the frig blig

My brother and his wife took the fish and me on a scenic hike along a mountain creek up in Beech Mountain. Looks something like this:

If you guessed ‘Fitzcarraldo’ based on the title of this post, bully for you. The fish and I watched aforesaid flick the night before last on our historic futon.

This 1982 film written and directed by Werner Herzog and starring Klaus Kinski in the title role is pretty cool. Watching Kinski speak german while pretending to be Irish took a little getting used to, but he was quite captivating as portraying the opera-obsessed eccentric capitalist with a dream of bringing european opera to the Peruvian jungle.

A film like this would no doubt utilize computers for effects today, rather than the huge expense of filming an actual steamboat being pulled up a real mountain by Indian laborers.

Seeing so many opera scenes made me compare director Herzog with composer Richard Wagner; both men are fond of creating large works with ambitious, epic themes. And both are skilled at their craft. And both are German.

This was the 3rd Herzog film I’ve watched, and the first with a happy ending I’m glad to report. All three films focus on men with near-crazy obsessions. They were all very intense, and powerful films.