Friday, November 11, 2005

Cobra Verde and The Jesus Of Cinema

Adam Witt here, checking in early in the second leg of the complete, and I mean complete Werner Herzog film festival. The main films I'm looking forward to this week are COBRA VERDE, INVINCIBLE, MY BEST FIEND, and GRIZZLY MAN. I didn't have to wait long for COBRA VERDE, it was the first film screened tonight and Kinski Fever has taken the festival, again, by storm. I think Cobra Verde was made like 9 years after Fitzcarraldo, so I always seemed like an afterthought to their collaborations, like it was their Mask of Zorro or Chainsaw Massacre 2 that they pulled out years after the magic was gone, but Cobra Verde was every bit as amazing as their other work. There was maybe something a little stale about it in comparison, but when you're grading it on a scale of Fitzcarraldo to Woyczek anything's a compliment. it's like having a "lesser" collaboration between Burton & Depp.

Once again, GORGEOUS FILM, with some striking visuals that caused the usual "did you just see what I saw?" moments between the attendees, which, admittedly was me and Chris, but it blew our minds.

COBRA VERDE seems to form a trilogy between AGUIRRE and FITZCARRALDO about Western interests pushing into native territories and the overreaching of certain icarus-types at a fulcrum-point in industrialization. I know it sounds off, but you CAN have three films about that. They're also three movies in which Herzog put himself completely in the middle of other cultures with no contact to the Western world to make these movies in which his psyche while going through such events is put onscreeen through the eyes of Kinski. Yes, you can have three films like that.

And then we had twenty minutes between movies so we watched some of the documentary on the making of the making of Fitzcarraldo (there's also a commentary track on the making of with Werner Herzog commenting on someone commenting on him, it is about as Meta as the world gets) and Herzog constantly states that had he given up on Fitzcarraldo, had he not pushed himself and nearly killed himself, had he given up he would be a man without dreams. He sermonizes very passionately about art and that no goal is too high if you love your art. He makes art so important, life or death important, and to show you how life or death important it is, he puts his life and sanity on the line to make a movie. Self sacrifice so that we all may be inspired to greatness. It's like he's the Jesus of Cinema.

Right now I have a African documentary on African mating rituals. Don't laugh, It's a culture where the men have to dress up and attract the women.

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