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A review by josh_paul
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog
4.0
There's a lot going on in this little book. The ostensible subject is Herzog's experience travelling to the Peruvian Amazon to film a movie called Fitzcarcaldo. It is not, however, about the technical aspects making a movie. Rather, I got the sense that Fitzcaraldo was conceived as an excuse for Herzog to go off into the jungle and go midly insane as a sort of performance art. Conequest of the Useless is a his documentation of this project.
As you might guess, Herzog presents himself as a highly unreliable narrator. He mentions a number of times the terrible rumors being spread about him "I was made out by the media to be a criminal, and a grotesque tribunal was convened in Germany to judge me."
He also shifts seamlessly between real events, dreams he had, and (I think) some kind of feverish hallucinations without distinguishing them. The only real signal the the events he's describing didn't happen is that they're outlandish. E.g., while in the jungle "I had received another telex, monosyllabic, saying it was the twilight of the gods, and I knew who had sent it and what the code meant. Then I was in the high mountains, Hindu Kush or the Himalayas, and at a great altitude I had to fight my way forward, sunk up to my chest in powder snow."
This question of what's really going on often takes an entertaining turn. For instance, he claims that a "scholar" asserts that "the opera house in Manaus, the Teatro Amazonas, is a spaceship, not built by human beings. He simply rejects all reports of its construction—the blueprints, the photos, all the supporting documents—claiming they are government forgeries."
Herzog is a great fabulist because he seems so guileless. His descriptions are often rather childlike, e.g. on a movie he saw: "Argentinean film, with one very thin man and one very fat one, blondes with bursting breasts and naughty lingerie, which was hanging up to dry in the kitchen belonging to one of the women. Because of his girth, the fat man could not duck down very well, so he kept bumping into the dangling panties and bras, rolling his eyes in ecstasy." This was apparently quite funny, and Herzog's companion laughed uproariously. "In one scene the fat man was also playing tennis." He describes several films in the book - this is one of his more positive takes.
I'm giving this 4 stars because it is largely original and unlike other books I have read, but it's certainly not for everyone.
As you might guess, Herzog presents himself as a highly unreliable narrator. He mentions a number of times the terrible rumors being spread about him "I was made out by the media to be a criminal, and a grotesque tribunal was convened in Germany to judge me."
He also shifts seamlessly between real events, dreams he had, and (I think) some kind of feverish hallucinations without distinguishing them. The only real signal the the events he's describing didn't happen is that they're outlandish. E.g., while in the jungle "I had received another telex, monosyllabic, saying it was the twilight of the gods, and I knew who had sent it and what the code meant. Then I was in the high mountains, Hindu Kush or the Himalayas, and at a great altitude I had to fight my way forward, sunk up to my chest in powder snow."
This question of what's really going on often takes an entertaining turn. For instance, he claims that a "scholar" asserts that "the opera house in Manaus, the Teatro Amazonas, is a spaceship, not built by human beings. He simply rejects all reports of its construction—the blueprints, the photos, all the supporting documents—claiming they are government forgeries."
Herzog is a great fabulist because he seems so guileless. His descriptions are often rather childlike, e.g. on a movie he saw: "Argentinean film, with one very thin man and one very fat one, blondes with bursting breasts and naughty lingerie, which was hanging up to dry in the kitchen belonging to one of the women. Because of his girth, the fat man could not duck down very well, so he kept bumping into the dangling panties and bras, rolling his eyes in ecstasy." This was apparently quite funny, and Herzog's companion laughed uproariously. "In one scene the fat man was also playing tennis." He describes several films in the book - this is one of his more positive takes.
I'm giving this 4 stars because it is largely original and unlike other books I have read, but it's certainly not for everyone.