Werner Herzogs Fitzcarraldo tells the story of a man with almost superhuman ambitions. Ironically in filming the movie, Herzog himself displayed an obsession with achieving the same unthinkable goal  moving a boat across a mountain. This project will examine the parallels between the outrageous feats accomplished both on screen and off, while simultaneously putting the film in the historical context of the Amazon rubber boom at the end of the 19th century. By looking at the contrast between the final film, the production, and the historical context, one may hope to gain an insight into the mind of this most interesting director.

Bachmann, Gideon. “The Man on the Volcano: A Portrait of Werner Herzog.” Film Quarterly, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Autumn, 1977): 2-10. In JSTOR [cited 9 April 2008].

This article attempts to describe the mindset of Werner Herzog. Written in 1977, it describes briefly his childhood being raised by his mother in rural Bavaria and then Munich. It describes some of his most unusual encounters, including flying to Guadeloupe to film a documentary about an impending volcano eruption, stealing monkeys from a South American airport while posing as a health inspector, and threatening the Greek army with firearms when they tried to stop the filming of a scene. Later, the paper equates both his films and life to “one continual struggle to overcome obstacles he himself alone sees, has created, or puts in the way of his films’ heroes.” For Herzog, he has no distinct professional or personal life. Starting out he worked in a factory to finance his first shorts rather than seek out funding from a producer. Each film shows a world of “despair and destruction” with a character who suffers throughout the film, failing in their given goal. Later, the author discusses how Herzog is willing to risk death in order to capture a story he sees necessary, as in the case of the volcano documentary, La Soufriere. Additionally, Herzog’s eccentric feats don’t limit themselves to the realm of filmmaking such as when he walked from Munich to Paris in the winter without a camera crew.
In examining in greater detail the personality of Werner Herzog, one begins to see the pattern of his radical commitment to film. While Fitzcarraldo perhaps marks the height of his creating enormous obstacles to overcome, the film marks a continuation of earlier exploits. By looking at his personality, his films appear to be an extension of himself. In all aspects of his life he seeks to accomplish extraordinary things, and his passion for filmmaking allows him to capture that to share with the world.

Maslin, Janet. "Werner Herzog’s Struggle for Mind Over Matter." New York Times, 12 October 1982, Late City Final Edition. In Lexis-Nexis [database Online] [cited 9 April 2008].

This New York Times feature of Fitzcarraldo offers Herzog’s perspective on the production of the film. He claims that if there had been a jungle with two rivers and a mountain in Central Park he would have been happy to film there instead of remote areas of Peru. He denies that he intentionally seeks obstructions and dangers when filming, only doing what he sees necessary to produce the film. In describing the historical Fitzcarrald, he states, “It's the stupid, uninteresting story of a man who exploited a vast area.” Herzog saw the boat scene as far more than just moving the vessel over a mountain. It was a symbol of a clash of cultures and a clash of dreams. He justified the choice to film the scene as he did in saying “so many rich details that you never thought of beforehand, there is so much more than you can imagine, that what the film gains in texture rewards your toil a hundred times.”
    Multiple sources in this project criticize Herzog for the decision to force so many people to endure the conditions necessary for this film and question the necessity of actually moving the boat over the mountain. This interview-heavy feature allows Herzog to rebut the criticism. The piece shows that Herzog is not quite the nutcase filmmaker that some see him to be. He has a deep commitment to making the movie exactly as he sees fit. The direct quotations also provide an example of Herzog’s conversational style. When he bluntly calls the story of the original rubber baron “stupid,” one can therefore infer that he sees the story of the exploration and seeking to establish a rubber plantation as relatively unimportant in the film. The moving of the boat over the mountain appears to be the greatest part for him, along with most other viewers. Additionally, the shaping of the fictional character demonstrates the huge importance of opera in understanding the character of Fitzcarraldo.

Zorach, Cecilia Cazort. "Geographical Exploration as Metaphor in Recent German Narrative." The German Quarterly 59 (1986 ): 611-627.

    Zorach’s article analyzes the symbolic meaning of geographical exploration specifically within the context of German culture. She states that it is a long-standing theme throughout German narrative, heavily tied to the fact that historically Germany did not play a major role in any of the great explorations. Zorach argues that exploration is a way of exploring the boundary between civilization and nature, with the explorer acting as a figure between these two worlds. Exploration also acts as a metaphor for artistic expression, with creativity imagined as the last frontier and the outcome of conquest. On a whole, the exploration is never about contributing to society or advancing knowledge, but is conceived of as a more personal and subjective experience in which irrationality is a common theme. The journey is not a progression to discovery, but a haphazard product of individual consciousness in which the problematic searchers become far more interesting than the successful heroes.

    As this article points out, the geographical quest in Aguirre is about far more than finding El Dorado. The search for the Golden City is a MacGuffin or plot device that keeps the narrative driving forward but has little to do with the actual actions portrayed. Instead, Aguirre carries out this predominant theme of German narrative in the ways that Zorach suggests. The subjectivity and irrationality that she highlights as key elements are present in the manic figure of Aguirre as well as in the confusion between illusion and reality that occurs at the end of the film in the form of the ship in the tree. The journey is one man’s quest to carve a place for himself in history and follows a psychological rather than physical trajectory. At the same time, the idea that geographical exploration is a metaphor for artistic expression is reflected both in the character of Aguirre and the process of filmmaking. When Aguirre discusses his desire to “make history while others put plays upon the stage,” he is declaring the direction of history as his own form of creative expression. Zorach further argues that, in a way, he is talking about filmmaking. By disregarding the real expedition of Lope de Aguirre, Herzog is purposefully defying logic to create his own world that places art above historical fact. The goal of the geographical exploration of the film as a whole can be viewed as making history itself into a form of artistic expression.

Bachmann, Gideon. "The Man on the Volcano: A Portrait of Werner Herzog." Film Quarterly 31 (1977): 2-10.

    Bachmann takes a look at the personality of Werner Herzog in an effort to understand the man behind the films. In particular, he examines Herzog’s penchant for storytelling in his own life and the way in which he tends to exaggerate reality in recounting his experiences. Bachmann states that Herzog draws no line between fact and fiction and does not see this embellishment as fictionalized invention. In fact, the author claims that the secret to Herzog’s films is his “ability to convince the viewer that Herzog’s version of the truth is in fact truth.” The man has the ability to create a reality and bring fantastic visions to material fulfillment. He is opposed to the idea that filmmaking is a kind of manipulation and does not believe he alters the objectivity of people or situations by incorporating them into his works. Herzog's ultimate goal is to produce images that enlighten and broaden human understanding, and he feels compelled to go to spectacular ends to force these visions out of himself for the world to see.

    Herzog’s relationship to fiction and reality plays a key role in understanding Aguirre and the way in which it handles history. The film deals heavily with concepts of illusion and the difficulty of distinguishing between fact and fiction, particularly in the final scenes of the film when the men on the raft lose all hold on reality. Yet taking a step back, Bachmann’s notion of Herzog as an inventor (though he himself rejects this characterization) must be considered in relation to how the film seeks to portray history. As several of the other articles in this project stress, Aguirre plays with real historical events and fashions a new story out of an amalgamation of facts and Herzog’s own personal vision. The film truly tries to create an illusion of historical reality, suggesting that the recording of history can never be viewed as a representation of objective truth. While one can examine the character of Aguirre and his quest as a work of illusion within the film, Herzog’s personal process of filmmaking can also be seen as uniquely tied to the creation of an illusion of reality, perhaps even more so than the basic illusion inherent in cinema as a mechanical production. Aguirre and Herzog’s overall style can be viewed as an allegory for history itself, which is truly all about creating the illusion that one version of the truth is the truth.

Sharman, Gundula M. "The Jungle Strikes Back: European Defeat at the Hands of the South American Landscape in the Films of Werner Herzog." Journal of Transatlantic Studies 2 (2004): 96-109.

    Sharman examines the complex relationship between Europe and South America by analyzing European interactions with the jungle in film. In particular, he focuses on how the jungle can be interpreted as the victor in Aguirre, considering how the characters in the film and even Herzog himself interact with it as a character of its own. For Sharman, the use of the jungle by European filmmakers is a kind of “post-colonial colonization” in which Europeans continue to exploit the resources of South America by trying to co-opt its spiritual and expressive qualities. Throwing man against the jungle and having him lose is a way for the Western world to resolve its anxiety over the advances of science and the possibility that humans may destroy themselves through technology. Thus, even as the Amazon is being destroyed by man’s advances, European filmmakers and Herzog in particular use the victorious jungle to create a new myth in which nature always wins. Sharman warns that this use of the jungle to satisfy a European “metaphysical need” is undoubtedly still a form of exploitation and threatens to further use up the resources of the natural world by fetishizing it as a kind of spiritual object.

    While Aguirre is often viewed as mainly critical of European colonial tendencies, Sharman’s analysis complicates the relationship between the film and the portrayal of Spanish conquest in the Amazon. It is clear that the jungle is the victor in the film, and the completeness of the its triumph is most evident in the final scene when all but Aguirre have fallen and monkeys begin to overrun the raft as the lone survivor makes an eloquent yet futile speech about how he will determine the course of history. But Sharman points out that this European failure, put forth as a representation of historical truth, is “at best an illusion,” a theme that runs throughout the film itself. With the failure of Aguirre, Herzog and the European psyche are able to triumph and find release by using the primitive power of the jungle to deal with their own postmodern disillusionment. Thus, while the original forms of colonialism may be criticized in Aguirre, the film can in fact be viewed as exercising a new kind of cultural colonization through the exploitation of the symbolic power of the jungle. This article establishes the importance of analyzing Aguirre within the historical context of colonialism to understand how a portrayal of the interaction between the West and the jungle in the past reflects and complicates present-day cultural relations.

Arthur, Paul. “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.” The Criterion Collection: Burden of Dreams (2005). <http://www.criterion.com/asp/release.asp?id=287&eid=415&section=essay> [cited 8 April 2008].
 
This essay discusses the documentary Burden of Dreams, which follows the four-year long production of Fitzcarraldo. Arthur argues that the film acts as a counterweight to Herzog’s fanatical view of the world. For example when Herzog obsesses over the “obscenity” of the jungle, Blank cuts to beautiful images of the natural state of the jungle. The essay also offers insights into the production of the film, involving total isolation of the crew in the Amazon, sending a riverboat he used down a series of rapids with the crew onboard, and the use of large numbers of local tribesmen. Lastly, the paper touches on how the filming of the movie in many ways paralleled the story being filmed.
In watching Fitzcarraldo and hearing Herzog’s perspective, one often loses track of exactly how outrageous of feat the filming of the movie actually was. The paper hints at but never fully explains the irony in the fact that Fitzcarraldo tells the story of a crazed European adventurer who goes into the Peruvian Amazon to accomplish a monumental feat, and Herzog, also crazed European adventurer, does precisely the same thing in order to film the movie. The paper does seem, however, to degrade Fitzcarraldo, making it seem almost like an adventurous folly whose greatest achievement was the production of Burden of Dreams.  While the latter may be a superb, even revolutionary documentary, Fitzcarraldo remains an incredible cinematic achievement unworthy of the negative tone Arthur takes towards it.

Kael, Pauline. "The Current Cinema." The New Yorker, 18 October 1982, 173-178.

This extremely critical review of Fitzcarraldo offers an insight into the production of the film, historical context, and mindset of Herzog. After praising Aguirre the Wrath of God, Pauline Kael gives the historical inspiration for the film. An Irishman, Fitzcarrald, who made a fortune in the Peruvian rubber trade made hundreds of natives disassemble a small boat and carry it from one river to another. In contrast to the film character, the real life he had already made a fortune and had no desire to build an opera house. Herzog then took this story, multiplied the size of the ship by ten, used a mountain twice as steep, and decided to not disassemble his ship. He did elect to use several hundred native Amazonians. Additionally, Kael mentions the inspiration of the ruins at Carnac on Herzog’s decision to move the ship. She then argues that film relies on illusions, which Herzog ignored in the production of Fitzcarraldo. To Herzog, using sets and models would have made the picture look fake, but Kael argues special effects can create a convincing picture without endangering the lives of everyone involved. She also notes that Herzog sees the making of a film as a challenge for all involved, seeing it as a curse. He views the fatalities that occurred on the set as a setback, all in the name of filmmaking and great art.

This review helps one to understand the mindset of Herzog going into Fitzcarraldo and the creative liberties he took in using historical facts. By contrasting the actual rubber baron with Kinski’s character, one sees how Herzog made the character more interesting. Whereas the actual person sought only financial gain, the film character seeks to build an opera house modeled after that of Manaus. The moving of the ship over the mountain gives the character a new dimension of determination, with the ultimate goal of creating great art, an opera house. Herzog’s characters often have desires to accomplish incredible feats, not unlike himself. His fanaticism in risking peoples’ lives to make a movie poses a great moral question, particularly given his disgust at the exploitation of Amazonian Natives over the years. While Kael sees the ordeal of Fitzcarraldo’s production as unnecessary, it still remains a remarkable feat.