Anyone who has seen the wild-eyed, white suited Klaus Kinski gesticulating wildly into the South American jungle in Herzog's film "Fitzcarraldo" knows what obsession is. The motion picture tells the story of a European who decides to build an opera house in the middle of the jungle in order to lure Enrico Caruso to perform there. But after a boat trip down the Pongo, our hero decides his multi-ton steamboat must be towed over a mountain to the other side of the river to complete the trip. Only his faith in his own lunacy, and the help of scores of inscrutable Indians, are able to make the dreams of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald real."Conquest of the Useless" is a journal kept by the director, Werner Herzog, during the making of this ill-starred production. Though they are notes kept contemporaneous with the filming of the movie, they are by no means a diary of the production. Those hunting set gossip will find all too little within this book. Instead, one samples Herzog's daily observations on the jungle and the collision he creates between the modern and the primordial. In the process, he creates a modern-day rendering of "Heart of Darkness," with Herzog not sure whether he is Kurtz or the tale's narrator, or both at the same time.There's no small humor that at the beginning of this book, Herzog is at the home of Francis Ford Coppola, the director of the Godfather films who is wrestling with is own obsession - "Apocalpyse Now." It too deals with a "Heart of Darkness" theme, and it's production history was perhaps even more infamous than that of "Fitzcarraldo." By the end of Herzog's production, he would have to recast key scenes in the film and refilm some of its most grueling passages.One appreciates Herzog's language as he struggles to describe what he sees in the Amazonian jungle. There is a sense that nothing has changed in centuries out there in the water and vines. The jungle is the book's largest character - a steamy, sweaty, malevolent, amoral presence which does not value human life and corrupts it just as it rusts the equipment brought into it to record its excesses. This is a land where babies die in their mother's arms, where soldiers' bodies come bobbing down the river and are left to drift further, where the loudest sounds are the snapping and falling of trees alive since before Columbus crossed the ocean:"The jungle is obscene. Everything about it is sinful, for which reason the sin does not stand out as sin. The voices in the jungle are silent; nothing is stirring, and a languid, immobile anger hovers over everything."Herzog struggles to hold himself together, even as his life seems to him nothing more than an invention "with its pathos, its banalities, its dramas, it's idling." His film, which threatens to spiral everything out of his control, eventually gets made but that story seems strangely secondary by the end. He is merely trying to survive. That is what this diary is about - the survival of aspiration. "Is the desire to fly innate to all creatures?" the director asks, even as he lugs his own great ship up into the clouds. The subtitle of this book, "Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo", is a little misleading - while it is a collection of diary entries that Herzog wrote during the production of that film, very little of it has to do with actual filmmaking. Instead, it reads more like a travelogue from a really terrible vacation. The jungle that Herzog describes sounds like hell on earth - dangerous animals, aggressive natives, and general sort of decay that affects everyone and everything. More than once while reading this I was reminded of Cormac McCarthy's "Blood Meridian".Of course, he does talk about the film as well, and many of the most interesting ancedotes involve Kinski's antics or the difficulties they had getting supplies to their remote camps. This book is basically a collection of these anecdotes, mixed with Herzog's eccentric musings and fevered dreams. I would imagine that someone not familiar with Fitzcarraldo might feel a little lost, as there isn't any background info other than an appendix explaining who the various people he mentions are. Even though I am familiar with the film, a short preface establishing the situation would have been nice.This book doesn't offer much insight into Herzog's filmmaking process, but it is a fascinating read anyway. I'm pretty sure Herzog can make any material engaging - the man could film a documentary on paint drying and somehow make it seem profound. Highly recommended to Herzog and/or cinema fans, but others might feel lost.
Do You like book La Conquista Dell'inutile (2007)?
An intimate journey with a very curious mind indeed as he attempts the impossible in the jungle.
—kassyskyxo
I love Uncle Werner, even if he is a bullshitter - and, guess what, my copy is signed :0)
—shabrokh
The dude does not suffer fools gladly. Or anyone, for that matter. He is awesome!
—Seena
Insanity, echoing in my brain chambers. Precious, deluded sentences.
—psailashir
Very good. The next is "walking on ice".
—Annsim1167
