖的乌圭里亚林区进行收割的任务，一段惊险刺激的旅程随之开始。 由德国著名导演沃纳·赫尔佐格执导的影片《陆上行舟》，荣获1982年第35届戛纳电影节主竞赛单元-最佳导演奖并入围该届金棕榈奖提名，以及入围1983年第40届金球奖最佳外语片提名。
长篇影评
1 ) 南美史前史的最后一部，但绝不是百年孤独的结局
从某种程度上，《陆上行舟》完全可以看作是霍尔佐格《阿基尔，上帝的愤怒》（1972）的续集。当阿基尔最后和一群猴子一起孤独的死去，经过几百年时间，南美大陆几乎已被欧洲殖民者完全占有和开拓。所剩之处寥寥无几，神秘面纱渐渐揭开，土著印第安人也退入更深的丛林腹地。当既得利益者开始趋于保守时，新的探险也就再次开始了。阿基尔复活后就是菲兹卡拉多，他和一群流浪儿和一只猪在一起。从本质上讲，这两部影片表现的疯狂，强力意志，趋近于幻想的理想，其内核是一致的。只是一个碰巧实现了，而另一个永远死在那里。
从阿基尔的冒险到菲兹卡拉多的冒险，其中疯狂的也是一脉相承的。也只是有的实现了，有的没有实现。而整个疯狂史，正好构成了另一版本的《百年孤独》。把这三个东西合在一起看，也许会更有意思。
说这是一部表现理想主义的影片，倒不如说它是描述理想由狂妄走向幻灭再侥幸成功后走向虚无的一个过程。或许只有那个主人公自己明白，他是如何发现这梦幻背后的寂静的。当众人都害怕那寂静时，只有这种极度自大超越于道德之外的狂徒才会迎难而上。在《阿基尔，上帝的愤怒》里，人们说大屠杀之前有一种寂静能把人逼疯。而对一个疯子而言，那种寂静才是他要找的地方——他要去完成上帝未完成的造化。阿基尔说，他将和他的女儿结婚，建立一个有史以来最纯种的王朝。而在《陆上行舟》，菲兹卡拉多要建立的可能是南美最大的歌剧院。武力征服和血统已不再重要，取而代之的是文化，而且是非基督教的歌剧。他到底有多爱那个情人，这在影片中也显得毫不重要。最后他的情人只在人群中出现了一个“中景”，而只有他一个人在船上的特写。尽管有卡鲁索，有歌剧，恐怕那一刻他想的要更为复杂。
他对不懂歌剧的猪讲过一个故事：说是第一个看见尼加拉瓜大瀑布的白人回来告诉他的同伴，瀑布有多大，他的同伴都不相信，问他“你有什么证据证明？”他只说“我看见了”。我看见了，这就是唯一的证明。而正是在这里，菲兹卡拉多的狂妄得到了平息。在侥幸回来之后，他已经不再执着于开发橡胶园，赚钱建歌剧院的狂想了。他只是把歌剧团请到了船上，让他们在船上演唱。他发现他最真实需要的其实只是一种“看见”，他希望回来之后，告诉人们“他看见了”。而且除了说“看见”，他无法用其他东西来证明。很多东西他是无力的，无论他怎么疯狂。如阿基尔，不成功，便是死（不是成仁）；如菲兹卡拉多，既成功，也不成仁。换句话说，那不如说是对自我的一种超越和再创造，而这之后就是虚无。(艺术或许是这虚无的唯一消遣)人完成它自己，而那上帝未完成的造化之地，在人走之后，上帝会回来继续完成。
在这两部片子中还有一个值得玩味的地方，就是文明和野蛮的冲突以及文明人和印第安人的不同表现（权且不管这种描述对印第安人是否公正）。在《阿基尔，上帝的愤怒》中，印第安人为了把殖民者引入圈套编造了一个“黄金陆地”的传说。最后殖民者果真在利益的驱使下走进圈套，全部死光。印第安人象征性地赢了。而在阿基尔到菲兹卡拉多的几百年间，西方通过理性主义和科学进入了工业文明(文明翻倍)，而印第安人在挤压和掠夺下仍然原封不动（他们的后代或者成了基督徒，或者躲进了更深的丛林——野蛮加倍）。这时，出现了一个“白色神器”的传说（这个传说的来源颇为不明），一方面印第安人笃信这个传说，而另一方面菲兹卡拉多认为他们可以利用这个传说。最后，印第安人再次象征性地赢了：他们帮助菲兹卡拉多把船拖过山，并顺利将船放入激流，以此平息激流中的鬼魂。然后，菲兹卡拉多之后的殖民者再来占领和掠夺这最后的无主之地。整个南美大陆的土著史就此结束，印第安人彻底灭绝。
（说到这里，想起几部片子的结局都是惊人的相似，依顺序排列是梅尔吉布森的《玛雅启示录》（可看作欧洲人第一次来到南美大陆），接着《阿基尔，上帝的愤怒》（欧洲人开始掠夺）然后是佩雷拉德桑托斯的《美味法国人的诅咒》（殖民者开始互相争夺，鼓动土著部落战争），最后是这部《陆上行舟》（也即殖民的终结，宗主国已开始衰落，新的国家开始形成），或可谓南美史前史四部曲也）但上帝还不会出现，因为人类的疯狂史还没有终结。在这里，只是菲兹卡拉多这个人的完成，也是霍尔佐格这部电影的完成。
从阿基尔的冒险到菲兹卡拉多的冒险，其中疯狂的也是一脉相承的。也只是有的实现了，有的没有实现。而整个疯狂史，正好构成了另一版本的《百年孤独》。把这三个东西合在一起看，也许会更有意思。
说这是一部表现理想主义的影片，倒不如说它是描述理想由狂妄走向幻灭再侥幸成功后走向虚无的一个过程。或许只有那个主人公自己明白，他是如何发现这梦幻背后的寂静的。当众人都害怕那寂静时，只有这种极度自大超越于道德之外的狂徒才会迎难而上。在《阿基尔，上帝的愤怒》里，人们说大屠杀之前有一种寂静能把人逼疯。而对一个疯子而言，那种寂静才是他要找的地方——他要去完成上帝未完成的造化。阿基尔说，他将和他的女儿结婚，建立一个有史以来最纯种的王朝。而在《陆上行舟》，菲兹卡拉多要建立的可能是南美最大的歌剧院。武力征服和血统已不再重要，取而代之的是文化，而且是非基督教的歌剧。他到底有多爱那个情人，这在影片中也显得毫不重要。最后他的情人只在人群中出现了一个“中景”，而只有他一个人在船上的特写。尽管有卡鲁索，有歌剧，恐怕那一刻他想的要更为复杂。
他对不懂歌剧的猪讲过一个故事：说是第一个看见尼加拉瓜大瀑布的白人回来告诉他的同伴，瀑布有多大，他的同伴都不相信，问他“你有什么证据证明？”他只说“我看见了”。我看见了，这就是唯一的证明。而正是在这里，菲兹卡拉多的狂妄得到了平息。在侥幸回来之后，他已经不再执着于开发橡胶园，赚钱建歌剧院的狂想了。他只是把歌剧团请到了船上，让他们在船上演唱。他发现他最真实需要的其实只是一种“看见”，他希望回来之后，告诉人们“他看见了”。而且除了说“看见”，他无法用其他东西来证明。很多东西他是无力的，无论他怎么疯狂。如阿基尔，不成功，便是死（不是成仁）；如菲兹卡拉多，既成功，也不成仁。换句话说，那不如说是对自我的一种超越和再创造，而这之后就是虚无。(艺术或许是这虚无的唯一消遣)人完成它自己，而那上帝未完成的造化之地，在人走之后，上帝会回来继续完成。
在这两部片子中还有一个值得玩味的地方，就是文明和野蛮的冲突以及文明人和印第安人的不同表现（权且不管这种描述对印第安人是否公正）。在《阿基尔，上帝的愤怒》中，印第安人为了把殖民者引入圈套编造了一个“黄金陆地”的传说。最后殖民者果真在利益的驱使下走进圈套，全部死光。印第安人象征性地赢了。而在阿基尔到菲兹卡拉多的几百年间，西方通过理性主义和科学进入了工业文明(文明翻倍)，而印第安人在挤压和掠夺下仍然原封不动（他们的后代或者成了基督徒，或者躲进了更深的丛林——野蛮加倍）。这时，出现了一个“白色神器”的传说（这个传说的来源颇为不明），一方面印第安人笃信这个传说，而另一方面菲兹卡拉多认为他们可以利用这个传说。最后，印第安人再次象征性地赢了：他们帮助菲兹卡拉多把船拖过山，并顺利将船放入激流，以此平息激流中的鬼魂。然后，菲兹卡拉多之后的殖民者再来占领和掠夺这最后的无主之地。整个南美大陆的土著史就此结束，印第安人彻底灭绝。
（说到这里，想起几部片子的结局都是惊人的相似，依顺序排列是梅尔吉布森的《玛雅启示录》（可看作欧洲人第一次来到南美大陆），接着《阿基尔，上帝的愤怒》（欧洲人开始掠夺）然后是佩雷拉德桑托斯的《美味法国人的诅咒》（殖民者开始互相争夺，鼓动土著部落战争），最后是这部《陆上行舟》（也即殖民的终结，宗主国已开始衰落，新的国家开始形成），或可谓南美史前史四部曲也）但上帝还不会出现，因为人类的疯狂史还没有终结。在这里，只是菲兹卡拉多这个人的完成，也是霍尔佐格这部电影的完成。
2 ) 作为边缘现代人的菲茨卡拉多
何塞•费明•菲茨卡拉多是一位生活在十九世纪于二十世纪之交的橡胶大亨，他拥有一支五千人的队伍以及一片面积相当于比利时大小的领地。真实历史中的菲茨卡拉多不过是一个黑心商人而已，他和那个时代在南美洲发殖民财的暴发户们没有任何区别，但有一件事情吸引了赫尔佐格：菲茨卡拉多曾在河岸边把一艘船拆散，然后将它从陆路运输到相邻的平行河道中再重新组装起来。但真实历史上的这艘轮船要比片中的蒸汽轮船小得多，且菲茨卡拉多是将其拆解了的，而片中则是完完整整的拖过高山。这部电影的投资人就是《天谴》的投资人，克劳斯•金斯基也再次担当主演，且影片本身与《天谴》也有着某种呼应关系。历史与赫尔佐格的灵感之间的碰撞过程也表现出在赫尔佐格的电影世界中，历史事件作为符号的象征作用要远远高过故事本身的戏剧张力的作用。将影片中的菲茨卡拉多与真实历史中的菲茨卡拉多分开，也就等于区分开了顺应现代性的现代之子与反现代性的现代之子：同为现代性的产物，真实的菲茨卡拉多乃是与片中那些脑满肠肥的贪婪商人一样，顺势发财；但这个反现代的菲茨卡拉多则是不折不扣的边缘人物，他虽身处资本主义的上升时期，但要用自己的身体逻辑反抗资本逻辑——他是一个不折不扣的“边缘现代人”。 作为边缘现代人的菲茨卡拉多反现代的第一个表现就是忽视现代性极为重要的一个因素：物质决定论。尽管现代性的前提之一是人的第一位，万事万物都要归于人的“研究”。但没有了上帝的、袪了魅的“万事万物”，我们进行研究就只能依靠通过归纳或演绎所找到的它们的所谓“规律”，而不能摆脱这个物质“规律”的方法论蛮干。但菲茨卡拉多却无视这一前提。他的第一次出场便宣布他的“边缘现代”的身份：衣冠不整、疯疯癫癫的跑着去看卡鲁索的演唱会，以致门卫不准其就座观看。菲茨卡拉多和那些殖民商人之间的关系与他和那些原始印第安人之间的关系的对比非常有意思：在这些商人里面，他是一个不折不扣的另类，他对卡鲁索的狂热不仅不被那些商人理解，甚至被他们奚落，在宴会上甚至要让“给狗做饭的厨子给他做饭”；而在印第安人面前，他则是用卡鲁索的音乐征服了他们。一群印第安小孩围绕着他和他的留声机静静聆听，他在其中显得非常安逸。他与商人们的疏远和与印第安们的亲近更加凸显了他的边缘现代的身份。这是影片的一个基本冲突（尽管它不算是戏剧性的）：音乐的情感与未受过文明浸染的原始人更加接近，而现代文明冷酷演练过的商人们是很难接近音乐的。 音乐是没有价值方向的“标量”。这个边缘现代的菲茨卡拉多对音乐的狂热正是这一特点的象征。价值理性是现代性的特点之一，而反价值理性便是反现代性，这就是菲茨卡拉多反现代性的第二个表现。他明知道这次运船翻山会出人命，他甚至知道这次运船的成功率极低，但他的偏执依旧要将他拉去。“我有个梦想，在热带雨林里建剧院。”为了梦想而不择手段的方式乃是价值理性的天敌，但从历史的角度讲，价值理性又可以说软弱无用的。价值理性作为现代文明衍生出的价值诉求，恰恰是建立在太多杵逆价值理性的历史事实的基础之上。菲茨卡拉多的梦想在影片中是辉煌的，在历史上则显得并不那么辉煌。这也是赫尔佐格饱受诟病的理由之一，即浪漫主义的再现压倒了行动的物质现实。“在这点上，或许没有任何一个导演如此清楚的阐明作者论中的浪漫艺术崇拜：创作者得到了豁免权，可活在约束着他人的束缚之外，和大多数的人所共同有的时间问题分开。” 创作者可以凭借自己的边缘现代的特点在艺术作品中获得豁免权，现实中的偏执狂们也可以凭借自己的边缘现代的身份在精神病院中获得豁免权，而历史上的种种暴行也可以凭借自己反现代性的身份获得存在主义意义上的豁免权。正如科耶夫对黑格尔辩证法的观点：“现实不过是一场人们相互之间为着可笑的目标进行的生死斗争……既然一个哲学观念的真理性要靠它在历史中的实现来证明，哲学家就不能责怪暴君以理念的名义统治。” 也可以说赫尔佐格就是这层意义上的电影哲学家。菲茨卡拉多的浪漫主义倾向在这种存在主义阐释层面的辨证法理论中获得了历史与哲学的双重救赎。 当贪婪的商人对菲茨卡拉多说：“我们不都是冒险家吗？”菲茨卡拉多回答道：“不，我们当中只有一个是。”菲茨卡拉多高傲的回答既将自己的边缘身份与商人们的主流现代性身份划清了界限，又为自己的边缘现代性树立了尊严。就连这些商人也不得不承认：“你是个怪人，但我喜欢你。”菲茨卡拉多虽然属于边缘人物，但作者这样的设置明显将其置于真理的核心地位，而美丽的女人、贪婪的商人、包括那些船员和印第安人都被这最终破产的狂人所迷倒。“边缘”成为了主流，成为了正统，成为了真理的载体，而文明社会中的主流与正统反倒成为了菲茨卡拉多脚下的“边缘”。这与《旧约》中的叙事有着呼应之处。在《旧约》中，无论是上帝拣选的以色列王，还是在争斗中最后的胜者，永远是看起来最小最弱的边缘人：摩西四次拒召，因为他是最不可能的人选；大卫的孱弱也无法令人信服他会战胜大力士；撒母耳是最小的儿子；等等。尤其是这乃是对当时长子继承制社会习俗的一种革命：他拣选了赛特而非该隐；拣选了以撒而非以实玛利；拣选了雅各而非以扫，拣选了犹大而非流便。并且这些被拣选对象也是有着很多缺点的人。无论是弱者小者还是先天缺陷者，神专挑这些边缘地位的人，这表明了真理在宗教中往往是归属于边缘人这一边的——更不用提将这一观念发扬到极致的俄罗斯圣愚文化了。“边缘”=“真理”。赫尔佐格的潜意识中或许一直有这样的观念认同。 另外在菲茨卡拉多的船上，三位有着丰满个性的人物形象的设置也非常值得品味。一个是船长，他之所以来应聘，是因为他善于分辨这热带雨林中的“幻象与现实”——这正是船员要面对的最大危险；一个是厨子胡拉给给，他同时也发挥着翻译的作用，永远喝得醉熏熏的，但并不丧失对情势的敏锐感知；一个是个大壮汉，是最没有纪律性的人，生性好冒险，然而当全船人员全部逃跑时，他却紧紧跟在菲茨卡拉多的身边，他最欣赏菲茨卡拉多。这三个人物形象分别代表了三种历史性。壮汉所代表的是古典主义的英雄气质、冒险气质与忠诚品质；船长则代表了严格区分幻想与现实的现代理性主义；而厨子则是超越了古典与现代的存在主义的象征——他能用他的醉眼看透一切，但他并不属于任何一派，他每天的状态只是醉醺醺的旁观这一切。而船长、莽夫与厨子则共同围绕着这个边缘现代者进行他的冒险，这其中亦有象征：艺术领域的浪漫主义崇拜终将征服科学理性与古典神性。正如史蒂文斯的诗《坛子》：“我把坛子置于田纳西州的小山顶，它使得散乱的荒野都以此小山为中心。”菲茨卡拉多就是拥有这种令四方朝拜、围之成秩序的魔力，甚至他最终成为了印第安人眼中的神明，这并不偶然，这是浪漫主义能量在亚马逊流域爆发的必然景观。 正如前文所述，该片可视作《天谴》在精神上的承接之作，冥冥中金斯基再次得到扮演这一角色的机会也证明了天意如此。如果说《天谴》的结尾表现了阿基尔成为了降临到这片土地上的新弥赛亚的话，那么这部电影则继续讲这个故事，叙述了这个弥赛亚是如何运用自己的神力将世代生活于此的原始部落民众收为自己的子民的。影片最为震撼的一段莫过于菲茨卡拉多对着森林放音乐了：当大家发现森林中的原始人开始袭击自己时，菲茨卡拉多没有表现出恐惧，而是镇定的说：“现在该轮到卡鲁索出场了。”然后勇敢地站在船头，对着森林大声放起卡鲁索的歌剧。“现在这个神不是坐独木舟而来，而是卡鲁索的声音”。这一次的弥赛亚放弃了火炮轰击，终于用自己的神力将印第安人感召过来，实现了真正的沟通，为自己服务，成就神的旨意。这也呼应了《天谴》结尾阿基尔的遗言：“我与那些追逐金钱名利的人不同”。本片片头那些商人则属于后者，他们或许用金钱和枪炮来征服这些原始人，但弥赛亚则是用上帝的声音来从精神上臣服他们。这一次的阿基尔终于成功上岸，与岸上的印第安人融为一体。边缘现代人在狼群般的现代社会中所遭受到的是蔑视、侮辱乃至最终的破产，但在原始部落里他则成为了神明，这里才是他的真正归属。他要在森林中建立一座歌剧院的梦想正是他内心向这个终极归属地的精神向往。其实赫尔佐格何尝不是如此：“相比起文学家，音乐家对我的影响更深。” 当文字作为一种工具不断制造着系统的复杂性，用这个系统将人与世界之间的感知通道切割得越来越细碎的时候，唯音乐在现代社会中仍旧顽强的承担人与世界最直接、最纯粹的感知的作用。某种程度上讲，音乐是一种逃避，就如同再次逃回卡斯帕•豪斯的地窖中（《卡斯帕•豪斯之谜》）或绿蚁安息之处（《绿蚂蚁安息的地方》）一样。印第安人轮流用手触摸菲茨卡拉多一幕正是对这种最原始的感知能力的一种戏仿与象征。
3 ) my best documentary
The "real" Fitzcarraldo had once dismantled a boat, carried it overland from one river to the parallel tributary and reassembled it back. But this film is not about Fitzcarraldo.
I finally understood the truth of it being more a documentary than a feature film, and all Herzog's films having some "documentary" quality. It is always about human life, about his struggles with getting to know the chaotic world around him, during which about him chasing his dream, or his absoluteness.
In this particular film, Herzog, is Dieter in Little Dieter Needs to Fly, is Goldsworthy in Rivers and Tides, is Christo in Running Fences. It is his pursuit of a myth and his realization of a dream.
I finally understood the truth of it being more a documentary than a feature film, and all Herzog's films having some "documentary" quality. It is always about human life, about his struggles with getting to know the chaotic world around him, during which about him chasing his dream, or his absoluteness.
In this particular film, Herzog, is Dieter in Little Dieter Needs to Fly, is Goldsworthy in Rivers and Tides, is Christo in Running Fences. It is his pursuit of a myth and his realization of a dream.
4 ) 当男高音在热带雨林中响起
看《陆上行舟》的时候一直在思索一个问题，男主想在雨林中建歌剧院的目的是什么，他也是一个商人，怎么头脑里只想到建歌剧院，难道没有想过以后要怎样把它维持营运下去？
看到后面他们一点点把船拖上山，拉到河里的时候，想到以前很多的冒险家不也是凭着信念开拓出一片新疆土的吗？不论是哥伦布、麦哲伦还是那些形单影只的传教士，他们不仅要跟陌生的自然环境打交道，还要面对不同的文化带来的误解和冲突，最后经过种种努力完成使命，促进文化的交流。
菲茨杰拉德想把歌剧带到一个荒蛮之地的心理动机跟那些传播福音的人出奇一致，所以我很愿意把他看成是一个传教士，歌剧就像是福音。这样一来，看似荒诞疯狂的行为其实是有现实根根基的。电影中极其写实的细节也跟历史上一些事件丝缕相连。比如给土著人冰块，让土著人帮他拉船，这就是一个文明的交流。另外金斯基在这里演的也是一个进入美洲的冒险家，但跟在《天谴》里的阿基尔有很大的不同，虽然都很疯，但没有阿基尔那么傲慢。他是一个强势的外来者，但也在学习适应土著文化。比如电影中他喝下土著用好像椰壳的容器盛的饮料，那种饮料的制作需要吐入唾液让其发酵，具体情况不太清楚，但看过纪录片和一些书籍确实有这样的。不是Herzog游历列国的背景，很难拍出如此写实细腻的电影。
看到后面他们一点点把船拖上山，拉到河里的时候，想到以前很多的冒险家不也是凭着信念开拓出一片新疆土的吗？不论是哥伦布、麦哲伦还是那些形单影只的传教士，他们不仅要跟陌生的自然环境打交道，还要面对不同的文化带来的误解和冲突，最后经过种种努力完成使命，促进文化的交流。
菲茨杰拉德想把歌剧带到一个荒蛮之地的心理动机跟那些传播福音的人出奇一致，所以我很愿意把他看成是一个传教士，歌剧就像是福音。这样一来，看似荒诞疯狂的行为其实是有现实根根基的。电影中极其写实的细节也跟历史上一些事件丝缕相连。比如给土著人冰块，让土著人帮他拉船，这就是一个文明的交流。另外金斯基在这里演的也是一个进入美洲的冒险家，但跟在《天谴》里的阿基尔有很大的不同，虽然都很疯，但没有阿基尔那么傲慢。他是一个强势的外来者，但也在学习适应土著文化。比如电影中他喝下土著用好像椰壳的容器盛的饮料，那种饮料的制作需要吐入唾液让其发酵，具体情况不太清楚，但看过纪录片和一些书籍确实有这样的。不是Herzog游历列国的背景，很难拍出如此写实细腻的电影。
5 ) 你心里住着一个菲茨卡拉多吗？
菲茨卡拉多是疯子Werner Herzog在电影《菲茨卡拉多》（《陆上行舟》）里描述的一个疯子。不管是导演还是他的男主角，身上都有着让我向往不已的癫狂气质。
这个叫菲茨卡拉多的疯子痴迷于各种极其不现实的事情，他在热带雨林里造冰并企图以此发财，为了看一场卡鲁索的歌剧徒手划了两天的船，还想在热带雨林的镇子里开一家歌剧院，请卡鲁索来演出。这个有着极其诡异外貌和“爆炸式”发型的理想主义者，从出场伊始便成了我的偶像。他总是充满热情，在旁人的嘲笑里偏执地相信很多愚蠢计划的可行性，不管失败了多少次也还是坚定不移地认为自己会取得巨大的成功，完全是乐观得无可救药的典范。
就是这个人，为了取得一片未被开采的橡胶地，带着船队逆流而上，试图把船拖上山，竟然在土著的帮助下取得了成功。你无法想象那种工作的强度，那些茂密高耸的树木、遍地的蛇和其他野生动物，徒步穿越那座山已经不易，还要把数吨重的船拖过去？在土著们像牛马一样每日为“陆上行舟”劳作的时候，我的心里始终充满了恐惧，害怕自己脆弱的心灵承受不住最终失败的消息，害怕自己没有勇气亲眼目睹一个理想主义者的失败。因此你也不难想象，当那艘船终于从山的那一面滑下，逐渐进入急流中的时候，我是怎样如释重负、欢呼雀跃，恨不能随便逮着一个人，摇他的肩膀并大喊：“你知道什么叫疯狂的伟大吗？！你知道什么叫伟大的疯狂吗？！”
你们都说我是理想主义者、乐观主义者，其实我不过是消极的不行动主义者。我体内长存这这种“疯狂情愫”，在现实生活中却总把头埋得那么低，甚至于从小到大也没做过什么很“出格”的事情，于是自从意识到自己体内可悲的浪漫主义以后，就开始了与之长期不懈的斗争。我不知道怎么判断“现实一点”和“疯狂一点”的好坏，只觉得二十岁的人拥有半百的人那种只求平稳、碌碌度日的想法实在可悲至极。
从前香港来的一个教授来给我们上新闻采访课，几乎每节课都要问发表“真想不明白这么年轻的你们为何那么消极被动、没有一点激情”的感叹。我第一次听了心里是有些难过的，因为我费尽心力同样找不到这个问题的答案。后来听惯了，也会跟大家一起不痛不痒地说：那是因为他不生活在我们生活的社会，很多东西他不懂的啦。
但是因着我对“疯狂”和“热情”的强烈向往，私下里便还是忍不住思索：我们的激情和梦想都是怎样失去的？还是我们从来不曾拥有过？我们可以万众一心、不看别处，只使劲指责我们这些年来所受到的教育和这个万恶的不适合我们健康成长的社会吗？是啊，我们生来是一张白纸，没有选择是否出生的能力也没有选择被如何抚养的资格，这是不是给了我们把一切推脱给社会的权力？
这一切我也没有答案。我只知道太少太少的人血液里有疯狂的基因，而我们都向往自己所没有的、都羡慕自己做不到的，就像我仰望疯狂的菲茨卡拉多一样。我不是在推崇他那种确实有些愚蠢的做法，也没有试图推翻一切理性，只是我太嫉妒那种彻头彻尾的理想主义与将之变成现实的巨大行动力。他的激情就是他的信仰，可以让他有永不倒下的勇气。而我太需要那种激情、那种信仰，把我从理想和现实的矛盾里解救出来。
使劲在心底一层一层地挖，你心里住着一个菲茨卡拉多吗？我知道我很迫切的希望我的心里住着Ta.
这个叫菲茨卡拉多的疯子痴迷于各种极其不现实的事情，他在热带雨林里造冰并企图以此发财，为了看一场卡鲁索的歌剧徒手划了两天的船，还想在热带雨林的镇子里开一家歌剧院，请卡鲁索来演出。这个有着极其诡异外貌和“爆炸式”发型的理想主义者，从出场伊始便成了我的偶像。他总是充满热情，在旁人的嘲笑里偏执地相信很多愚蠢计划的可行性，不管失败了多少次也还是坚定不移地认为自己会取得巨大的成功，完全是乐观得无可救药的典范。
就是这个人，为了取得一片未被开采的橡胶地，带着船队逆流而上，试图把船拖上山，竟然在土著的帮助下取得了成功。你无法想象那种工作的强度，那些茂密高耸的树木、遍地的蛇和其他野生动物，徒步穿越那座山已经不易，还要把数吨重的船拖过去？在土著们像牛马一样每日为“陆上行舟”劳作的时候，我的心里始终充满了恐惧，害怕自己脆弱的心灵承受不住最终失败的消息，害怕自己没有勇气亲眼目睹一个理想主义者的失败。因此你也不难想象，当那艘船终于从山的那一面滑下，逐渐进入急流中的时候，我是怎样如释重负、欢呼雀跃，恨不能随便逮着一个人，摇他的肩膀并大喊：“你知道什么叫疯狂的伟大吗？！你知道什么叫伟大的疯狂吗？！”
你们都说我是理想主义者、乐观主义者，其实我不过是消极的不行动主义者。我体内长存这这种“疯狂情愫”，在现实生活中却总把头埋得那么低，甚至于从小到大也没做过什么很“出格”的事情，于是自从意识到自己体内可悲的浪漫主义以后，就开始了与之长期不懈的斗争。我不知道怎么判断“现实一点”和“疯狂一点”的好坏，只觉得二十岁的人拥有半百的人那种只求平稳、碌碌度日的想法实在可悲至极。
从前香港来的一个教授来给我们上新闻采访课，几乎每节课都要问发表“真想不明白这么年轻的你们为何那么消极被动、没有一点激情”的感叹。我第一次听了心里是有些难过的，因为我费尽心力同样找不到这个问题的答案。后来听惯了，也会跟大家一起不痛不痒地说：那是因为他不生活在我们生活的社会，很多东西他不懂的啦。
但是因着我对“疯狂”和“热情”的强烈向往，私下里便还是忍不住思索：我们的激情和梦想都是怎样失去的？还是我们从来不曾拥有过？我们可以万众一心、不看别处，只使劲指责我们这些年来所受到的教育和这个万恶的不适合我们健康成长的社会吗？是啊，我们生来是一张白纸，没有选择是否出生的能力也没有选择被如何抚养的资格，这是不是给了我们把一切推脱给社会的权力？
这一切我也没有答案。我只知道太少太少的人血液里有疯狂的基因，而我们都向往自己所没有的、都羡慕自己做不到的，就像我仰望疯狂的菲茨卡拉多一样。我不是在推崇他那种确实有些愚蠢的做法，也没有试图推翻一切理性，只是我太嫉妒那种彻头彻尾的理想主义与将之变成现实的巨大行动力。他的激情就是他的信仰，可以让他有永不倒下的勇气。而我太需要那种激情、那种信仰，把我从理想和现实的矛盾里解救出来。
使劲在心底一层一层地挖，你心里住着一个菲茨卡拉多吗？我知道我很迫切的希望我的心里住着Ta.
6 ) Opera in an unfinished land: an examination of Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo
研究生Screen Style and Aesthetics课程论文，引用请注明作者Yayi Mo
German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s feature film Fitzcarraldo (1982) begins with the title character (Klaus Kinski), an ecstatic opera lover, who attempts to build a great opera house in Iquitos of the Peruvian Amazon where his idol, Enrico Caruso, can perform. The film ends with Fitzcarraldo achieving a victory of sorts that he brings a small-time European opera troupe to a boat for a single performance. However, the central dramatic action of this film is not the process of building a grand opera house but the protagonist’s attempt and success in dragging an enormous steamship over a nearly vertical mountain that separates two rivers.
Herzog has a distinguishing conception of human and nature. Like its antecedent Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo also sets the story in the Amazonian jungle, “an unfinished land with curse that God creates it in anger”. In Burden of dreams (1982), a documentary on the production of Fitzcarraldo, Herzog describes the jungle as “the enormous articulation of vileness, baseness and obscenity”, compare to which human is only “badly pronounced and half-finished sentences”. Apart from this, Herzog’s other documentary Grizzly Man (2005) centres on a tragic hero’s life, examining the cruelty of wild animals and the “overwhelming indifference” of nature. It is safe to say that “human struggles against nature” is a recurring theme in his works.
However, what Herzog attempts to explore in Fitzcarraldo is not “human and nature” but rather “opera and nature”, in other word, art and nature. Although Herzog repeatedly asserted the visual primacy of his films (Rogers, 2004, p77), the musical component of Fitzcarraldo should not be disregarded. On the one hand, this Amazonian adventure film has an operatic, grand-scale narrative structure. On the other hand, while the actual ‘opera house’ remains absent during the epic jungle-exploring journey, opera arias in various forms do appear several times in the entire film, including the opening sequence that Caruso performs arias on a grand opera house, the struggle-against-the-rapids scene that opera music is played through a gramophone among hundreds of headhunters, and the ending scene in which a travelling opera troupe preforms Bellini’s I Puritani on a steamship along the river. Especially, in the climactic scene when the boat is slowly rising up the mountain, the operatic accompaniment makes this ship-hailing undertaking a visual-musical spectacular. That is to say, though the protagonist fulfills his operatic dream indirectly, the thematic connection between art and nature is clear in Fitzcarraldo.
Herzog is a distinguished filmmaker not only famous for his precise articulation of filmic themes but also his stylistic idiosyncrasy and monomaniacal obsession, or in other words, he is notoriously difficult to cooperate with (Arthur, 2005), which is similar to his protagonist Fitzcarraldo. Just as the eponymous character in Fitzcarraldo, Herzog pursues his dreams with ultimate madness and crazed energy, which raises the following questions: what is the relation between Fitzcarraldo and Herzog? How has Herzog’s conception of “art and nature” influenced his filmic articulation to his works?
Ultimately this essay focuses specifically on the image of Fitzcarraldo and his relation to Herzog, also on the thematic connection of art and nature in Fitzcarraldo. In section one, I conduct a detailed analysis of the party scene and I first examine the image of the protagonist as “the conquistador of the useless” and then I explore the two images of the protagonist Fitzcarraldo as well as the director Herzog. The latter half of this essay analyses the climactic ship-hauling scene in detail. By examining the complementary treatment of visual and musical aspects, it may be possible to understand Herzog’s attempt to use art as a “human articulation” against the nature.
Section one: the party scene
“The conquistador of the useless”
Fitzcarraldo’s obsession of opera is introduced in the opening sequences that he has rowed 1200 miles for two days and nights down the Amazon to see Caruso’s performance in person. When watching the opera, Fitzcarraldo believes that the dying protagonist on stage is pointing at him. He interprets it as a sacred transferring ceremony that the most renowned opera performer has transferred the musical life to him, he thus has found and absorbed the cultural power embodied in the opera (Rogers, 2004, p92). After this sacred transferring ceremony, he determines to build a grand opera house into the jungle. His lover Molly (Claudia Cardinale) considers him as “a dreamer who moves mountains”, while he identifies himself as a fulfiller of dreams.
At other point, however, a dreamer as Fitzcarraldo is someone who lacks the ability to differentiate reality from dreams. In this very opening sequence, he believes himself has absorbed the musical power of opera and since then he has transferred the real world to a musical make-believe one. To defend his dream against the artless, unmusical ‘old’ world, he fights with crazed energy, including climbs to the top of a Church tower, striking the bell and threatening the Church will remain closed until Iquitos builds an opera house. These establishing scenes demonstrate his refusal to differentiate between the reality and dream. His monomania of the opera dream continues in the party scene when he attends with his lover Molly at a wealthy rubber baron’s house.
This party scene is striking example that Fitzcarraldo lacks the ability to differentiate reality from dreams and thus feels the sense of otherness and alienation in real world. When attends the party, Fitzcarraldo directly brings out his gramophone and begins to set up this musical equipment in the middle of the hall. Meanwhile, Molly walks around waving her feather hand fan, “please, may we have your attention”, but no one seems to be intrigued. Without any introduction, Fitzcarraldo plays the opera music. In the middle of all the indifferent guests, he utterly immerses himself into his beloved opera, while Molly is looking around and trying to attract the guests’ attention. Don Aquilino (José Lewgoy), a rubber baron, the host of the party, keeps talking with another magnate, remains aloof from Fitzcarraldo’s action. Accompanying these is an uncut shot, just as the operatic music sounds absurdly out of place, Fitzcarraldo looks absolutely alienated. Herzog puts Fitzcarraldo in such situation to depict the sense of otherness and alienation that Fitzcarraldo always feels, recalls the previous sequences that he is either surrounded by a group of drunken card-playing barons or a crowd of shirtless foreign-language-speaking Amazonians. While Fitzcarraldo becomes completely engrossed in Caruso’s mechanically reproduced voice that he remains unaware of the other audiences’ inattention, a guest directly walks toward the gramophone and turns the music off. Fitzcarraldo becomes frenzied and attempts to punch the man, at the same time, Aquilino finally aware of Fitzcarraldo’s existence and immediately commands the servants to take him out. Fitzcarraldo gets rid of the servants to grab his gramophone, holding it in arms, looking around the indifferent crowd, causing a minor disturbance. To clam the guests, the amused host shouts “ladies and gentlemen, don’t worries, this gentleman is harmless”, while another steward proposes a meal prepared by “the dog’s cook” to Fitzcarraldo, derides him as “superb”. Accompanying this is a medium close-up shot of the stony, unsympathetic face of the steward and then the medium shot of Fitzcarraldo in an awkward position, with the heavy gramophone in arms, surrounded by the indifferent guests. Humiliated by the guests and the hosts, Fitzcarraldo continuously downs four drinks to his admired opera artists, but the steward stops him by proposing a toast sarcastically, “to Fitzcarraldo, the conquistador of the useless”. As the rubber barons unable to be touched by the opera, Fitzcarraldo cries to the amused audience, “the reality of your world is nothing more than a rotten caricature of great opera”, which demonstrating again Fitzcarraldo’s inability or rather unwillingness of differentiating reality from dreams.
In the eyes of the economic upper crust of Iquitos, Fitzcarraldo is nothing more than a harmless, useless and crazed “strange bird”, his eccentric attempt to bring an opera house to the jungle is nothing more than an unachievable business plan. Fitzcarraldo is juxtaposed with these European financial elites in several scenes, including the above-mentioned party scene, as well as the card-playing scene he tries to enlist the rubber barons’ financial support, while Aquilino taunts and ridicules his obsession with opera. Within the frame of repetitive close-ups, Fitzcarraldo’s face is sweaty, frenzied, contorted in disgust. It is worth noting that the bug-eyed maniac Klaus Kinski’s rendering of Fitzcarraldo is admittedly powerful, with true madness and absolute energy, as if “a beast has been domesticated and pressed into shape” (Herzog, My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski, [1999]).
Pure dreamers
Some film scholars see Fitzcarraldo as a colonial hero (Prager, 2012, p25) or “an imperial agent of expansion”(Davidson, 1994, p69). Opera is a symbol of the European civilization, and Fitzcarraldo’s attempt to bring the opera house to the barbaric Latin America is viewed as an attempt of cultural enlightenment. In the scene when Fitzcarraldo first confronts the Jivaro, or what he calls, the “bare-asses”, he fires back with the arias of Caruso, the sound of the “white God”. He believes (perhaps at an unconscious level) opera has a particular power against the barbaric headhunters, as Dolkart (1985, p126) discusses, “devotion to and knowledge of opera represented entrance into the elite and disdain for indigenous culture”.
Despite these cultural interpretations of the figure of Fitzcarraldo, I want to discern his image in a more abstract, metaphysical meaning that, Fitzcarraldo is a pure dreamer, who seeks to fulfill his dream and eagers to express himself in an “other” land. In his words, opera “gives expressions to our greatest feelings”. Apart from the party scene, the film also shows his obsession with opera and inability to differentiate between reality and dream in other scenes, for example, when enters to the jungle, Fitzcarraldo is deeply intrigued by the words of an old missionary that “our everyday life is only an illusion, behind which lies the reality of dreams”. Fitzcarraldo replies, “actually I’m very interested in these ideas. I specialize opera myself”, making a connection between illusion and operatic articulation. As Herzog (2010) says, “what's beautiful about opera is that reality doesn't play any role in it at all”. For Fitzcarraldo, the operatic dream is the reason to live, to go through the illusions of life. As an opera impresario once said, “It [opera] lifts one so out of the sordid affairs of life and makes material things seem so petty, so inconsequential, it places one for the time being, at least, in a higher and better world” (quoted from Dolkart, 1985, p131). It is not the visionary of bringing European culture into Iquitos so much as the desire of articulation of “the Self” that distinguish Fitzcarraldo from those philistines, who only care about wealth and “a great name in Europe”.
These sequences raise questions about the Herzog’s conception of dreams and how he endeavors to achieve it. The documentary on the making of Fitzcarraldo, Burden of dreams (1982), continually reasserts the impossibility of the production of Fitzcarraldo: the harsh rainforest climate, the tribal wars, crew revolts and cast changing. Though encounters enormous difficulties, Herzog sticks at this impossible mission and pursues his goal with madness and crazed energy, “if I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams and I don’t want to live like that”, to a point where the director’s dreams and Fitzcarraldo’s dreams meet. In other words, Fitzcarraldo is such a powerful and complex statement of Herzog’s monomaniacal obsession of “dreams”. The protagonist is a reproduction and a reflection of Herzog himself. Like Fitzcarraldo, Herzog is an aesthete with good ideas and a pure dreamer who attempts to pursue his goals. The word “pure” not only refers to the futility of the reality life and the pursuit of illusions, but also the filmic aestheticisation of uselessness. Fitzcarraldo is once mocked as “the conquistador of the useless” and likewise Herzog entitles his production diaries Conquest of the Useless (Thompson, 2011, p42), which highlights the connection between the two figures, two pure dreams. The concept of uselessness can be viewed in two ways. On the one hand, it refers to the idea of going to nowhere or returning in full circle. Fitzcarraldo’s adventure leads him to nowhere: his ship is damaged by Jivaro, the same crowd who helped him move the ship over the mountain, and he fails to get rubber, coming back where he started. But the concept of uselessness is aestheticized. The final tableau is an opera performance on the boat and although the glorious dream of building an opera house in the jungle fails, this triumphant ending scene is seen as a victory of sorts, a fulfillment of dream. On the other hand, uselessness can be seen as inability of self-expression, of “human articulation”, which I explore in detail in section two.
Section two: the climactic scene
Herzog’s “Ecstatic truth”
Herzog is a well-known auteur for his stylistic idiosyncrasy, recurrent themes and cultural-historical sensitivity (Dolkart, 1985, p126). For a better understanding of Herzog’s distinguishing view of natural landscape, it is essential to look at his own words: “I wanted an ecstatic detail of that landscape where all the drama, passion and human pathos became visible” (My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski, [1999]). For him, landscape is not a backdrop of outstanding scenic beauty in Hollywood-style commercials, but rather a place filled with “indifference of nature” (Grizzly Man, [2005]), with “almost human qualities” (My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski) and with “overwhelming and collective murder” and full of “fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away” (Burden of dreams, [1982]). Again in Fitzcarraldo Herzog sets the story in the barbaric Amazonian jungle, “an unfinished place with curse that God creates in anger”. Herzog’s view of nature sounds deeply pessimistic, but he claims he admire the nature, “I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment” (Burden of dreams).
The most striking example to demonstrate Herzog’s obsession with visual authenticity of the natural landscape in Fitzcarraldo is the climactic scene when the steamship is dragged over the mountain separating the two rivers. This climactic ship-hauling scene consists of a series of documentary-like shots and a static one-minute long shot. It begins with several shots of the mechanism within the steamship and details how the complex pulling system works. The long documentary-like sequence also details their effort: cutting a path through the dense jungle, oiling the pulleys, and setting the hauling system. In these shots, the images of the jungle have a very crude, unfinished, and primeval texture, the natural landscape is represented with the visual authenticity that Herzog aims to impart. In the scene, we then hear Fitzcarraldo’s shouting, “we have two dead man”. In a tracking shot, he fretfully climbs over the supporting stakes, while Cholo, the mechanic of Fitzcarraldo’s crew, excitedly explains the ship-hauling plan to him. “We have two dead man!” Fitzcarraldo ignores Cholo and repeats, recalling their last failed attempt that two Jivaroan people died when dragging the ship. Additionally, this scene also reminds us of the director's own ambiguous filmmaking anecdotes, blurring the distinction between filmic reality and reality per se.
To pursue the documentary-like truth or rather what he called the “ecstatic truth”, Herzog prefers shooting on location rather than filming in studio (Ascárate, 2007), no matter how dangerous the shooting sites would be or what enormous difficulties the cast and crew would face. In addition to the authentic shooting sites, Herzog also employ the local Aguaruna people to play the “uncultivated” Jivaro, and insists on using the full-sized steamship in the climax instead of dismantling before the portage and also refuses to adopt miniatures or special effect. He also refuses the Brazilian engineer’s original ship-hauling mechanisms design, which the ship would be hauling at 20 degree up the mountain while Herzog insists on 40 degree. In Filmmakers’ Choices, John Gibbs (2006, p14) points out the significance of filmmakers’ decision-making, and
one of the best ways of determining what has been gained by the decisions taken in the construction of an artwork is to imagine the consequences of changing a single element of the design.
(John Gibbs, 2006, p14)
Perkins also contends “the director’s job is, particularly, to hold each and every moment of performance within a vision of the scene as a whole” (1981, p1143). In the case of Herzog, changing 40 degree to the initial 20 degree may seems insignificant but the vision of the climactic scene (in which the ship is rising up in a quite peculiar angle) may consequently changed. By considering why Herzog refuses the initial doable design and insists on the impracticable one, it may be possible to understand what he calls “the sublimity of images and their illuminating effect” (Weigel, 2010) in his films.
Because of his insistences on visual authenticity, Herzog earned a reputation for his “neurotic obsession” of ecstatic truth, and has been criticized by press and scholars. On the one hand, some dislike the idea of “realism” (Kael, 1982). On the other hand, some question Herzog’s view of nature and criticize it as nihilism (Arthur, 2005). As in Herzog’s films and documentaries, the vivid images of picturesque flora and fauna contradict his concept of nature “vileness, baseness and obscenity”, “the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder”. Despite the criticism, Herzog’s insistences seriously affect the visual authenticity of his works. In Fitzcarraldo, Herzog captures the distinguishing unique beauty and cruelty of nature, and composes his unique images of filmic landscape in the climactic scene.
Civilization’s opera and barbarism’s silence
Despite his obsession with visual authenticity, Herzog does not tend to prioritises the visual over the aural. In this film, music operates on two levels; one is the diegetic music of Caruso’s operatic recordings. Opera is sophisticatedly used in both time and place and functions as a crucial component in Fitzcarraldo, as William Van Wert (1986, P68) contends that, “the spectator may very well marvel at ‘haunting’ visuals in Herzog’s films, but the music that accompanies those visuals is what charges them, providing the ‘haunting,’ as much as the camera or editing”. In the journey, Fitzcarraldo equipped himself with a gramophone that plays arias. Opera becomes a travelling art and a mobile theatrical event, and always function as an external, often incongruous complement to the visual landscape.
The second musical level is the ‘acousmatic’ sound (Chion, 1999): the Latin American folk music composed by Popol Vuh and the ominous chanting and primitive drumming noises of the Jivaros. In an earlier scene when the crew enters the Jivaro Indian domain, they hear the constant noises of drumming and chanting, a threatening signal from the headhunters. As the beating sounds getting louder, Fitzcarraldo brings out the gramophone, and uses opera as a weapon of sorts to confront the Jivaro’s ominous chorus. The two contrasting sounds meet and mix in the midst of the primeval jungle, and then the Indian chorus is swallowed by the sound of opera arias and gradually mutes and disappears. As Dolkart (1985, p135) argues, opera is used to sharpen the contrast between civilization's arias and barbarism’s silences. At that night when Cholo proposes to use violence against the Jivaro's, Fitzcarraldo replies to take advantage of the myths of their gods, “this God doesn't come with canons. He comes with the voice of Caruso”. The next morning, when finds out his crew has deserted him, Fitzcarraldo again plays the opera. In a long tracking shot, the ship equipped with opera arias is slowly sailing up the river, while the Jivaros remain silent and mute. It appears that the civilization’s sounds have dominated the barbaric areas.
These musical and narrative strands converge at the climactic scene. With human efforts and engine power, the steamship is slowly moving over the mountain. Presented in a peculiar shot, the ship is slowly rising up in an oblique angle, while Fitzcarraldo is standing front the ship and shouting, to punctuate this dramatic moment: “we forget something –Caruso! Enrico Caruso!” After a shot of the bottom of the ship showing the mechanism and how it works, Caruso’s beautiful aria resounds in the midst of the primeval jungle, initiating an epic, breathtaking visual-musical interplay. In a one-minute long static shot, the ship is slowly moving up the steep slope with Caruso’s operatic accompaniment.
In the climactic scene, Caruso’s voice is no longer a mere incongruous complement or a contrasting sound against the barbarism, but as an integral component of the performance. Opera is a high art that combines extensive scenery and virtuoso singing, and all integrated into one grandiose visual-musical spectacle (Dolkart, 1985, p131). Herzog reconstructs the natural landscape, transforms the jungle into a grand opera stage. While watching this scene of the enormous steamship slowly moving up in the middle of this jungle stage, we become the audience inside an opera auditorium, and this one-minute long static scene is a breathtaking visual-musical opera spectacle. Despite the terribly scratchy quality of the opera recording, Caruso’s voice is with “an unspeakably dignified beauty, sad and strong and moving” (Herzog, 1982). To some extent, the steep mountain and the barbaric jungle and the steamship hauled by the “wild” Jivaro, are all working together to accomplish an opera performance. “We can feel the theatricality of the place, we see the image of the opera that surges from the sweat of the jungle” (Herzog, interview, 1982). The highly artificial, civilized high art is connected with barbaric jungle in harmony for the first time.
Herzog, with sense of irony, completes his use of opera in the rapids scene when the ship is careering down the impassable river. In Jivaro’s myths, the divine white ship could drift through the rapids to soothe the “the angry spirits” so the chief of the Jivaro's severs the rope and sending the ship floating down the Pongo River, the most dangerous place in the jungle. During the scene, Herzog adopts point of view shots. As the ship crashes helplessly through the raging river, the POV shots are violently shaking. In the shot when the ship is adrift in the treacherous rapids and slams into the cliff and jars the gramophone on, once again the off-stage operatic accompaniment resounds throughout the jungle and the rapids. The opera once again turns the struggle between the steamship and the jungle into a nautical ballet sequence. When the ship eventually drifts through the river, the arias slowly dissolve, completing the final performance.
Unlike the earlier scene when Fitzcarraldo using the opera as a weapon to dispel the violence, the rapids scene is not about the confrontation between civilization and barbarism, but about interconnection between opera and nature, or rather art and nature.
“Human articulation” against the nature
In Burden of dreams, Herzog describes the jungle as “the enormous articulation of vileness, baseness and obscenity”, compare to which human is only “badly pronounced and half-finished sentences”. I borrow the term “human articulation”, and to explore the attempt of human’s articulation against nature in both the ship-hauling scene and the rapids scene. In Herzog’s view, poetry, painting, filmmaking are all about articulation, in which we can reach a deeper truth –“an ecstatic truth”. In other words, art is, in essence, about articulating ourselves.
In the essay of musical and textual analysis in Fitzcarraldo, Rogers (2004, p97) asserts that Fitzcarraldo’s opera “is able to attack the Amazon on its own terms.” Likewise, in an interview, Herzog describe the moment when Fitzcarraldo plays the opera, “the jungle seems to be paralyzed with emotion by Caruso's beautiful, sad voice” (Herzog, 1982). To be fair, one must admit that the opera, whatever the form, stage performance or the scratchy recordings, has no power against the rapids or the nature. As Kant (2010) says, “the irresistibility of the power of nature forces us to recognize our physical impotence as natural beings, but at the same time discloses our capacity to judge ourselves independent of nature as well as superior to nature”. Art can never really “beat” or “conquer” nature, as much as human is never fully capable of expressing or articulating own self in relation to the nature. What lies in Fitzcarraldo is that self may encounters with other, but not subordinating the one to the other.
This is another aspect of “uselessness” I try to explore, which is the inability of self-expression, of “human articulation”. In several earlier scenes, Caruso’s voice resounds throughout the jungle, while nature is responding to this human articulation with enormous silences and overwhelming indifference. The strangeness and foreignness of opera echoes the earlier party scene that not a single guest seems to care or shows any interest in Caruso’s operatic voice, though Fitzcarraldo is desperate to attract other’s attention and express himself. “Opera’s use lies in its uselessness” (Koepnick, p161). Like poem, and other art, opera is highly artificial and aesthetic. Its values lie in a deeper, purer, more abstract dimension. In other words, in the final rapids scene, opera is not used as a civilization weapon or a practical tool to conquer the nature, but rather as the articulation of humans, an attempt to express the self toward the other.
In the ending scene, Fitzcarraldo brings a small-time opera troupe to a boat for a single performance. With a royal seat next to him, Fitzcarraldo is standing on the top of the ship Molly Aida, before his eyes is a sea of jubilant people –all people unite, his lover Molly, the locals and the entrepreneurs, waving and applauding. The ending is seen as a triumph. The triumph lies not in the achievement of wealth or good names, but the great efforts and desires to articulate, and the admiration of beautiful art.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by interpreting two particular scenes of Fitzcarraldo in detail, this essay examines the images of Fitzcarraldo and Herzog, and explores the interconnection of visual and musical aspects in this film. In section one, I examine the party scene in detail to explore the image of Fitzcarraldo, while he views himself as a dreamer, other may see him as “useless”. And then I explore the interconnection between Fitzcarraldo and the director Herzog. In section two, by interpreting the climactic ship-hauling scene, I look into Herzog’s view of nature and how his pursuit of visual authenticity affects the representation of natural landscape in his film. I then examine the visual and musical aspects of the film, and gain a better understanding that how Herzog attempts to use art as a “human articulation” against the nature.
Fitzcarraldo is such a complex and powerful statement and it is worth closely reading. Herzog is a genius auteur famous for his formidable gifts of expression. He writes and speaks with poetic precision and therefore sometimes it is difficult to paraphrase his distinguishing expressions. As a result, this essay frequently quotes Herzog’s words from different materials, including interviews, documentaries and articles, to directly show Herzog’s views. By doing this, I do not mean to assume the director’s intentions or find the “truth” of his works. The director is not the authority of films but a reader like us. As Dow (1996, p15) notes that, “the act of interpretation and argument by the researcher is paramount”.
Bibliography
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Ascárate, R. J., 2007. “Have You Ever Seen a Shrunken Head?”: The Early Modern Roots of Ecstatic Truth inWerner Herzog's “Fitzcarraldo”, PMLA, 122(2), 483-501, Published by: Modern Language Association
Chion, M., 1999. The voice in cinema. tr. C. Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.
Davidson, J. E., 1994. Contacting the Other: Traces of Migrational Colonialism and the Imperial Agent in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Film & History: an interdisciplinary journal of film and television studies, Volume 24, Numbers 3-4, 66-83
Dolkart, R. H., 1985. Civilization's Aria: Film as Lore and Opera as Metaphor in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, Journal of Latin American Lore, 11(2), 125-141, Printed in U.S.A.
Dow, B. J., 1996. Prime-time Feminism: television, media culture, and the women’s movement since 1970, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.
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Koepnick, L., 2012. Archetypes of Emotion: Werner Herzog and Opera. In: A Companion to Werner Herzog, ed. Brad Prager, West Sussex: Blackwell Publishing Ltd
Prager, B., 2003. Werner Herzog's Hearts of Darkness: Fitzcarraldo, Scream of Stone and Beyond, Quarterly Review of Film and Video, 20(1), 23-35
Rogers, H., 2004. Fitzcarraldo's Search for Aguirre: Music and Text in the Amazonian Films of WernerHerzog, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 129(1), 77-99, Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd. on behalf of the Royal Musical Association
Sheean, V., 1956. Oscar Hammerstein I: The Life and Exploits of an Impresario, New York, 252-253.
Tambling, J., 1987. Opera, Ideology and Film, Manchester: Manchester University Press
Thompson, K. M., 2011. Madness on a Grand Scale. In: The Cinema of Werner Herzog: Aesthetic Ecstasy and Truth, London: Wallflower Press
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German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s feature film Fitzcarraldo (1982) begins with the title character (Klaus Kinski), an ecstatic opera lover, who attempts to build a great opera house in Iquitos of the Peruvian Amazon where his idol, Enrico Caruso, can perform. The film ends with Fitzcarraldo achieving a victory of sorts that he brings a small-time European opera troupe to a boat for a single performance. However, the central dramatic action of this film is not the process of building a grand opera house but the protagonist’s attempt and success in dragging an enormous steamship over a nearly vertical mountain that separates two rivers.
Herzog has a distinguishing conception of human and nature. Like its antecedent Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo also sets the story in the Amazonian jungle, “an unfinished land with curse that God creates it in anger”. In Burden of dreams (1982), a documentary on the production of Fitzcarraldo, Herzog describes the jungle as “the enormous articulation of vileness, baseness and obscenity”, compare to which human is only “badly pronounced and half-finished sentences”. Apart from this, Herzog’s other documentary Grizzly Man (2005) centres on a tragic hero’s life, examining the cruelty of wild animals and the “overwhelming indifference” of nature. It is safe to say that “human struggles against nature” is a recurring theme in his works.
However, what Herzog attempts to explore in Fitzcarraldo is not “human and nature” but rather “opera and nature”, in other word, art and nature. Although Herzog repeatedly asserted the visual primacy of his films (Rogers, 2004, p77), the musical component of Fitzcarraldo should not be disregarded. On the one hand, this Amazonian adventure film has an operatic, grand-scale narrative structure. On the other hand, while the actual ‘opera house’ remains absent during the epic jungle-exploring journey, opera arias in various forms do appear several times in the entire film, including the opening sequence that Caruso performs arias on a grand opera house, the struggle-against-the-rapids scene that opera music is played through a gramophone among hundreds of headhunters, and the ending scene in which a travelling opera troupe preforms Bellini’s I Puritani on a steamship along the river. Especially, in the climactic scene when the boat is slowly rising up the mountain, the operatic accompaniment makes this ship-hailing undertaking a visual-musical spectacular. That is to say, though the protagonist fulfills his operatic dream indirectly, the thematic connection between art and nature is clear in Fitzcarraldo.
Herzog is a distinguished filmmaker not only famous for his precise articulation of filmic themes but also his stylistic idiosyncrasy and monomaniacal obsession, or in other words, he is notoriously difficult to cooperate with (Arthur, 2005), which is similar to his protagonist Fitzcarraldo. Just as the eponymous character in Fitzcarraldo, Herzog pursues his dreams with ultimate madness and crazed energy, which raises the following questions: what is the relation between Fitzcarraldo and Herzog? How has Herzog’s conception of “art and nature” influenced his filmic articulation to his works?
Ultimately this essay focuses specifically on the image of Fitzcarraldo and his relation to Herzog, also on the thematic connection of art and nature in Fitzcarraldo. In section one, I conduct a detailed analysis of the party scene and I first examine the image of the protagonist as “the conquistador of the useless” and then I explore the two images of the protagonist Fitzcarraldo as well as the director Herzog. The latter half of this essay analyses the climactic ship-hauling scene in detail. By examining the complementary treatment of visual and musical aspects, it may be possible to understand Herzog’s attempt to use art as a “human articulation” against the nature.
Section one: the party scene
“The conquistador of the useless”
Fitzcarraldo’s obsession of opera is introduced in the opening sequences that he has rowed 1200 miles for two days and nights down the Amazon to see Caruso’s performance in person. When watching the opera, Fitzcarraldo believes that the dying protagonist on stage is pointing at him. He interprets it as a sacred transferring ceremony that the most renowned opera performer has transferred the musical life to him, he thus has found and absorbed the cultural power embodied in the opera (Rogers, 2004, p92). After this sacred transferring ceremony, he determines to build a grand opera house into the jungle. His lover Molly (Claudia Cardinale) considers him as “a dreamer who moves mountains”, while he identifies himself as a fulfiller of dreams.
At other point, however, a dreamer as Fitzcarraldo is someone who lacks the ability to differentiate reality from dreams. In this very opening sequence, he believes himself has absorbed the musical power of opera and since then he has transferred the real world to a musical make-believe one. To defend his dream against the artless, unmusical ‘old’ world, he fights with crazed energy, including climbs to the top of a Church tower, striking the bell and threatening the Church will remain closed until Iquitos builds an opera house. These establishing scenes demonstrate his refusal to differentiate between the reality and dream. His monomania of the opera dream continues in the party scene when he attends with his lover Molly at a wealthy rubber baron’s house.
This party scene is striking example that Fitzcarraldo lacks the ability to differentiate reality from dreams and thus feels the sense of otherness and alienation in real world. When attends the party, Fitzcarraldo directly brings out his gramophone and begins to set up this musical equipment in the middle of the hall. Meanwhile, Molly walks around waving her feather hand fan, “please, may we have your attention”, but no one seems to be intrigued. Without any introduction, Fitzcarraldo plays the opera music. In the middle of all the indifferent guests, he utterly immerses himself into his beloved opera, while Molly is looking around and trying to attract the guests’ attention. Don Aquilino (José Lewgoy), a rubber baron, the host of the party, keeps talking with another magnate, remains aloof from Fitzcarraldo’s action. Accompanying these is an uncut shot, just as the operatic music sounds absurdly out of place, Fitzcarraldo looks absolutely alienated. Herzog puts Fitzcarraldo in such situation to depict the sense of otherness and alienation that Fitzcarraldo always feels, recalls the previous sequences that he is either surrounded by a group of drunken card-playing barons or a crowd of shirtless foreign-language-speaking Amazonians. While Fitzcarraldo becomes completely engrossed in Caruso’s mechanically reproduced voice that he remains unaware of the other audiences’ inattention, a guest directly walks toward the gramophone and turns the music off. Fitzcarraldo becomes frenzied and attempts to punch the man, at the same time, Aquilino finally aware of Fitzcarraldo’s existence and immediately commands the servants to take him out. Fitzcarraldo gets rid of the servants to grab his gramophone, holding it in arms, looking around the indifferent crowd, causing a minor disturbance. To clam the guests, the amused host shouts “ladies and gentlemen, don’t worries, this gentleman is harmless”, while another steward proposes a meal prepared by “the dog’s cook” to Fitzcarraldo, derides him as “superb”. Accompanying this is a medium close-up shot of the stony, unsympathetic face of the steward and then the medium shot of Fitzcarraldo in an awkward position, with the heavy gramophone in arms, surrounded by the indifferent guests. Humiliated by the guests and the hosts, Fitzcarraldo continuously downs four drinks to his admired opera artists, but the steward stops him by proposing a toast sarcastically, “to Fitzcarraldo, the conquistador of the useless”. As the rubber barons unable to be touched by the opera, Fitzcarraldo cries to the amused audience, “the reality of your world is nothing more than a rotten caricature of great opera”, which demonstrating again Fitzcarraldo’s inability or rather unwillingness of differentiating reality from dreams.
In the eyes of the economic upper crust of Iquitos, Fitzcarraldo is nothing more than a harmless, useless and crazed “strange bird”, his eccentric attempt to bring an opera house to the jungle is nothing more than an unachievable business plan. Fitzcarraldo is juxtaposed with these European financial elites in several scenes, including the above-mentioned party scene, as well as the card-playing scene he tries to enlist the rubber barons’ financial support, while Aquilino taunts and ridicules his obsession with opera. Within the frame of repetitive close-ups, Fitzcarraldo’s face is sweaty, frenzied, contorted in disgust. It is worth noting that the bug-eyed maniac Klaus Kinski’s rendering of Fitzcarraldo is admittedly powerful, with true madness and absolute energy, as if “a beast has been domesticated and pressed into shape” (Herzog, My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski, [1999]).
Pure dreamers
Some film scholars see Fitzcarraldo as a colonial hero (Prager, 2012, p25) or “an imperial agent of expansion”(Davidson, 1994, p69). Opera is a symbol of the European civilization, and Fitzcarraldo’s attempt to bring the opera house to the barbaric Latin America is viewed as an attempt of cultural enlightenment. In the scene when Fitzcarraldo first confronts the Jivaro, or what he calls, the “bare-asses”, he fires back with the arias of Caruso, the sound of the “white God”. He believes (perhaps at an unconscious level) opera has a particular power against the barbaric headhunters, as Dolkart (1985, p126) discusses, “devotion to and knowledge of opera represented entrance into the elite and disdain for indigenous culture”.
Despite these cultural interpretations of the figure of Fitzcarraldo, I want to discern his image in a more abstract, metaphysical meaning that, Fitzcarraldo is a pure dreamer, who seeks to fulfill his dream and eagers to express himself in an “other” land. In his words, opera “gives expressions to our greatest feelings”. Apart from the party scene, the film also shows his obsession with opera and inability to differentiate between reality and dream in other scenes, for example, when enters to the jungle, Fitzcarraldo is deeply intrigued by the words of an old missionary that “our everyday life is only an illusion, behind which lies the reality of dreams”. Fitzcarraldo replies, “actually I’m very interested in these ideas. I specialize opera myself”, making a connection between illusion and operatic articulation. As Herzog (2010) says, “what's beautiful about opera is that reality doesn't play any role in it at all”. For Fitzcarraldo, the operatic dream is the reason to live, to go through the illusions of life. As an opera impresario once said, “It [opera] lifts one so out of the sordid affairs of life and makes material things seem so petty, so inconsequential, it places one for the time being, at least, in a higher and better world” (quoted from Dolkart, 1985, p131). It is not the visionary of bringing European culture into Iquitos so much as the desire of articulation of “the Self” that distinguish Fitzcarraldo from those philistines, who only care about wealth and “a great name in Europe”.
These sequences raise questions about the Herzog’s conception of dreams and how he endeavors to achieve it. The documentary on the making of Fitzcarraldo, Burden of dreams (1982), continually reasserts the impossibility of the production of Fitzcarraldo: the harsh rainforest climate, the tribal wars, crew revolts and cast changing. Though encounters enormous difficulties, Herzog sticks at this impossible mission and pursues his goal with madness and crazed energy, “if I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams and I don’t want to live like that”, to a point where the director’s dreams and Fitzcarraldo’s dreams meet. In other words, Fitzcarraldo is such a powerful and complex statement of Herzog’s monomaniacal obsession of “dreams”. The protagonist is a reproduction and a reflection of Herzog himself. Like Fitzcarraldo, Herzog is an aesthete with good ideas and a pure dreamer who attempts to pursue his goals. The word “pure” not only refers to the futility of the reality life and the pursuit of illusions, but also the filmic aestheticisation of uselessness. Fitzcarraldo is once mocked as “the conquistador of the useless” and likewise Herzog entitles his production diaries Conquest of the Useless (Thompson, 2011, p42), which highlights the connection between the two figures, two pure dreams. The concept of uselessness can be viewed in two ways. On the one hand, it refers to the idea of going to nowhere or returning in full circle. Fitzcarraldo’s adventure leads him to nowhere: his ship is damaged by Jivaro, the same crowd who helped him move the ship over the mountain, and he fails to get rubber, coming back where he started. But the concept of uselessness is aestheticized. The final tableau is an opera performance on the boat and although the glorious dream of building an opera house in the jungle fails, this triumphant ending scene is seen as a victory of sorts, a fulfillment of dream. On the other hand, uselessness can be seen as inability of self-expression, of “human articulation”, which I explore in detail in section two.
Section two: the climactic scene
Herzog’s “Ecstatic truth”
Herzog is a well-known auteur for his stylistic idiosyncrasy, recurrent themes and cultural-historical sensitivity (Dolkart, 1985, p126). For a better understanding of Herzog’s distinguishing view of natural landscape, it is essential to look at his own words: “I wanted an ecstatic detail of that landscape where all the drama, passion and human pathos became visible” (My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski, [1999]). For him, landscape is not a backdrop of outstanding scenic beauty in Hollywood-style commercials, but rather a place filled with “indifference of nature” (Grizzly Man, [2005]), with “almost human qualities” (My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski) and with “overwhelming and collective murder” and full of “fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away” (Burden of dreams, [1982]). Again in Fitzcarraldo Herzog sets the story in the barbaric Amazonian jungle, “an unfinished place with curse that God creates in anger”. Herzog’s view of nature sounds deeply pessimistic, but he claims he admire the nature, “I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment” (Burden of dreams).
The most striking example to demonstrate Herzog’s obsession with visual authenticity of the natural landscape in Fitzcarraldo is the climactic scene when the steamship is dragged over the mountain separating the two rivers. This climactic ship-hauling scene consists of a series of documentary-like shots and a static one-minute long shot. It begins with several shots of the mechanism within the steamship and details how the complex pulling system works. The long documentary-like sequence also details their effort: cutting a path through the dense jungle, oiling the pulleys, and setting the hauling system. In these shots, the images of the jungle have a very crude, unfinished, and primeval texture, the natural landscape is represented with the visual authenticity that Herzog aims to impart. In the scene, we then hear Fitzcarraldo’s shouting, “we have two dead man”. In a tracking shot, he fretfully climbs over the supporting stakes, while Cholo, the mechanic of Fitzcarraldo’s crew, excitedly explains the ship-hauling plan to him. “We have two dead man!” Fitzcarraldo ignores Cholo and repeats, recalling their last failed attempt that two Jivaroan people died when dragging the ship. Additionally, this scene also reminds us of the director's own ambiguous filmmaking anecdotes, blurring the distinction between filmic reality and reality per se.
To pursue the documentary-like truth or rather what he called the “ecstatic truth”, Herzog prefers shooting on location rather than filming in studio (Ascárate, 2007), no matter how dangerous the shooting sites would be or what enormous difficulties the cast and crew would face. In addition to the authentic shooting sites, Herzog also employ the local Aguaruna people to play the “uncultivated” Jivaro, and insists on using the full-sized steamship in the climax instead of dismantling before the portage and also refuses to adopt miniatures or special effect. He also refuses the Brazilian engineer’s original ship-hauling mechanisms design, which the ship would be hauling at 20 degree up the mountain while Herzog insists on 40 degree. In Filmmakers’ Choices, John Gibbs (2006, p14) points out the significance of filmmakers’ decision-making, and
one of the best ways of determining what has been gained by the decisions taken in the construction of an artwork is to imagine the consequences of changing a single element of the design.
(John Gibbs, 2006, p14)
Perkins also contends “the director’s job is, particularly, to hold each and every moment of performance within a vision of the scene as a whole” (1981, p1143). In the case of Herzog, changing 40 degree to the initial 20 degree may seems insignificant but the vision of the climactic scene (in which the ship is rising up in a quite peculiar angle) may consequently changed. By considering why Herzog refuses the initial doable design and insists on the impracticable one, it may be possible to understand what he calls “the sublimity of images and their illuminating effect” (Weigel, 2010) in his films.
Because of his insistences on visual authenticity, Herzog earned a reputation for his “neurotic obsession” of ecstatic truth, and has been criticized by press and scholars. On the one hand, some dislike the idea of “realism” (Kael, 1982). On the other hand, some question Herzog’s view of nature and criticize it as nihilism (Arthur, 2005). As in Herzog’s films and documentaries, the vivid images of picturesque flora and fauna contradict his concept of nature “vileness, baseness and obscenity”, “the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder”. Despite the criticism, Herzog’s insistences seriously affect the visual authenticity of his works. In Fitzcarraldo, Herzog captures the distinguishing unique beauty and cruelty of nature, and composes his unique images of filmic landscape in the climactic scene.
Civilization’s opera and barbarism’s silence
Despite his obsession with visual authenticity, Herzog does not tend to prioritises the visual over the aural. In this film, music operates on two levels; one is the diegetic music of Caruso’s operatic recordings. Opera is sophisticatedly used in both time and place and functions as a crucial component in Fitzcarraldo, as William Van Wert (1986, P68) contends that, “the spectator may very well marvel at ‘haunting’ visuals in Herzog’s films, but the music that accompanies those visuals is what charges them, providing the ‘haunting,’ as much as the camera or editing”. In the journey, Fitzcarraldo equipped himself with a gramophone that plays arias. Opera becomes a travelling art and a mobile theatrical event, and always function as an external, often incongruous complement to the visual landscape.
The second musical level is the ‘acousmatic’ sound (Chion, 1999): the Latin American folk music composed by Popol Vuh and the ominous chanting and primitive drumming noises of the Jivaros. In an earlier scene when the crew enters the Jivaro Indian domain, they hear the constant noises of drumming and chanting, a threatening signal from the headhunters. As the beating sounds getting louder, Fitzcarraldo brings out the gramophone, and uses opera as a weapon of sorts to confront the Jivaro’s ominous chorus. The two contrasting sounds meet and mix in the midst of the primeval jungle, and then the Indian chorus is swallowed by the sound of opera arias and gradually mutes and disappears. As Dolkart (1985, p135) argues, opera is used to sharpen the contrast between civilization's arias and barbarism’s silences. At that night when Cholo proposes to use violence against the Jivaro's, Fitzcarraldo replies to take advantage of the myths of their gods, “this God doesn't come with canons. He comes with the voice of Caruso”. The next morning, when finds out his crew has deserted him, Fitzcarraldo again plays the opera. In a long tracking shot, the ship equipped with opera arias is slowly sailing up the river, while the Jivaros remain silent and mute. It appears that the civilization’s sounds have dominated the barbaric areas.
These musical and narrative strands converge at the climactic scene. With human efforts and engine power, the steamship is slowly moving over the mountain. Presented in a peculiar shot, the ship is slowly rising up in an oblique angle, while Fitzcarraldo is standing front the ship and shouting, to punctuate this dramatic moment: “we forget something –Caruso! Enrico Caruso!” After a shot of the bottom of the ship showing the mechanism and how it works, Caruso’s beautiful aria resounds in the midst of the primeval jungle, initiating an epic, breathtaking visual-musical interplay. In a one-minute long static shot, the ship is slowly moving up the steep slope with Caruso’s operatic accompaniment.
In the climactic scene, Caruso’s voice is no longer a mere incongruous complement or a contrasting sound against the barbarism, but as an integral component of the performance. Opera is a high art that combines extensive scenery and virtuoso singing, and all integrated into one grandiose visual-musical spectacle (Dolkart, 1985, p131). Herzog reconstructs the natural landscape, transforms the jungle into a grand opera stage. While watching this scene of the enormous steamship slowly moving up in the middle of this jungle stage, we become the audience inside an opera auditorium, and this one-minute long static scene is a breathtaking visual-musical opera spectacle. Despite the terribly scratchy quality of the opera recording, Caruso’s voice is with “an unspeakably dignified beauty, sad and strong and moving” (Herzog, 1982). To some extent, the steep mountain and the barbaric jungle and the steamship hauled by the “wild” Jivaro, are all working together to accomplish an opera performance. “We can feel the theatricality of the place, we see the image of the opera that surges from the sweat of the jungle” (Herzog, interview, 1982). The highly artificial, civilized high art is connected with barbaric jungle in harmony for the first time.
Herzog, with sense of irony, completes his use of opera in the rapids scene when the ship is careering down the impassable river. In Jivaro’s myths, the divine white ship could drift through the rapids to soothe the “the angry spirits” so the chief of the Jivaro's severs the rope and sending the ship floating down the Pongo River, the most dangerous place in the jungle. During the scene, Herzog adopts point of view shots. As the ship crashes helplessly through the raging river, the POV shots are violently shaking. In the shot when the ship is adrift in the treacherous rapids and slams into the cliff and jars the gramophone on, once again the off-stage operatic accompaniment resounds throughout the jungle and the rapids. The opera once again turns the struggle between the steamship and the jungle into a nautical ballet sequence. When the ship eventually drifts through the river, the arias slowly dissolve, completing the final performance.
Unlike the earlier scene when Fitzcarraldo using the opera as a weapon to dispel the violence, the rapids scene is not about the confrontation between civilization and barbarism, but about interconnection between opera and nature, or rather art and nature.
“Human articulation” against the nature
In Burden of dreams, Herzog describes the jungle as “the enormous articulation of vileness, baseness and obscenity”, compare to which human is only “badly pronounced and half-finished sentences”. I borrow the term “human articulation”, and to explore the attempt of human’s articulation against nature in both the ship-hauling scene and the rapids scene. In Herzog’s view, poetry, painting, filmmaking are all about articulation, in which we can reach a deeper truth –“an ecstatic truth”. In other words, art is, in essence, about articulating ourselves.
In the essay of musical and textual analysis in Fitzcarraldo, Rogers (2004, p97) asserts that Fitzcarraldo’s opera “is able to attack the Amazon on its own terms.” Likewise, in an interview, Herzog describe the moment when Fitzcarraldo plays the opera, “the jungle seems to be paralyzed with emotion by Caruso's beautiful, sad voice” (Herzog, 1982). To be fair, one must admit that the opera, whatever the form, stage performance or the scratchy recordings, has no power against the rapids or the nature. As Kant (2010) says, “the irresistibility of the power of nature forces us to recognize our physical impotence as natural beings, but at the same time discloses our capacity to judge ourselves independent of nature as well as superior to nature”. Art can never really “beat” or “conquer” nature, as much as human is never fully capable of expressing or articulating own self in relation to the nature. What lies in Fitzcarraldo is that self may encounters with other, but not subordinating the one to the other.
This is another aspect of “uselessness” I try to explore, which is the inability of self-expression, of “human articulation”. In several earlier scenes, Caruso’s voice resounds throughout the jungle, while nature is responding to this human articulation with enormous silences and overwhelming indifference. The strangeness and foreignness of opera echoes the earlier party scene that not a single guest seems to care or shows any interest in Caruso’s operatic voice, though Fitzcarraldo is desperate to attract other’s attention and express himself. “Opera’s use lies in its uselessness” (Koepnick, p161). Like poem, and other art, opera is highly artificial and aesthetic. Its values lie in a deeper, purer, more abstract dimension. In other words, in the final rapids scene, opera is not used as a civilization weapon or a practical tool to conquer the nature, but rather as the articulation of humans, an attempt to express the self toward the other.
In the ending scene, Fitzcarraldo brings a small-time opera troupe to a boat for a single performance. With a royal seat next to him, Fitzcarraldo is standing on the top of the ship Molly Aida, before his eyes is a sea of jubilant people –all people unite, his lover Molly, the locals and the entrepreneurs, waving and applauding. The ending is seen as a triumph. The triumph lies not in the achievement of wealth or good names, but the great efforts and desires to articulate, and the admiration of beautiful art.
Conclusion
In conclusion, by interpreting two particular scenes of Fitzcarraldo in detail, this essay examines the images of Fitzcarraldo and Herzog, and explores the interconnection of visual and musical aspects in this film. In section one, I examine the party scene in detail to explore the image of Fitzcarraldo, while he views himself as a dreamer, other may see him as “useless”. And then I explore the interconnection between Fitzcarraldo and the director Herzog. In section two, by interpreting the climactic ship-hauling scene, I look into Herzog’s view of nature and how his pursuit of visual authenticity affects the representation of natural landscape in his film. I then examine the visual and musical aspects of the film, and gain a better understanding that how Herzog attempts to use art as a “human articulation” against the nature.
Fitzcarraldo is such a complex and powerful statement and it is worth closely reading. Herzog is a genius auteur famous for his formidable gifts of expression. He writes and speaks with poetic precision and therefore sometimes it is difficult to paraphrase his distinguishing expressions. As a result, this essay frequently quotes Herzog’s words from different materials, including interviews, documentaries and articles, to directly show Herzog’s views. By doing this, I do not mean to assume the director’s intentions or find the “truth” of his works. The director is not the authority of films but a reader like us. As Dow (1996, p15) notes that, “the act of interpretation and argument by the researcher is paramount”.
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很震撼，真正展现人类文明力量的电影，那种不同肤色、种族，不同文明间百川汇聚迸发出的力量，让人对我们自身产生难以言表的骄傲与希望。赫尔佐格经常着眼于文明社会的边缘人，让他们与自然或融入、或纠缠，而本片更进一步，逐步剥离了主角身上疲软的社会性与幼稚的自我满足，最后在超现实的镜头下使其展现出希腊神话般的壮志伟力。歌剧与金斯基炽热的面孔为电影增色不少，唯一的遗憾是这场冒险没有带上美艳的Cardinale。
所以，你那个把某领导扒光了拖过单位肮脏走廊的梦想也是可以实现的。
布鲁姆们也许会说‘这部电影受到麦尔维尔的影响，它是电影中的《白鲸》，一个陆地上的亚哈船长怀着不可告人的目的带着一群不明就里的魁魁格出发了……’我只想说，有时候并不是后面的人受到前面的谁的影响，而是疯子们想到一处去了。
1.陆上行舟，喜爱歌剧的倔强之人将大胆固执的想法变成了现实；2.查亚休亚里·亚居，雨林里的印第安人说这个地方是"上帝未创造完成的疆域"，他们相信只有人类消失后，上帝才会回来完成他的工作。3.-要不要告诉他(冰)会化没的？-不行，他们的语言里没有冰这个词。4.我要给你讲个故事，那时北美还远远没被征服。有一个法国捕猎者从蒙特利尔向西走，他是第一个看到尼亚加拉瀑布的白人。回来后，他告诉人们瀑布壮阔得...人们根本想象不到。可没人信他，他们认为他不是疯了，就是在撒谎，他们问他：“你有什么证据？” 他说：“我的证据就是，我看到了。”
三十年过去了，这部电影依旧保持着某种特异性，拒绝被分类，也不可能被归类。它只代表创造电影，无中生有这件事情本身。
四星半,相当通俗. 真正与本片可有一比的作品要算《阿拉伯的劳伦斯》:二者都既是纯粹视觉的(辽阔的自然与人的对比)又是纯粹精神的(征服一切的偏执欲求),故进入此类电影所需要的仅仅是睁大眼睛去捕捉,打开头脑去感受和想象――既是有关故事本身亦有关拍摄历程. 在高超的节奏控制与"奇观"性质的文明对立之下,电影的形式便自然显示为朴实无华而富于感染力的了;此可谓"意志的胜利".
疯狂的赫尔佐格从来都只为探险家、理想主义者和堂吉诃德们作传，一种伟大的偏执和缺心眼。
难以用简单词汇定义这样的电影，想起赫尔佐格用战士形容自己。集中呈现文明与野蛮执着抗争的角力，歌剧与揶揄、冰块与信仰成就完美主义的一体两面（戏里戏外的疯狂人生，波澜壮阔的雨林奇观），要死命违抗物质存在本能，才能初见陆上行舟的奇迹；他说，要让船在惊涛中重生，我们才可能获得上帝的宽恕。
2018年3月24日第三次重温；“他们的语言里没有冰这个词”这个意象堪比『百年孤独』；文明和蛮荒的对峙角力，体力和意志的互补拉锯；唯有赫尔佐格能将纪实与神奇调教得波澜壮阔，也唯有金斯基能传达如此这般狂热不息的斗志，热带雨林里的华丽咏叹。
"船只—剧院"即身体及其欲望延展的可能性之喻。逆流等同意志提纯。《陆上行舟》建置在"I want"和"I've seen"两个前提，接近于神性，在影片内外共同完成。一种理想化的自由意志:在荒蛮中创造文明的可能，在"上帝式施予"之中，"经验"以臣服于激情的"同路人"角色在场。
瞠目结舌叹为观止，最后船缓缓移动的时候忍不住想哭啊！赫尔佐格和金斯基的组合就是神一般的存在，他们展示了人类和大自然最原始的关系，征服
一部反映文化冲突和意识形态差别的、近乎疯癫的片子。与其说是一部带纪实风格的假想片，不如说是一部社会实验片，台词十分黑色幽默，每个独立细节都引人深思。这是一部杰作，是运镜的疯子在拍摄一个奇想的天才，而天才往往也是疯的：赫尔佐格此人，不止侏儒、狼人、傻子或吸血鬼，应该注意的是他本身
9/10。将失败变成凯旋的菲茨卡拉多穿着晚礼服，叼着雪茄向两岸欢呼的人群得意地挥手，把请来破船演奏的歌剧献给爱人，以他人的艺术完成自我的艺术，上演了人类疯狂梦想的歌剧。菲茨卡拉多代表现代性启蒙者，从开心地把冰分给当地小孩、半途而废的铁路到船头播乐平息两岸原住民狂野的鼓声，运用知识引导秘鲁人和原住民的伙伴完成文明的拓荒。有一点值得注意：被视为神器的船翻过山顶解掉缆绳，破船在急流中荡漾，现代性的启蒙让位于自然神话。赌桌外商人将美元喂鱼，晚宴上鱼变成佳肴，菲茨卡拉多受到政商人士的羞辱，庸常的物质社会使人堕落挥霍沦为失去梦想的死鱼，他在教堂疯狂敲钟宣告要反抗庸常建立梦想。妓院和歌剧的设置形成联系：爱人用开妓院的钱赞助菲茨卡拉多的梦想，他送来两人并肩而坐的画像，梦想分别所在艺术和色情的两者达成了精神同盟。
哥还能说什么 能拍这种电影的人什么拍不出来？！ 、元来哥还不够疯狂！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！我的女神怎么成了妓院的老鸨了！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！！
2018.3.28重看@北电。确实是伟大的电影。
一部南美版的愚公移山，导演和主演一样疯狂，那份执念甚至能令船跳出水面。在当时来说拍摄难度无法想象。酋长举起冰的一刻，能感觉到世界都静了...
2个小时30多分钟，讲述一个人，一艘船，如何为了追寻一个看似荒唐的梦想，在漫长的亚马逊河上，行走了一个来回。
奇观的代价（纪录片叫burden of dreams），在泛滥的殖民主义情绪和暴君的行事方式中通向了电影层面的节制：因为没有一个“超人镜头”不是用血汗换来
沃纳·赫尔佐格代表作，获1982年戛纳最佳导演。影片事无巨细地描述了一位执着狂热的理想主义者追寻唐吉坷德式梦想的过程。片中大量场景实地实景拍摄，痴狂的导演甚至真的将整艘蒸汽船运上山顶，技术难度可想而知。本片另一特色是迷人的丛林风光镜头。经过艰苦卓绝的旅程，结尾令人心潮澎湃。（9.0/10）
整部电影充满冒险神秘和大气偏执的精神，不过不喜欢电影的结尾，在我想象中的的结局他要么建起了歌剧院，要么死于土著人的乱箭之下。