
I saw Werner
Herzog's My Best Fiend the other week and I had to watch it again the next day. I'm amazed how such passion and rage of 'unimaginable proportions' could reside in one man. The film started in a big
auditorioum where Klaus
Kinski played the part of a raving savior quoting the bible, probably raving about people's misunderstandings of the gospel.Off the stage, he continued to play the part, a lunatic and furious Jesus.
Perhaps,divine providence brought
Kinski and
Herzog together in a small apartment;
Herzog was then 13 and the young
Kinksi was a theater actor.
Herzog narrates, in an almost melancholic, shifting to an ecstatic tone how fascinated he was to the man. Images of the, already then mad
Kinski locked in his little room filled with dead leaves, naked - practicing his lines for hours and hours made a huge impression on the young
Herzog.
He
revisited two of his 5 films with Klaus
Kinski:
Aguirre, the Wrath of God and
Fitzcarraldo. These collaborations exhibited
Kinski's undeniable power on screen. Off screen, you expect the same energy . . .probably,even more. Megalomania and rage are prompted by petty irritants like insects, food and noise. Sometimes
Kinski would make up anything,find a victim, throw a fit. These raw energies were exploited by both
Kinski and
Herzog to temper the 'beast' to the point when they reach saturation and
independently plotted to murder
each other. In result, one sees this disquieting tension in each of K's
performances.
Kinski is an asshole and he is beautiful.Indeed, the wrath of God.
I have a lot of good things to say about the documentary, but I'm tired, so I'll stop here.
Ps. Claudia Cardinale was still pretty and dreamy in old age.