FFWD Weekly
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Video by Jaime Frederick Both on screen and off, German director Werner Herzog is among the greatest fabulists in modern cinema, so even though he started out making documentaries, a balanced work is probably the last thing one would expect from him. That’s not to say Herzog neglects his responsibilities as a filmmaker, it’s just that in his attempt to realize on celluloid what he calls "ecstatic truth," he has been known to spin some mighty fantastic tales. In his films and in interviews, exaggeration crops up frequently as a cinematic or narrative device, and Herzog is often accused of megalomaniacal excess. Perhaps that is why his temperament was perfectly suited to that of another legendary egomaniac, actor Klaus Kinski, who made five films with Herzog as director, including some of the best work either artist ever produced. In his latest film, My Best Fiend (Germany, 1999), Herzog chronicles his uneasy kinship with Kinski and their insane working relationship, which lasted through the making of Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), Nosferatu (1979), Woyzeck (1978), Fitzcarraldo (1982) and Cobra Verde (1988). Herzog does little to dispel the image of Kinski as an artist whose madness and genius are inseparable, and whose intensity earned him the reputation of a delusional, self-obsessed prima donna. Interspersing personal reminiscences about the rigorous shooting of his greatest works with rare film and audio footage of Kinski’s on-set ravings, Herzog has returned to South America, the great battleground on which their most famous conflicts were waged. To work together as often as they did, and with such astonishing results, reveals that their admiration for one another must have been at least as great as their publicly displayed animosity. For his part, Herzog admits that he had been captivated by Kinski since he saw him act in the ’50s anti-war film Children, Mothers and the General. Herzog also explains his apprehensiveness about approaching Kinski when he initially asked him to play Aguirre, since Herzog had experienced Kinski’s lunatic ravings some years earlier when they lived in the same boarding house in Munich. Herzog often jokes that he regularly plotted to kill Kinski, and during the making of Fitzcarraldo some of the Indians acting in the film actually offered to do the murderous job for Herzog, so great was their fear of the "half-mad, diabolical" actor. Kinski’s opinion of Herzog has never been a secret, either – it’s clearly outlined in his warts-and-all autobiography, Kinski Uncut, a book that reveals him to be a more horrible monster than Herzog could make him out to be. Of his experience working on Aguirre, Kinski, in one of the more gracious passages about Herzog, writes this about his tyrannical director: "Herzog is a miserable, hateful, malevolent, avaricious, money-hungry, nasty, sadistic, treacherous, cowardly creep.... He doesn’t care about anyone or anything except his wretched career as a so-called filmmaker. Driven by a pathological addiction to sensationalism, he creates the most senseless difficulties and dangers, risking other peoples’ safety and even their lives – just so he can eventually say that he, Herzog, has beaten seemingly unbeatable odds." As for Herzog, he dismisses the autobiography, saying it is "of course, to a high degree, fictitious." Despite Kinski’s vehement assertions to the contrary, Herzog believes that Kinski needed him as much as he needed Kinski. Yet, for all this, My Best Fiend reveals little of either artist’s creative process. As entertaining and amusing as the film is at times, there is not much new here for viewers who are already familiar with the lore surrounding these two enigmatic forces. Now and then, My Best Fiend even seems like it might be Herzog’s revenge against the late Kinski’s despisal of him. Only at the very end of the film does Herzog insinuate that there may have been another, more tender element to the great actor, who, for the rest of the film, has been characterized as either a coward or a maniac.

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