Conquest of the Useless

by Werner Herzog, Unknown Author

Werner Herzog (Grizzly Man) is one of the most revered and enigmatic filmmakers of our time, and Fitzcarraldo is one of his most honored and admired films. More than just Herzog’s journal of the making of the monumental, problematical motion picture, which involved, among other things, major cast changes and reshoots, and the hauling (without the use of special effects) of a 360-ton steamship over a mountain , Conquest of the Useless is  a work of art unto itself, an Amazonian fever dream that emerged from the delirium of the jungle. With fascinating observations about crew and players—including Herzog’s lead, the somewhat demented internationally renowned star Klaus Kinski—and breathtaking insights into the filmmaking process that are uniquely Werner Herzog, Conquest of the Useless is an eye-opening look into the mind of a cinematic master.

Genres: Film, Nonfiction, Biography, Memoir, Art, Media Tie In, German Literature

Paperback

First published January 1, 2004

About the author

Werner Herzog (born Werner Stipetić) is a German film director, screenwriter, actor, and opera director.

He is often associated with the German New Wave movement (also called New German Cinema), along with Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Margarethe von Trotta, Volker Schlöndorff, Wim Wenders and others. His films often feature heroes with impossible dreams, or people with unique talents in obscure fields.

Reviews

[julieta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Este libro es una locura! un cuaderno en donde Herzog describe el día a día de la locura de filmar una película en el amazonas. Sus conflictos, encuentros con bichos, sueños extraños, problemas con actores, de dinero o legales, o con la gente local, la prensa, su disgusto con Lima (que cada vez que la menciona lo hace con cierto no se qué), sus disgustos con todo lo que puede salir mal, y que sale mal. Es genial, como meterte en la cabeza de alguien creando algo sumamente complejo, no solo por hacer una peli, sino todo lo que querían hacer, como construir dos barcos iguales que uno se queda encallado y no pueden terminar la peli, hasta algunos meses después cuando el río vuelve a subir. Ahora tendré que ver la peli, pero este libro me dejó con una sensación tan extraña, leer algo que no es que te lleve a alguna parte, tiene su propio encanto. Muy genial.

[Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here's something to do before the end of the month: read this book and watch "Fitzcarraldo," "Aguirre: Wrath of God," the Herzog documentary about Klaus Kinski called "My Best Fiend," and the Les Blank documentary about the making of "Fitzcarraldo" called "The Burden of Dreams." A highly recommended crash course in Herzogian ecstatic beauty . . . At one point, a diary entry begins with a hilarious understatement, something like "Profoundly unreconciled to nature." But the writing is so natural and the descriptions of the jungle and mountains and fog and insects and, well, nature in general are profoundly evocative. Like all Herzog documentaries, you also have to sort of treat it like fiction. Mick Jagger, who was in the film early on, is portrayed as pleasantly impish. The New York Times review was idiotic, wishing for more logistic/technical information about certain shots, or Coppola's role etc. The reviewer wanted characters who appeared once to be introduced and appear again, as in a novel or non-fiction, not a journal -- he wanted a non-Herzogian non-fiction, essentially. But this thing reeks of Herzog everywhere as he charts the athletic/spiritual endurance required of pulling off an ambition like this, and also the singular sort of obsessed perspective that allows it to happen in the first place. Also, it's real funny. Dozens of LOLs, often at audacious, over-the-top descriptions, or sudden crazy jumps from sentence to sentence. "Seen from the plane, the sheer expanse of the jungle is terrifying; no one who has not been there can picture it. We do not need virtuosos of syntax." And yet on every page Werner proves himself a virtuoso of seeing and describing what he's seen. This book is almost more about language than any particular film - Herzog's sentences seem to me sharper and funnier and more peculiarly individuated than those of most contemporary prose writers. Plus, this book seems to prove that what's inside the artist comes outside the artist. Hope he has a journal like this for Stroszek, too - another highly recommended movie (if you're a Joy Division fan you probably know this as the movie Ian Curtis watched before he hanged himself).

[Jeff Jackson · Rating 5 out of 5]

His documentaries are still strong, but Herzog the person has started to lapse into self-parody. It's easy to imagine his journal chronicling the torturous making of "Fitzcarraldo" would be chock full of madly hilarious Germanic ravings and pronouncements on the maniacal cruelty of nature and hairbrained insanity of the universe - but in fact this is a nuanced, affecting, microscopically observant, and sometimes visionary account of the inner and outer landscapes Herzog navigated during his epic filmmaking project in the jungle.

Those who have read the equally wonderful "Of Walking In Ice" know that Herzog is a superb stylist and his written voice is far richer than his relatively one-dimensional public persona. These entries are dense with physical and poetic detail, crafted to capture at least a sideways glance of those sensations which tend to elude language. As the book progresses, it would be helpful to be familiar with the movie but it's not strictly necessary. These dark ruminations and unflinching observations are their own reward.

And for those who crave the crazier Herzog, here are some prime bits of jungle madness:

"At the market I ate a piece a grilled monkey - it looked like a naked child."

"Our speedboat is stranded with gasket failure. The boatman forgot to take along spare parts and tools and is now waiting for a miraculous intervention that might revive the engine. Sweat, storm clouds overhead, sleeping dogs. There is a smell of stale urine. In my soup, ants and bugs were swimming among the globules of fat. Lord Almighty, send us an earthquake."

"For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do - out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation - look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing."

"Seen from the plane, the sheer expanse of jungle is terrifying: no one who has not been there can picture it. We do not need virtuosos of syntax."

[Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wanted to love this. But Herzog was right! This book IS the conquest of uselessness. Three stars to you, poor struggling soul! That's all I could manage for a struggling, useless book.

For, Herr Herzog, YOU are that fabled tenth of an inch difference of which the Platform Sutra writes:

A tenth of an inch's difference -
And Heaven and Earth are split asunder.

Why, as with that epic nothingness of Fitzcarraldo, would any sane believer (aside from the obvious choice Kierkegaard) seek to uselessly relive the Fall of Mankind, day in and day out for the rest of his earthly existence?

YOU would, Maestro.

Perhaps that's why I for so long admired this book negatively, being Christian.

Are you merely another Belacqua, Maestro, too lazy for the challenges of Mount Purgatory?

No, maesro. You're nothing if not lazy. But you're gone for glory and never gone TO glory! Grace is the missing link you're blind to.

Egoblind, you balk at nothing and go against the grain nonetheless: blind to the horrified looks on the conforming young penguins, who could never see themselves venturing away from them all alone, as he does, to certain death!

Why not conform and Believe?

Ego. For the ego of the most widely esteemed film noir director of our era is humoungous!

But I'll go on - even if you refuse to conform, Werner, to faith -

Into the Sunshine -

For if you kissed your joy as it flies
You’d live in Eternity's Sunrise.

[Manny]

From Marina Hyde's column in today's Guardian:

Anyway, let me conclude with a correction. A fortnight ago, I suggested the movie disaster Brexit was most like was Heaven’s Gate, simply because that notorious flop effectively collapsed a studio much in the way this crisis is threatening to collapse the UK. But I have since wondered whether the most closely analogous flop is Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo (don’t worry, you needn’t have seen it), which even its director came to see as “the conquest of the useless”. Stop me if any of this feels familiar, but during the making of it Herzog claimed to have stopped sleeping entirely – “I just have brief, strenuous fainting spells” – while actors he accused of immense stupidity were required to do things like drag a steamship over a mountain. Everyone on the movie behaved appallingly. Indeed, when I look back over all the progressively insane and insatiable demands of the ERG and others during this sorry saga, I think of the story of Herzog’s leading man Klaus Kinski, who on the very day he arrived on set screamed: “Not even my hairdresser is allowed to touch my hair!” And things went downhill from there. One of the crew was bitten by a snake and sawed off his own foot. Some of the extras offered to kill Kinski. Herzog talked them out of it on the basis that the film wouldn’t be finished.

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my favorite films of the 1980s was Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, about a 19th century Peruvian rubber baron who decides to bring the opera to the jungle city of Iquitos. In order to do this, he must find a way of moving a largish steamship over a ridge that separates two adjacent rivers, the Camisea and the Urubamba.

Naturally, such an idea is madness on the face of it. But Herzog did it, and the result is a film production that will continue to amaze people as long as films are being watched.

Almost equal to the film, however, is Herzog's journal of the making of the film, Conquest of the Useless: Reflections from the Making of Fitzcarraldo. Although in form the book is theoretically a documentation of an insanely difficult film production, it is as much a series of vignettes of life in the jungle, dreams, tales of encounters with snakes, spiders, Peruvian Indians, strange fish and birds, jungle rot, illnesses and wounds, and whatnot. Here is a brief example:

When I tossed a cigarette butt, still glowing, into a metal sewer grating, suddenly something like a snake shot up out of the damp, black sewer, seized the butt, dropped it again at once, and disappeared just as fast. It was a very large frog.

Here is another typical instance of jungle life:

Our kitchen crew slaughtered our last four ducks. While they were still alive, Julian plucked their neck feathers before chopping off their heads on the execution block. The albino turkey, that vain creature, the survivor of so many roast chickens and ducks transformed into soup, came over to inspect, gobbling and displaying, used his ugly feet to push one of the beheaded ducks as it lay there on the ground bleeding and flapping its wings into what he thought was a proper position, and making gurgling sounds while his bluish red wattles swelled, he mounted the dying duck and copulated with it.

There were also many descriptions of problems with the cast and crew, particularly with Klaus Kinski, who played the lead. After one of his crazier tantrums, a number of Campos Indians came up to Herzog and whispered whether he wanted to have the actor killed. Kinski got wind of what was going on and immediately died down.

This book is a classic and tells me more about the area around the Peruvian headwaters of the Amazon than I have seen in any other source. But then Herzog had made two films in the area. In addition to Fitzcarraldo, there was the equally excellent Aguirre, the Wrath of God, also starring Kinski. Also, this book gives me a good reason for never having wanted to become a film director: I would have gone stark raving mad and would have had to be killed by the Indians out of spite.

[Mariel · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm glad that I've not felt that compelled to HAVE to do something. But I kinda relate in feeling sometimes like people around me don't give a shit and I'm some crazy dreamer chick with a crazy dreamy look in her eyes.

But I also kinda wish that I had those visions in my head that had to come out in words and images. I've not felt the kind of righteous rightness that burdened me to create. Maybe that's why I almost never remember my dreams...

Fucking crazy stuff. I loved it. Like the rest of life was seen through a story focus lens, splitting details away for their fevered qualities.

I don't think the stories were contrived. If others wouldn't have seen it that way, well, they weren't Herzog.


I love the Destroyer song "Virgin with a Memory". It goes "Was it the movie or the making of Fitzcarraldo?" Right-on, Dan Bejar!

I forgot to mention the birds! All of the other reviews detail a terrific entry from Conquest of the Useless (damn now I can't talk about swimming with piranhas). I loved all of the tidbits about parrots and I'd try and guess what kinds they were based on the descriptions he gave. There were amazonians and caiques (my favorite kind of bird, pretty much)! I'd lose my mind in the jungle. I'd make a caique my king (and he would be a playful god). Only I couldn't go all Heart of Darkness and rip the monkey's (or bird's) head off either (that'd be like Steerpike from Gormenghast, too. Poor monkeys. Weren't those songs by ex-Genesis members enough???).

[María Carpio · Rating 4 out of 5]

A este libro le salen lianas, hojas gigantes, hormigas y tarántulas. También murciélagos, animales exóticos, perros sarnosos, niños con miradas extáticas, accidentes, enfermedades, mutilados e indígenas tratando de mover una embarcación enorme a través de un monte. Por tierra. A este libro lo engulle la selva, que solo sabe devorar y vivir el presente. El pasado es putrefacción constante. Herzog está loco, nos queda claro. Quizás no locura exactamente, pero sí una megalomanía rayana en insania, con una alta dosis de temeridad. Y aunque ello pareciera irracional, estas páginas revelan el alto nivel de consciencia y de razonamiento que rebasa la propia razón y la convierte en una pulsión primigenia que conecta el profundo inconciente del autor con ese pálpito primitivo de la tierra. Herzog está en dos niveles: el material, el de afuera, con el que realiza la película (Fitzcarraldo) que rodó mientras escribía este pseudo-diario de rodaje, y el inmaterial, el de adentro, el de su psiquis profunda y de su acoplamiento con la selva encarnada, que produce en él un fenómeno contemplativo y epifánico.

Dicho esto, no es un diario de rodaje, como señalé anteriormente. "Son paisajes interiores", como él mismo lo ha señalado. Lo que sabemos de lo que sucede durante la producción del filme está subordinado por ese escenario enorme y glotón que es la selva y lo que allí ocurre desde el nivel más aparentemente insignificante (el crecimiento de hongos) hasta los modos de vida de indígenas y mestizos en la selva de Iquitos en el Perú. Y es que es allí donde Herzog decidió llevar a cabo su empresa imposible -e inútil- de rodar una película sobre un hombre que decide construir una Ópera en plena selva y para ello debía trasladar una embarcación enorme por tierra a través de una montaña. No tiene sentido a primera vista, ni a segunda tampoco, pero recordemos que en Manaos, en plena Amazonia en el Brasil, existe una Ópera. Pero esa es otra historia. Hergoz mezcló dos historias reales (la otra es la de un comerciante peruano que quiso abrir una nueva ruta de navegación en la selva y para ello debía pasar un barco por tierra, pero no lo hizo entero sino por partes, a diferencia de la locura de Herzog), y entre 1980 y 1981 se lanzó a ese proyecto desquiciado, del que quedó un enorme vestigio poético acerca de las acciones idealizadas e inútiles y el recuerdo de la relación igual de desquiciada con Klaus Kinski, su actor fetiche y "su mejor enemigo".

Lo demás, es una lectura contemporánea que da cuenta de que la empresa absurda de Herzog ha envejecido mal en su aspecto idiosincrático. Salvo que a Herzog no le mueve la ambición monetaria, ni la gloria ni la fama, sino una mezcla de instinto idealista y a la vez megalómano, el proceso de producción y rodaje de esta película recrea, o quizás, pone en escena, el propio proceso de conquista y colonización de pueblos ancestrales. Me explico. Herzog no conquista nada, no coloniza nada (ya está hecho todo eso a estas alturas), pero sí invade y sí usa mano de obra barata indígena y sí explota trabajo (pagó por ello pero sigue resultando antiético por las condiciones de vida en los campamentos), y también se aprovecha de sus privilegios como blanco-europeo. Eso está clarísimo. Y por eso reproduce, a escala de la ficción, esa estructura de sometimiento y dominación que hoy con conciencia más aguda, tratamos de erradicar. En aquellos tiempos aún no era mal visto contratar cientos de indios y mantenerlos en condiciones míseras (más que todo debido a lo agreste y precario de la selva) para llevar a cabo un proyecto como este. El proyecto en sí era absurdo e irrealizable pero Herzog gracias a su necedad y tesón lo logró, no sin antes cargarse incluso con vidas humanas. Algo así como las construcciones de ferrocarriles en el pasado siglo XIX.

Y sin embargo, pese a todo ello, este es un documento riquísimo ahogado en poesía y reflexiones profundas consmogónicas y ontológicas que solo son posibles por esa conexión con la naturaleza más salvaje que desarrolla el autor en su estancia durante la producción y el rodaje de la película. Él no es inocente y sabe lo que está haciendo. No es un mea culpa, reconoce y acepta todo. No es solo la vida de los indígenas y el equipo de rodaje que arriesga, sino la propia vida. Varias veces está a punto de morir. Esto de alguna forma lo iguala al resto, deja de ser el explotador para convertirse en uno más de los explotados por su ideal magnánimo que se convierte ya en un ser autónomo. Una paradoja enorme, inquietante, con un resultado que vale la pena leer.

[Karen · Rating 4 out of 5]

What else can you do but give this one two thumbs up? The man hauled a steamship over a mountain in the Amazon. There's nothing about that that isn't ridiculous, amazing, destructive, damaging, obsessive, incomprehensible, baffling, gratuitous, pointless, staggering, horrible, laughable, great.

I've seen My Best Fiend, Herzog's documentary about his relationship with Klaus Kinski, which contains a lot of footage of the making of Fitzcarraldo, the ship-hauling movie. Reading his diaries from the movie shoot recalled many of those scenes--Kinski raving and screaming, Herzog looking drawn and dour, animals shrieking, machinery breaking in impressive and dangerous ways, a general aura of doom.

I remember Herzog narrating in his dolorous Teutonic accent over the sounds of jungle creatures, something like, "People think the jungle is beautiful. It isn't beautiful. It's in agony. The birds...the animals, they are in agony." I was ready to believe him, but after reading his diaries it makes even more sense. Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong. There are military coups, political battles, bad media attention, deaths and injuries, disease, fussy American actors, equipment thefts, droughts, floods, alligators, and angst. So much angst. The jungle is not a happy place.

All that said, this is an amazing record of an amazing work. Herzog never tries to explain the meaning of his vision--the ship hauled over the mountaintop--but he also never compromises it. He works doggedly, miserably, past the point of all reason, to make the movie he wants. It's as much an inspiration as a kind of warning. Parents, don't let your kids grow up to be filmmakers. Or if you do, make sure they have strong constitutions.

[Nancy Oakes · Rating 5 out of 5]

http://www.nonfictionrealstuff.com/20...

As Werner Herzog tells us in his preface, this book is not a collection of "reports on the actual filming," and it is not a journal, "except in a very general sense." He refers to it as "inner landscapes, born of the delirium of the jungle," but then says that he's not sure if that's really it either. The book covers the period from June 1979 through November 1981 during the making of Fitzcarraldo and while it is filled with some of the struggles he endured while trying to get his movie off the ground, it is also a deeply personal account, suffused with his observations about the Amazon jungle, its people, the rivers, and his own relationship with nature, trying to find some insight into it all while trying to maintain a sense of calm as the leader of the enterprise.

One thing that I discovered in reading this book is that there are a number of similarities between Herzog and his character Fitzcarraldo, who is more than once referred to in the film as "the conquistador of the useless." Both are dreamers, and both in their own way are lunatics, compelled by their visions. At some point Herzog notes that his project and character have become identical," and certainly, there is no greater truth in this book.

And while it's not a tell-all sort of thing, if you're interested in such details as his frustration with Klaus Kinski, or what it was like to work with Mick Jagger and Claudia Cardinale, that's here too, but this book reaches much deeper.

highly recommended, especially if you've seen Fitzcarraldo and Burden of Dreams.

[Dubravka · Rating 4 out of 5]

Moja nekritička naklonost prema Herzogu još je porasla nakon ovoga iskustva.... Objektivno, bilješke su repetitivne, entropične, zamorne - a u isto vrijeme nevjerojatne, čulne i predivne (uz jedinu zamjerku da se u nekim - rijetkim - epizodama možda malko nelagodno doima odnos prema domorodačkim suradnicima na filmu).

[Guillermo · Rating 5 out of 5]

«Mejor dicho: los gritos de los pájaros, porque en este paisaje inacabado y abandonado por Dios en un arrebato de ira, los pájaros no cantan, sino que gritan de dolor, y árboles enmarañados se pelean entre sí con sus garras de gigantes, de horizonte a horizonte, entre las brumas de una creación que no llegó a concretarse. Jadeantes de niebla y agotados, los árboles se yerguen en este mundo irreal, en una miseria irreal; y yo, como en la estrofa de un poema en una lengua extranjera que no entiendo, estoy allí, profundamente asustado».

[Karmologyclinic · Rating 5 out of 5]

But in the film the geography has to be visible: two rivers that almost touch, with only a mountain ridge between them, over which the ship has to be hauled. Without that understanding the point of the story is lost says Herzog.

In the jungle things can go wrong and everything that could go wrong did, in Herzog's case. And people kept asking him, why can't we ditch the scene with the ship or fake it at least? And he replies, because there is a metaphor there, without this metaphor there is no film. So, what is the metaphor, they asked him. I don't know, I can't express it with words but it is there. And it is important, he replied.

In my opinion, the metaphor of the ship being hauled over the ridge is open, it is all inclusive, that's why it is all important. The metaphor has become in itself art. It can become anything at all in each person's mind. Whether you think it is about madness, human endurance, humanity, mortality, vanity, colonialism, the conquest of the useless, the burden of dreams you would be correct. In a very introspective moment I thought it was about the divide between conscious and unconscious mind and you know what, maybe I was right maybe I wasn't, not important. The metaphor is there for all to carry around inside them. If the fleshed out metaphor was faked, it would have lost its power. I have a feeling that in this movie Herzog has blended performance art with movie and they coexist symbiotically.

All that is to be reported is this: I took part.

Leaving my musings aside, this book, the diary Herzog kept while shooting the film, is not about the film. You will not find descriptions of how he did what and why. It is a diary of everything else that happens while they shoot this film. And you are left to wonder, how the hell did they finish shooting it, with literally everything going awry?

In the face of the obscene, explicit malice of the jungle, which lacks only dinosaurs as punctuation, I feel like a half-finished, poorly expressed sentence in a cheap novel

It is also a diary of Herzog's astute observation of landscapes and innerscapes. Funny and vaguely dreamlike.

Once more, despite all my attempts at fending it off, a shuddering sense creeps into me of being trapped in the stanza of a strange poem, and it shakes me so violently that I glance around superstitiously to see whether anyone is watching me.

Does the monkey dream my dreams in the branches above me? I ordered a beer, and my voice sounded altered, like the voice of a parrot imitating operatic arias. The sun sank in an angry blaze. For a moment, and for the only time I think I can remember, the earth struck me as motherly, covered with a decaying forest that seemed positively humble. A large brown moth was boring into the smooth concrete floor as if it wanted to go down into the earth, and beating its wings so violently that the wooden sound it created blended with the electrical hissing and crackling of a dying fluorescent bulb overhead like a symphony from the depths of a ghastly universe, a universe readying itself for the final harvest.

You would expect a colonialism in his approach, but there is none. It struck me at how authentic his reactions and his relationship with the jungle became.

The jungle, existing exclusively in the present, is certainly subject to time, but remains forever ageless. Any concept of justice would be antithetical to all this. But is there justice in the desert, either? Or in the oceans? And in the depths? Life in the sea must be pure hell, an infinite hell of constant and ever-present danger, so unbearable that in the course of evolution some species—including Homo sapiens—crawled, fled, onto some clods of firm land, the future continents.

I looked around, and there was the jungle, manifesting the same seething hatred, wrathful and steaming, while the river flowed by in majestic indifference and scornful condescension, ignoring everything: the plight of man, the burden of dreams, and the torments of time.

A declaration I feel I should make is that I am a big fan of Werner Herzog, I like his good stuff and I also celebrate his failures. There is meaning in them. Or I find it. The same with Cronenberg.

[Spiros · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fear and Loathing in the Peruvian Jungle: Werner Herzog's Pursuit of his Dream.
I feel that it is a fairly safe statement that never has a film production been so fraught by so many factors: political hurdles, extortionate local bureaucrats, wars between indiginous tribes, plane crashes, torrential down pours, drought, dried up funding, drunken extras, drunken crew, drunken actors, snakes, seperate media circuses involving Mick Jagger and Claudia Cardinale, snakes, and Klaus Kinski, to name just a few. Herzog battles against his head of production, against the jungle, against illness, and against gruesome injuries to himself and his crew: "Mauch said he could not take any more, that he was going to faint, and I told him to go ahead. Then he thought he was going to shit his pants from the pain, but he could not decide between the two options, and in the end did neither."
Herzog, despite a prediliction for filming in extreme environments, is not a wide-eyed lover of nature: "The jungle, existing exclusively in the present, is certainly subject to time, but remains forever ageless. Any concept of justice would be antithetical to all this. But is there justice in the desert, either? Or in the oceans? And in the depths? Life in the sea must be pure hell, an infinite hell of constant and ever-present danger, so unbearable that in the course of evoltion some species - including Homo sapiens - crawled, fled, onto some clods of firm land, the future continents."
Somewhat surprisingly, a confessed fear of spiders runs through this journal; as I expected, an almost pathological loathing of chickens pervades the entries. Unsurprisingly, it would seem that Huerequeque didn't have to do any acting: he played himself. A leit-motif running through the journals is the bizarre quality of the news from civilization that filters down into the jungle: the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, the account of the Japanese surgeon who remved his own appendix, the computer in Miami which sent a dilatory insurance client 24,000 notices of late payment of a monthly premium. Juxtaposed to the shambolic film production, these intimations of entropy from beyond the trees have a tendancy to make Herzog's travails a little more quotidian than they might otherwise seem.

[Kit Fox · Rating 4 out of 5]

So, if like me, you've seen Fitzcaraldo and Burden of Dreams and My Beast Fiend in addition to having read Kinski Uncut, is this still worth checking out? The answer is an emphatic "yes." Yes all the way to Peru. Herzog writes the way he speaks, in his own—well I wouldn't say inimitable because people do pretty good impressions of his these days—idiosyncratic, stream-of-subconscious cadence that bounds from topic to topic with patently illuminating levels of absurdity. A dreamscape full of fist-sized jungle spiders that lie in wait in the director's shoe, impossible filming conditions that test the sanity of veteran film crews, and a half-goblin, half-genius actor whose volatile tantrums seek only to draw attention to his own creative indolence, the greatest shame of all, though, is that there isn't an audio version of this book; seriously, if someone started a kickstarter to generate funds to pay Herzog to read this book out loud, I'd put money in today. Without a doubt.

[Hank1972 · Rating 4 out of 5]

BRIAN SWEENY FITZGERALD aka FITZCARRALDO

Solo per chi conosce Herzog, il suo cinema ed ha visto e amato Fitzcarraldo. Di cui questo libro é il diario della realizzazione, avvenuta non in uno studio con quinte, modellini ed effetti speciali, ma dal "vero" e per davvero nel mezzo della foresta amazzonica.

Il film è la splendida follia di Fitzcarraldo di costruire un teatro d’opera nel mezzo della foresta, finanziato dai proventi della vendita del caucciù, per la cui raccolta una nave dovrá scalare una montagna.

É la splendita follia di Herzog, che per ben 3 anni se ne andrà in Amazzonia e quella nave la fará navigare per fiumi impetuosi diffondendo musica d’opera con un grammofono e ce la porterà davvero sulla montagna. E tutto ció in mezzo a difficoltá immaginabili, innanzitutto quelle logistiche, come portare acqua, elettricitá, cibo e mezzi nella foresta. E poi finanziarie, Herzog ha rischiato la rovina, e di tanto in tanto il diario registra viaggi negli States per trovare i soldi, inclusa visita a casa Coppola (Francis Ford). E poi la formazione-gestione del cast. Tra cui una vera tribù amazzonica. E il protagonista che abbandona, per quella che poi si rivelerà una fortuna perché Fitz avra il volto indimenticabile di Kinski, le cui mattane lo rendono inviso a tutti, tanto che gli indios avevano un piano per il suo omicidio. E tanti altri, tra cui Mick Jagger, si proprio lui, assieme a Jerry Hall, che abbandona per un tour degli Stones.

Le parti più belle del diario, che procede per pensieri, impressioni e immagini, trova le sue parti migliori la dove Herzog si abbandona a riflessioni intime, sulla vita, sul ruolo di artista, sulla natura selvaggia, sul viaggio alla conquista dell'inafferabbile, dell'impossibile, dell'inutile. Perchè poi quel che conta alla fine è il viaggio e la forza di farlo.


****



 

"...e, in mezzo a una natura che annienta senza distinzione i deboli e i forti, la voce di Caruso, che riduce al silenzio il dolore e il clamore degli animali nella foresta amazzonica e smorza il canto degli uccelli."


 

"O meglio: le grida degli uccelli, perché in questa terra, incompiuta e abbandonata da Dio nella sua ira, gli uccelli non cantano, gridano di dolore, e colossali alberi intricati si artigliano uno con l'altro come in una gigantomachia, da orizzonte a orizzonte, tra le esalazioni di una creazione che qui non si è ancora conclusa. Trasudando nebbia, spossati, si ergono in questo mondo irreale, in una miseria irreale - e io, come nella strofa di una poesia in una lingua sconosciuta che non capisco, mi ritrovo a provare un profondo terrore."


 

"Tuttavia, la domanda a cui tutti volevano una risposta era se avrei avuto il coraggio e la forza di ricominciare di nuovo tutto dall'inizio. Risposi di sì, perchè altrimenti sarei stato un uomo che non aveva più sogni, e senza sogni non volevo vivere"


 

Kinski e Cardinale


 

Herzog, Cardinale, Kinski

[Kobe Bryant · Rating 4 out of 5]

How did he have the energy for all this, just reading it was exhausting

[Derian · Rating 5 out of 5]

Impresionante, uno de los mejores libros que leí.

[sion · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ein Spaziergang entlang eines Fiebertraumes, welchen man allerhöchstens vage erahnen kann, ohne ihn je zu durchdringen.

Werner Herzogs Tagebuchaufzeichungen, die er rundum die Dreharbeiten seines Films Fitzcarraldo verfasst hat, ein wuchtiges Stück der Filmgeschichte.

Einblicke in die Widrigkeiten des Dschungels, Klaus Kinskis Wahn und poetische Beobachtungen - aber auch ein unfreiwilliges Porträts eines weißen, damals noch nicht alten Mannes, der für seine Vision ein Schiff über einen Berg zu ziehen einiges in Kauf nahm.
Wenn Herzog in seinem Selbstverständnis den indigenen Völkern gegenüber fair und warmherzig war, was auch an sich stimmen mag, kamen ihm die ausbeuterischen Verhältnisse in Lateinamerika bei seinem Unterfangen wohl gerade recht. Auch die weithin gleichgültige Hinnahme Kinskis missbräuchlichen Verhaltens lassen auf den eigensinnigen Charakter schließen. Diverse Geschmacklosigkeiten geben einen Einblick in eine ganze Generation und Zeit.

Ein Stück Zeitgeschichte, gleichwohl tief persönlich.

[Steev Hise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a wonderful book. If you're a big Herzog fan like I am, or interested in filmmaking, or Peru, or just interested in reading the journals of a really unique artist and thinker, trying to do the impossible in the middle of a jungle, you will probably like this book. I'm not sure who else would like it for sure if they don't fall into one or more of those categories.

This book covers a lot of ground. It's some descriptive logging of daily work on a film set, but it's much much more. Many entries are unrelated directly to the business of making his film, but rather is just strange anecdotes of the bizarre stuff that happens on the periphery of the operation, or just surreal observations that Herzog makes about plants or animals or landscapes that he sees. he really has a unique outlook on nature and the world in general. It's super super interesting.

[Professor Weasel · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was insane. It was like reading a Bolaño poem, or a nightmare. Very hallucinatory. In terms of content (i.e. what happens while they're filming the movie) it's not that interesting - it's hard to keep track of who's who and what's what, so watching "Burden of Dreams" is a much better way to get the full story on that. I would read this for the prose style, and Herzog's observations. He is OBSESSED with animals, especially primeval ones. I would seriously put this on the recommended reading list for a non-fiction or nature writing class. I must have underlined a sentence on every page. He is SUCH a stylist, and SO GOOD at observation. It's hard to pick one part to share, but I suppose if I had to, it'd be when the albino turkey copulated with the dead duck.

"Today the bat was still there. Someone had neatly laid a strip of toilet paper over it. It was dead, its position unchanged. I left it there and did not use the sink, not out of disgust or hygienic considerations but out of an unarticulated sense of respect. One of my favorite words in Spanish has always been murciélago, bat. My life seemed like an invention to me, with its pathos, its banalities, its dramas, its idling."

[El · Rating 5 out of 5]

Werner Herzog is one of the greatest filmmakers in cinematic history. Anyone who says otherwise is, well... Wrong. Seriously. Go watch Grizzly Man and come back and tell me I'm wrong. That shit is crazy.

He also did this one film few people have heard of, Fitzcarraldo. During the filming of that movie in South America, Herzog kept a journal of his everyday experiences. Later he turned those recollections into a book, Conquest of the Useless. Santa loves me and gave it to me for Christmas, so it's about time I got around to reading it.

Herzog's recollections cover a gamut of information - the socioeconomic situations of the countries in which he was filming, the politics, the weather, the wildlife, his crew and film-buddies. The Hollywood gossip factor was pretty high here, from Jason Robards (initially chosen to play Fitzcarraldo until he freaked the eff out about being in the jungle all the time and had to go bye-bye) to Mick Jagger (whose role in the film was ultimately cut, sadly). Some of my favorite passages from the book involves those two particular crazies:

Herzog on Robards: "Robards is being flown out today. [...:] I had seen Robards at the crack of dawn, when it was actually still quite dark, hurrying through the camp without his dentures, his hair flying and his eyes crazed, like King Lear through the deserted chambers in his castle." (page 130)

Herzog on Jagger: "We shot some footage with Mick and the little Indian boy who is called McNamara in the film, and both of them did such a good job that the team broke into applause. During the scene Mick was bitten on the shoulder by one of the monkeys and laughed so uproariously about it afterward that it sounded like a donkey braying. Whenever we take a break he distracts me with clever little lectures on English dialects and the development of the language since the late Middle Ages." (page 131)

You can't make that kind of stuff up. You have to be there. I love me some Jason Robards, don't get me wrong. But that man has always been at least 900 years old. He's like Ray Bradbury. Were they ever young? But I can totally picture Robards going around stark-ass crazy. And Jagger - well, whoda thunk that he'd converse about language on some downtime? I love it.

There's also a bit about Herzog fishing piranhas out of the water and trying to convince his crew it's okay to swim there now. They didn't believe him, even after he got in the water himself to illustrate. Dude, I don't know about you, but the piranhas I've seen at the Pittsburgh Zoo and Aquarium are nothing to be trifled with.

(Which then led me to think about the fish in my high school Biology class called Oscar. He wasn't a piranha but I swear each day that damn fish got just a little bigger and scarier-looking.)

Piranhas are scary. Which is probably why I haven't seen the movie yet. It's not like they're the evolved sting rays like in that classic book I read a few years ago, Natural Selection. Piranhas will beat your ass, even in 3-D.

(This review was written in a sober state.)

[Philipp · Rating 4 out of 5]

I responded, half jokingly, that our prayers resembled intense comments directed into a darkened room from which no answer came and which we had to assume was completely empty, not even occupied by a large, taciturn guy on a throne, who might be able to hear us but did not even bestow on us so much as an echo from the void, other than the echo of our stupid hopes and our self-deception. After I had got that off my chest, we laughed and had a beer.

A mad diary of the making of Fitzcarraldo, but it's not really about the movie, more about the accompanying state of a bunch of underfunded manic Germans stuck in the jungle on their own, surrounded by an uncontacted hostile native tribe, hellbent on moving a boat over a mountain by sheer force of will.



You don't need to know much about the movie to understand what's going on here, but having a fever helps. Things are stolen, or get lost - the diary suddenly jumps by years because one book has been eaten by termites - Herzog is suddenly in the US, at the set of The Shining - the camp is flooded - a baby dies - the making of the movie continues - Mick Jagger (!!!) appears, but has to leave - Mario Adorf is a whiny idiot - camp prostitutes are fighting - things are at the edge of falling apart but the last tear never happens - Kinski is insane, as usual.

When Kinski had his next outburst, the Ashininka-Campa chief and the chief of the Shivankoreni Machiguengas cautiously drew me aside and asked very calmly whether they should kill him for me. To be sure I had heard right, I said, Kill? Whom? They pointed at Kinski, and the way they spoke left no doubt that they were prepared to do the deed in the next sixty seconds.

-----------------------

Profoundly unreconciled to nature, I had an encounter with the big boa constrictor, which poked its head through the chicken wire surrounding its wooden cage and looked me fearlessly in the eye for a long time. Stubbornly confronting each other, we were pondering the relatedness of the species. Both of us, since the relatedness was slight, felt sad and turned away from each other.

[Boyd · Rating 5 out of 5]

Two great things about *Conquest of the Useless*

1) Werner Herzog writes exactly the same way he talks, so it's no trouble at all to imagine him personally reading this book to you in that trademark flat Bavarian drawl. It would make the perfect accompaniment to a midnight road trip through a Louisiana bayou where you ran out of gas, sank into mud up to your wheel wells, were bitten by several cottonmouth moccasins and then had your throat slashed by swamp-dwelling sociopaths. Werner Herzog would STILL have bigger problems than you did.

2) Also Werner Herzog can't stand nature and isn't ashamed to tell you all about it at length and in a tone of horrified fascination. You have to respect that. Oh, sure, he'll pause periodically and go through the motions of extolling, e.g., the beauty of the Amazonian night sky (though in "Burden of Dreams" he even criticized that), but we all know what he's really thinking: Get me the fuck out of here! Every pig is a bag of bones, every dog has three legs, every spider is the size of Saturn, and everything everywhere is drenched and rotting and infected and teetering on the verge of death.

The tale of the movie shoot is really great and all that, and I loved it. Still, anyone could dine out on stories about those little mountainside boat problems and trying to handle the head case that was Klaus Kinski. It takes a real man, though, to bitch about The Majestic World Around Us.

[Vincent Saint-Simon · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sirs, But More Especially Madams:

When I read this book I feel like I am touching another soul, and that soul is slapping an albino turkey.

Sd,

V

[Pedro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very good. The next is "walking on ice".

[Bria · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5
Honestly, I didn't have very high expectations for this book. I found it in a little free library and just grabbed it out of name recognition, although I've never actually seen any Herzog film, only know the stereotypes about him. But this book really drove home what the essence of Herzog is, and really made me just *like* him. Every sentence is either part of some story you can't believe actually happened, and/or involving some animal - so many animals in the jungle - or just pure Herzogian fever dream poetry. A constant delight.

[Antonio Heras · Rating 4 out of 5]

Aunque a ratos se haga largo o tedioso, Herzog escribe muy bien y su titánica misión en la selva logra enganchar. Y, por descontado, voy a ver la peli cuyo rodaje cuenta aquí -de manera superficial-: Fitzcarraldo.
Los chismes, salseos y anécdotas con actores y actrices, directores y productores son un añadido que salpimenta el conjunto. La edición está muy cuidada, salvando unos pocos fallos tipográficos. Le hubieran venido bien unas cuantas fotos del rodaje, al estilo de la de la portada.

[Jordi J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Bàsicament, diari del rodatge de Fitzcarraldo però no en el format habitual, en realitat és un autèntic abocament per part de Herzog de visions, sensacions, vivències, experiències inversemblants, etc. però sobretot és el relat de la constància i la fe de l’artista per arribar a la seva idea, el seu cel, potser inútil, però arribar-hi. Això sí, malgrat totes les dificultats que planteja fer art en plena selva amazònica i amb tot l’esforç per part d’ell per entendre-la. Brutal. Thank you Mark!

[Kit · Rating 4 out of 5]

exhausting just to read it.