"i will move mountains"

so i kept my word and ended up seeing Fitzcarraldo last week. I still haven't seen that much of Herzog's fiction films (actually only The Mystery of Kaspar Hauser) so its nice to have another film of his in my mind to compare. I kind of wish I could see Fitzcarraldo again, because even though i was aware of its famous backstory of people leaving the set, being injured, threatened, or otherwise made to feel very uncomfortable, I wonder still how much of the real life trauma affected the people on set and Herzog himself. The boat being dragged over the mountain seemed like an accomplishment in a documentary sense more than in a fictional sense. It seemed real. As did the tension between the native Peruvians and the actors. I really wonder what Herzog's intention with this film was from before production. I mean, I thought it was uplifting in a certain sense. The final scene with the opera on the boat going down the Amazon was very positive. But the film is so overwhelmingly negative at times, its kind of hard to distinguish where Herzog wants us to have hope and courage along with Fitzcarraldo and where he wants us to acknowledge that he's a hopeless madman. Maybe he felt like he needed to throw on that ridiculously happy ending because the film was such a disaster in production that he needed to give Fitzcarraldo, and in turn himself and everyone involved, some hope, unlike some of his other films (Kaspar Hauser, Grizzly Man) where the madmen meet tragic deaths. Or maybe it became less about the fact that Fitzcarraldo was "mad" (even though i don't think he's necessarily crazy just because he really really likes opera), or about his character at all, and more about pursuing a dream and pushing it as far as it can go. Therefore the entirety of the experience ends on a hopeful note not because the mission was successful, but because they tried so damn hard.

I don't know. At least Claudia Cardinale is always smiling.

Anyway I think its worth it to see this movie again. I also really need to see more of Herzog's films. I think with each one i see i understand more about the ones i've seen previously.

I do like this picture though: