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A review by tittypete
Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo by Werner Herzog
4.0
Read the below in the voice of the fingerless bad guy from the first Jack Reacher movie:
Miserable Jungle Village, Early 1980s
All around me the jungle hisses. Its stench of obscenity and indifference wafting through the llianas. In the morning I went deep into the foliage to defecate and was followed by a large turgid pig which snuffled hungrily as last night’s meal of yucca and masato fell from my backside to the dead leaves of the jungle floor. Several Indians died making hats from banana fronds. I am consumed by darkness and self-loathing. Walter has snagged his penis on a frayed piece of cable meant to bring the ship over the mountain. Now it is infected and looks like a dachshund wearing an oversized wetsuit made of decaying walrus flesh. It seeps pus. Gloria says she will leave him. We have to fly him to Iquitos for medical attention but cannot because the pilot has gouged out his eyes with the remains of a broken beer bottle. While weeping I noticed my tears tasted of mutton.
Last night I road my motorcycle through a battered women’s shelter. I no longer know what success means.
The ship is stuck in the mud and everything is rotten. An Indian was bit by and uncommon snake and cut of his own leg with a machete. He was bitten on the arm.
Kinski stared screaming so vehemently I thought his veins would burst. He was upset that all of the typewriters only had QWERTY keyboards. In the night, a child cried and it sounded like Wagner.
All around me is misery and the impenetrable brownness of the river. Huerequeque has Malaria and is insistent I sell him a non-functioning boat motor of which I do not claim ownership. Drug dealers have murdered the albino turkey with the tumorous blue face. Laundry chemicals have stripped a duck of its feather oils and now it cannot stay afloat. I watched it sink. Quacking up into the apathy of Mother Nature’s earless face.
Tomorrow we will have the ship over the mountain and into the Urubamba. I must prevent the Indians from killing Kinski. Contrary to what the Italian press are printing, Claudia Cardinale has not been hit by a truck. We are wait for parts from Manaus.
In a week old Czech newspaper I read of a Japanese who performed surgery on his own haemorrhoids by squatting over the reflective surface of a disused tin can.
I have done nothing but be here.
…
This book was essentially two years worth of journal entries like this detailing the production of Herzog’s movie Fitzcarraldo in which the main plot point is the dragging of a giant river ship over a mountain in the middle of the amazon. He did it. He filmed. All with not special effects and in the process it seems he went a bit nuts. It’s like reading a fever dream that ends in a shrug. There’s some really great quotes though.
Net-Net: I gotta watch Fitzcarraldo again.
Miserable Jungle Village, Early 1980s
All around me the jungle hisses. Its stench of obscenity and indifference wafting through the llianas. In the morning I went deep into the foliage to defecate and was followed by a large turgid pig which snuffled hungrily as last night’s meal of yucca and masato fell from my backside to the dead leaves of the jungle floor. Several Indians died making hats from banana fronds. I am consumed by darkness and self-loathing. Walter has snagged his penis on a frayed piece of cable meant to bring the ship over the mountain. Now it is infected and looks like a dachshund wearing an oversized wetsuit made of decaying walrus flesh. It seeps pus. Gloria says she will leave him. We have to fly him to Iquitos for medical attention but cannot because the pilot has gouged out his eyes with the remains of a broken beer bottle. While weeping I noticed my tears tasted of mutton.
Last night I road my motorcycle through a battered women’s shelter. I no longer know what success means.
The ship is stuck in the mud and everything is rotten. An Indian was bit by and uncommon snake and cut of his own leg with a machete. He was bitten on the arm.
Kinski stared screaming so vehemently I thought his veins would burst. He was upset that all of the typewriters only had QWERTY keyboards. In the night, a child cried and it sounded like Wagner.
All around me is misery and the impenetrable brownness of the river. Huerequeque has Malaria and is insistent I sell him a non-functioning boat motor of which I do not claim ownership. Drug dealers have murdered the albino turkey with the tumorous blue face. Laundry chemicals have stripped a duck of its feather oils and now it cannot stay afloat. I watched it sink. Quacking up into the apathy of Mother Nature’s earless face.
Tomorrow we will have the ship over the mountain and into the Urubamba. I must prevent the Indians from killing Kinski. Contrary to what the Italian press are printing, Claudia Cardinale has not been hit by a truck. We are wait for parts from Manaus.
In a week old Czech newspaper I read of a Japanese who performed surgery on his own haemorrhoids by squatting over the reflective surface of a disused tin can.
I have done nothing but be here.
…
This book was essentially two years worth of journal entries like this detailing the production of Herzog’s movie Fitzcarraldo in which the main plot point is the dragging of a giant river ship over a mountain in the middle of the amazon. He did it. He filmed. All with not special effects and in the process it seems he went a bit nuts. It’s like reading a fever dream that ends in a shrug. There’s some really great quotes though.
Net-Net: I gotta watch Fitzcarraldo again.