陆上行舟

The "real" Fitzcarraldo had once dismantled a boat, carried it overland from one river to the parallel tributary and reassembled it back. But this film is not about Fitzcarraldo.

I finally understood the truth of it being more a documentary than a feature film, and all Herzog's films having some "documentary" quality. It is always about human life, about his struggles with getting to know the chaotic world around him, during which about him chasing his dream, or his absoluteness.

In this particular film, Herzog, is Dieter in Little Dieter Needs to Fly, is Goldsworthy in Rivers and Tides, is Christo in Running Fences. It is his pursuit of a myth and his realization of a dream.

看电影要有耐心。小宝总是在开头的10分钟之内便判断好看与否，所以他这辈子从头看到尾的电影恐怕屈指可数。可是开头10分钟内就精彩的电影是多么索然无味啊，因为那是没有自信的电影。

好的电影，往往要在最后那10分钟才真正尝到甜头，不仅如此，前面被忽略的细节纷至沓来，让你反复咀嚼不已。命运往往也是如此，人所经历的一切常常荒谬不堪，看不到意义和目标所在。可是如果你有耐心，也许会有那么一刻，前尘往事纷至沓来，让你忍不住嚼了又嚼——原来命运的所有安排都有深意。只有真正耐心的人，才能等到那一刻。

而情节本身是不重要的，从来都不重要。就象命运从来都不重要。

《陆上行舟》就是这样一部电影。2个小时30多分钟，讲述一个人，一艘船，如何为了追寻一个看似荒唐的梦想，在漫长的亚马逊河上，行走了一个来回。

刚开始，那人看上去象是要被塑造成英雄，他为了梦想可以那么疯狂。如果是英雄，你开始猜，那无论多么荒唐的梦想都会在电影结束时实现。果然，他做到了别人都做不到的事，他渡过了别人都落马的险境。但有时却不是因为他勇敢，或聪明，看上去，只不过是碰巧。这个时候，你开始明白，原来导演的目的不是塑造英雄，那好，这部电影没有刚开始看上去那么俗了。

再接下去，他最大的困难居然也克服了，看来，这真是一个歌颂梦想的电影。但是不。造就了他的幸运居然接着就差点毁了他——可谓成也萧何，败也萧何。好在大难不死，他和他的船总算逃离险境，完好归航。可是，慢点，2个小时30分钟，一条船，一条河，难道就是毫无意义的一通折腾？他来自原点，又归于原点，一切艰苦卓绝的努力都付之东流。。。

然后那个结尾来了，所有那些伟大结尾中的一个。在那10分钟里，你突然体会到，人生似乎用另外一种方式给了他报偿，也许并不能说他哪里也未曾到达。这个时候开始有各种感觉涌上心头，五味杂陈。路途中的辉煌和惨痛；命运的神秘莫测；还有所有那些人们，在回首的时候都化为酒的余味，如许悠长。

为了这10分钟，那2小时20分钟都是值得的，可是为了这10分钟，你必须耐心、再耐心，在这漫长又乏味的一生当中。

菲茨卡拉多是疯子Werner Herzog在电影《菲茨卡拉多》（《陆上行舟》）里描述的一个疯子。不管是导演还是他的男主角，身上都有着让我向往不已的癫狂气质。
这个叫菲茨卡拉多的疯子痴迷于各种极其不现实的事情，他在热带雨林里造冰并企图以此发财，为了看一场卡鲁索的歌剧徒手划了两天的船，还想在热带雨林的镇子里开一家歌剧院，请卡鲁索来演出。这个有着极其诡异外貌和“爆炸式”发型的理想主义者，从出场伊始便成了我的偶像。他总是充满热情，在旁人的嘲笑里偏执地相信很多愚蠢计划的可行性，不管失败了多少次也还是坚定不移地认为自己会取得巨大的成功，完全是乐观得无可救药的典范。
就是这个人，为了取得一片未被开采的橡胶地，带着船队逆流而上，试图把船拖上山，竟然在土著的帮助下取得了成功。你无法想象那种工作的强度，那些茂密高耸的树木、遍地的蛇和其他野生动物，徒步穿越那座山已经不易，还要把数吨重的船拖过去？在土著们像牛马一样每日为“陆上行舟”劳作的时候，我的心里始终充满了恐惧，害怕自己脆弱的心灵承受不住最终失败的消息，害怕自己没有勇气亲眼目睹一个理想主义者的失败。因此你也不难想象，当那艘船终于从山的那一面滑下，逐渐进入急流中的时候，我是怎样如释重负、欢呼雀跃，恨不能随便逮着一个人，摇他的肩膀并大喊：“你知道什么叫疯狂的伟大吗？！你知道什么叫伟大的疯狂吗？！”

你们都说我是理想主义者、乐观主义者，其实我不过是消极的不行动主义者。我体内长存这这种“疯狂情愫”，在现实生活中却总把头埋得那么低，甚至于从小到大也没做过什么很“出格”的事情，于是自从意识到自己体内可悲的浪漫主义以后，就开始了与之长期不懈的斗争。我不知道怎么判断“现实一点”和“疯狂一点”的好坏，只觉得二十岁的人拥有半百的人那种只求平稳、碌碌度日的想法实在可悲至极。
从前香港来的一个教授来给我们上新闻采访课，几乎每节课都要问发表“真想不明白这么年轻的你们为何那么消极被动、没有一点激情”的感叹。我第一次听了心里是有些难过的，因为我费尽心力同样找不到这个问题的答案。后来听惯了，也会跟大家一起不痛不痒地说：那是因为他不生活在我们生活的社会，很多东西他不懂的啦。
但是因着我对“疯狂”和“热情”的强烈向往，私下里便还是忍不住思索：我们的激情和梦想都是怎样失去的？还是我们从来不曾拥有过？我们可以万众一心、不看别处，只使劲指责我们这些年来所受到的教育和这个万恶的不适合我们健康成长的社会吗？是啊，我们生来是一张白纸，没有选择是否出生的能力也没有选择被如何抚养的资格，这是不是给了我们把一切推脱给社会的权力？
这一切我也没有答案。我只知道太少太少的人血液里有疯狂的基因，而我们都向往自己所没有的、都羡慕自己做不到的，就像我仰望疯狂的菲茨卡拉多一样。我不是在推崇他那种确实有些愚蠢的做法，也没有试图推翻一切理性，只是我太嫉妒那种彻头彻尾的理想主义与将之变成现实的巨大行动力。他的激情就是他的信仰，可以让他有永不倒下的勇气。而我太需要那种激情、那种信仰，把我从理想和现实的矛盾里解救出来。

使劲在心底一层一层地挖，你心里住着一个菲茨卡拉多吗？我知道我很迫切的希望我的心里住着Ta.

研究生Screen Style and Aesthetics课程论文，引用请注明作者Yayi Mo

German filmmaker Werner Herzog’s feature film Fitzcarraldo (1982) begins with the title character (Klaus Kinski), an ecstatic opera lover, who attempts to build a great opera house in Iquitos of the Peruvian Amazon where his idol, Enrico Caruso, can perform. The film ends with Fitzcarraldo achieving a victory of sorts that he brings a small-time European opera troupe to a boat for a single performance. However, the central dramatic action of this film is not the process of building a grand opera house but the protagonist’s attempt and success in dragging an enormous steamship over a nearly vertical mountain that separates two rivers.

Herzog has a distinguishing conception of human and nature. Like its antecedent Aguirre, Wrath of God (1972), Fitzcarraldo also sets the story in the Amazonian jungle, “an unfinished land with curse that God creates it in anger”. In Burden of dreams (1982), a documentary on the production of Fitzcarraldo, Herzog describes the jungle as “the enormous articulation of vileness, baseness and obscenity”, compare to which human is only “badly pronounced and half-finished sentences”. Apart from this, Herzog’s other documentary Grizzly Man (2005) centres on a tragic hero’s life, examining the cruelty of wild animals and the “overwhelming indifference” of nature. It is safe to say that “human struggles against nature” is a recurring theme in his works.

However, what Herzog attempts to explore in Fitzcarraldo is not “human and nature” but rather “opera and nature”, in other word, art and nature. Although Herzog repeatedly asserted the visual primacy of his films (Rogers, 2004, p77), the musical component of Fitzcarraldo should not be disregarded. On the one hand, this Amazonian adventure film has an operatic, grand-scale narrative structure. On the other hand, while the actual ‘opera house’ remains absent during the epic jungle-exploring journey, opera arias in various forms do appear several times in the entire film, including the opening sequence that Caruso performs arias on a grand opera house, the struggle-against-the-rapids scene that opera music is played through a gramophone among hundreds of headhunters, and the ending scene in which a travelling opera troupe preforms Bellini’s I Puritani on a steamship along the river. Especially, in the climactic scene when the boat is slowly rising up the mountain, the operatic accompaniment makes this ship-hailing undertaking a visual-musical spectacular. That is to say, though the protagonist fulfills his operatic dream indirectly, the thematic connection between art and nature is clear in Fitzcarraldo.

Herzog is a distinguished filmmaker not only famous for his precise articulation of filmic themes but also his stylistic idiosyncrasy and monomaniacal obsession, or in other words, he is notoriously difficult to cooperate with (Arthur, 2005), which is similar to his protagonist Fitzcarraldo. Just as the eponymous character in Fitzcarraldo, Herzog pursues his dreams with ultimate madness and crazed energy, which raises the following questions: what is the relation between Fitzcarraldo and Herzog? How has Herzog’s conception of “art and nature” influenced his filmic articulation to his works?

Ultimately this essay focuses specifically on the image of Fitzcarraldo and his relation to Herzog, also on the thematic connection of art and nature in Fitzcarraldo. In section one, I conduct a detailed analysis of the party scene and I first examine the image of the protagonist as “the conquistador of the useless” and then I explore the two images of the protagonist Fitzcarraldo as well as the director Herzog. The latter half of this essay analyses the climactic ship-hauling scene in detail. By examining the complementary treatment of visual and musical aspects, it may be possible to understand Herzog’s attempt to use art as a “human articulation” against the nature.


Section one: the party scene


“The conquistador of the useless”

Fitzcarraldo’s obsession of opera is introduced in the opening sequences that he has rowed 1200 miles for two days and nights down the Amazon to see Caruso’s performance in person. When watching the opera, Fitzcarraldo believes that the dying protagonist on stage is pointing at him. He interprets it as a sacred transferring ceremony that the most renowned opera performer has transferred the musical life to him, he thus has found and absorbed the cultural power embodied in the opera (Rogers, 2004, p92). After this sacred transferring ceremony, he determines to build a grand opera house into the jungle. His lover Molly (Claudia Cardinale) considers him as “a dreamer who moves mountains”, while he identifies himself as a fulfiller of dreams.

At other point, however, a dreamer as Fitzcarraldo is someone who lacks the ability to differentiate reality from dreams. In this very opening sequence, he believes himself has absorbed the musical power of opera and since then he has transferred the real world to a musical make-believe one. To defend his dream against the artless, unmusical ‘old’ world, he fights with crazed energy, including climbs to the top of a Church tower, striking the bell and threatening the Church will remain closed until Iquitos builds an opera house. These establishing scenes demonstrate his refusal to differentiate between the reality and dream. His monomania of the opera dream continues in the party scene when he attends with his lover Molly at a wealthy rubber baron’s house.

This party scene is striking example that Fitzcarraldo lacks the ability to differentiate reality from dreams and thus feels the sense of otherness and alienation in real world. When attends the party, Fitzcarraldo directly brings out his gramophone and begins to set up this musical equipment in the middle of the hall. Meanwhile, Molly walks around waving her feather hand fan, “please, may we have your attention”, but no one seems to be intrigued. Without any introduction, Fitzcarraldo plays the opera music. In the middle of all the indifferent guests, he utterly immerses himself into his beloved opera, while Molly is looking around and trying to attract the guests’ attention. Don Aquilino (José Lewgoy), a rubber baron, the host of the party, keeps talking with another magnate, remains aloof from Fitzcarraldo’s action. Accompanying these is an uncut shot, just as the operatic music sounds absurdly out of place, Fitzcarraldo looks absolutely alienated. Herzog puts Fitzcarraldo in such situation to depict the sense of otherness and alienation that Fitzcarraldo always feels, recalls the previous sequences that he is either surrounded by a group of drunken card-playing barons or a crowd of shirtless foreign-language-speaking Amazonians. While Fitzcarraldo becomes completely engrossed in Caruso’s mechanically reproduced voice that he remains unaware of the other audiences’ inattention, a guest directly walks toward the gramophone and turns the music off. Fitzcarraldo becomes frenzied and attempts to punch the man, at the same time, Aquilino finally aware of Fitzcarraldo’s existence and immediately commands the servants to take him out. Fitzcarraldo gets rid of the servants to grab his gramophone, holding it in arms, looking around the indifferent crowd, causing a minor disturbance. To clam the guests, the amused host shouts “ladies and gentlemen, don’t worries, this gentleman is harmless”, while another steward proposes a meal prepared by “the dog’s cook” to Fitzcarraldo, derides him as “superb”. Accompanying this is a medium close-up shot of the stony, unsympathetic face of the steward and then the medium shot of Fitzcarraldo in an awkward position, with the heavy gramophone in arms, surrounded by the indifferent guests. Humiliated by the guests and the hosts, Fitzcarraldo continuously downs four drinks to his admired opera artists, but the steward stops him by proposing a toast sarcastically, “to Fitzcarraldo, the conquistador of the useless”. As the rubber barons unable to be touched by the opera, Fitzcarraldo cries to the amused audience, “the reality of your world is nothing more than a rotten caricature of great opera”, which demonstrating again Fitzcarraldo’s inability or rather unwillingness of differentiating reality from dreams.

In the eyes of the economic upper crust of Iquitos, Fitzcarraldo is nothing more than a harmless, useless and crazed “strange bird”, his eccentric attempt to bring an opera house to the jungle is nothing more than an unachievable business plan. Fitzcarraldo is juxtaposed with these European financial elites in several scenes, including the above-mentioned party scene, as well as the card-playing scene he tries to enlist the rubber barons’ financial support, while Aquilino taunts and ridicules his obsession with opera. Within the frame of repetitive close-ups, Fitzcarraldo’s face is sweaty, frenzied, contorted in disgust. It is worth noting that the bug-eyed maniac Klaus Kinski’s rendering of Fitzcarraldo is admittedly powerful, with true madness and absolute energy, as if “a beast has been domesticated and pressed into shape” (Herzog, My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski, [1999]).


Pure dreamers

Some film scholars see Fitzcarraldo as a colonial hero (Prager, 2012, p25) or “an imperial agent of expansion”(Davidson, 1994, p69). Opera is a symbol of the European civilization, and Fitzcarraldo’s attempt to bring the opera house to the barbaric Latin America is viewed as an attempt of cultural enlightenment. In the scene when Fitzcarraldo first confronts the Jivaro, or what he calls, the “bare-asses”, he fires back with the arias of Caruso, the sound of the “white God”. He believes (perhaps at an unconscious level) opera has a particular power against the barbaric headhunters, as Dolkart (1985, p126) discusses, “devotion to and knowledge of opera represented entrance into the elite and disdain for indigenous culture”.

Despite these cultural interpretations of the figure of Fitzcarraldo, I want to discern his image in a more abstract, metaphysical meaning that, Fitzcarraldo is a pure dreamer, who seeks to fulfill his dream and eagers to express himself in an “other” land. In his words, opera “gives expressions to our greatest feelings”. Apart from the party scene, the film also shows his obsession with opera and inability to differentiate between reality and dream in other scenes, for example, when enters to the jungle, Fitzcarraldo is deeply intrigued by the words of an old missionary that “our everyday life is only an illusion, behind which lies the reality of dreams”. Fitzcarraldo replies, “actually I’m very interested in these ideas. I specialize opera myself”, making a connection between illusion and operatic articulation. As Herzog (2010) says, “what's beautiful about opera is that reality doesn't play any role in it at all”. For Fitzcarraldo, the operatic dream is the reason to live, to go through the illusions of life. As an opera impresario once said, “It [opera] lifts one so out of the sordid affairs of life and makes material things seem so petty, so inconsequential, it places one for the time being, at least, in a higher and better world” (quoted from Dolkart, 1985, p131). It is not the visionary of bringing European culture into Iquitos so much as the desire of articulation of “the Self” that distinguish Fitzcarraldo from those philistines, who only care about wealth and “a great name in Europe”.

These sequences raise questions about the Herzog’s conception of dreams and how he endeavors to achieve it. The documentary on the making of Fitzcarraldo, Burden of dreams (1982), continually reasserts the impossibility of the production of Fitzcarraldo: the harsh rainforest climate, the tribal wars, crew revolts and cast changing. Though encounters enormous difficulties, Herzog sticks at this impossible mission and pursues his goal with madness and crazed energy, “if I abandon this project, I would be a man without dreams and I don’t want to live like that”, to a point where the director’s dreams and Fitzcarraldo’s dreams meet. In other words, Fitzcarraldo is such a powerful and complex statement of Herzog’s monomaniacal obsession of “dreams”. The protagonist is a reproduction and a reflection of Herzog himself. Like Fitzcarraldo, Herzog is an aesthete with good ideas and a pure dreamer who attempts to pursue his goals. The word “pure” not only refers to the futility of the reality life and the pursuit of illusions, but also the filmic aestheticisation of uselessness. Fitzcarraldo is once mocked as “the conquistador of the useless” and likewise Herzog entitles his production diaries Conquest of the Useless (Thompson, 2011, p42), which highlights the connection between the two figures, two pure dreams. The concept of uselessness can be viewed in two ways. On the one hand, it refers to the idea of going to nowhere or returning in full circle. Fitzcarraldo’s adventure leads him to nowhere: his ship is damaged by Jivaro, the same crowd who helped him move the ship over the mountain, and he fails to get rubber, coming back where he started. But the concept of uselessness is aestheticized. The final tableau is an opera performance on the boat and although the glorious dream of building an opera house in the jungle fails, this triumphant ending scene is seen as a victory of sorts, a fulfillment of dream. On the other hand, uselessness can be seen as inability of self-expression, of “human articulation”, which I explore in detail in section two.


Section two: the climactic scene

Herzog’s “Ecstatic truth”

Herzog is a well-known auteur for his stylistic idiosyncrasy, recurrent themes and cultural-historical sensitivity (Dolkart, 1985, p126). For a better understanding of Herzog’s distinguishing view of natural landscape, it is essential to look at his own words: “I wanted an ecstatic detail of that landscape where all the drama, passion and human pathos became visible” (My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski, [1999]). For him, landscape is not a backdrop of outstanding scenic beauty in Hollywood-style commercials, but rather a place filled with “indifference of nature” (Grizzly Man, [2005]), with “almost human qualities” (My Best Fiend – Klaus Kinski) and with “overwhelming and collective murder” and full of “fornication and asphyxiation and choking and fighting for survival and growing and just rotting away” (Burden of dreams, [1982]). Again in Fitzcarraldo Herzog sets the story in the barbaric Amazonian jungle, “an unfinished place with curse that God creates in anger”. Herzog’s view of nature sounds deeply pessimistic, but he claims he admire the nature, “I love it very much. But I love it against my better judgment” (Burden of dreams).

The most striking example to demonstrate Herzog’s obsession with visual authenticity of the natural landscape in Fitzcarraldo is the climactic scene when the steamship is dragged over the mountain separating the two rivers. This climactic ship-hauling scene consists of a series of documentary-like shots and a static one-minute long shot. It begins with several shots of the mechanism within the steamship and details how the complex pulling system works. The long documentary-like sequence also details their effort: cutting a path through the dense jungle, oiling the pulleys, and setting the hauling system. In these shots, the images of the jungle have a very crude, unfinished, and primeval texture, the natural landscape is represented with the visual authenticity that Herzog aims to impart. In the scene, we then hear Fitzcarraldo’s shouting, “we have two dead man”. In a tracking shot, he fretfully climbs over the supporting stakes, while Cholo, the mechanic of Fitzcarraldo’s crew, excitedly explains the ship-hauling plan to him. “We have two dead man!” Fitzcarraldo ignores Cholo and repeats, recalling their last failed attempt that two Jivaroan people died when dragging the ship. Additionally, this scene also reminds us of the director's own ambiguous filmmaking anecdotes, blurring the distinction between filmic reality and reality per se.

To pursue the documentary-like truth or rather what he called the “ecstatic truth”, Herzog prefers shooting on location rather than filming in studio (Ascárate, 2007), no matter how dangerous the shooting sites would be or what enormous difficulties the cast and crew would face. In addition to the authentic shooting sites, Herzog also employ the local Aguaruna people to play the “uncultivated” Jivaro, and insists on using the full-sized steamship in the climax instead of dismantling before the portage and also refuses to adopt miniatures or special effect. He also refuses the Brazilian engineer’s original ship-hauling mechanisms design, which the ship would be hauling at 20 degree up the mountain while Herzog insists on 40 degree. In Filmmakers’ Choices, John Gibbs (2006, p14) points out the significance of filmmakers’ decision-making, and
one of the best ways of determining what has been gained by the decisions taken in the construction of an artwork is to imagine the consequences of changing a single element of the design.
(John Gibbs, 2006, p14)
Perkins also contends “the director’s job is, particularly, to hold each and every moment of performance within a vision of the scene as a whole” (1981, p1143). In the case of Herzog, changing 40 degree to the initial 20 degree may seems insignificant but the vision of the climactic scene (in which the ship is rising up in a quite peculiar angle) may consequently changed. By considering why Herzog refuses the initial doable design and insists on the impracticable one, it may be possible to understand what he calls “the sublimity of images and their illuminating effect” (Weigel, 2010) in his films.

Because of his insistences on visual authenticity, Herzog earned a reputation for his “neurotic obsession” of ecstatic truth, and has been criticized by press and scholars. On the one hand, some dislike the idea of “realism” (Kael, 1982). On the other hand, some question Herzog’s view of nature and criticize it as nihilism (Arthur, 2005). As in Herzog’s films and documentaries, the vivid images of picturesque flora and fauna contradict his concept of nature “vileness, baseness and obscenity”, “the harmony of overwhelming and collective murder”. Despite the criticism, Herzog’s insistences seriously affect the visual authenticity of his works. In Fitzcarraldo, Herzog captures the distinguishing unique beauty and cruelty of nature, and composes his unique images of filmic landscape in the climactic scene.


Civilization’s opera and barbarism’s silence

Despite his obsession with visual authenticity, Herzog does not tend to prioritises the visual over the aural. In this film, music operates on two levels; one is the diegetic music of Caruso’s operatic recordings. Opera is sophisticatedly used in both time and place and functions as a crucial component in Fitzcarraldo, as William Van Wert (1986, P68) contends that, “the spectator may very well marvel at ‘haunting’ visuals in Herzog’s films, but the music that accompanies those visuals is what charges them, providing the ‘haunting,’ as much as the camera or editing”. In the journey, Fitzcarraldo equipped himself with a gramophone that plays arias. Opera becomes a travelling art and a mobile theatrical event, and always function as an external, often incongruous complement to the visual landscape.

The second musical level is the ‘acousmatic’ sound (Chion, 1999): the Latin American folk music composed by Popol Vuh and the ominous chanting and primitive drumming noises of the Jivaros. In an earlier scene when the crew enters the Jivaro Indian domain, they hear the constant noises of drumming and chanting, a threatening signal from the headhunters. As the beating sounds getting louder, Fitzcarraldo brings out the gramophone, and uses opera as a weapon of sorts to confront the Jivaro’s ominous chorus. The two contrasting sounds meet and mix in the midst of the primeval jungle, and then the Indian chorus is swallowed by the sound of opera arias and gradually mutes and disappears. As Dolkart (1985, p135) argues, opera is used to sharpen the contrast between civilization's arias and barbarism’s silences. At that night when Cholo proposes to use violence against the Jivaro's, Fitzcarraldo replies to take advantage of the myths of their gods, “this God doesn't come with canons. He comes with the voice of Caruso”. The next morning, when finds out his crew has deserted him, Fitzcarraldo again plays the opera. In a long tracking shot, the ship equipped with opera arias is slowly sailing up the river, while the Jivaros remain silent and mute. It appears that the civilization’s sounds have dominated the barbaric areas.

These musical and narrative strands converge at the climactic scene. With human efforts and engine power, the steamship is slowly moving over the mountain. Presented in a peculiar shot, the ship is slowly rising up in an oblique angle, while Fitzcarraldo is standing front the ship and shouting, to punctuate this dramatic moment: “we forget something –Caruso! Enrico Caruso!” After a shot of the bottom of the ship showing the mechanism and how it works, Caruso’s beautiful aria resounds in the midst of the primeval jungle, initiating an epic, breathtaking visual-musical interplay. In a one-minute long static shot, the ship is slowly moving up the steep slope with Caruso’s operatic accompaniment.

In the climactic scene, Caruso’s voice is no longer a mere incongruous complement or a contrasting sound against the barbarism, but as an integral component of the performance. Opera is a high art that combines extensive scenery and virtuoso singing, and all integrated into one grandiose visual-musical spectacle (Dolkart, 1985, p131). Herzog reconstructs the natural landscape, transforms the jungle into a grand opera stage. While watching this scene of the enormous steamship slowly moving up in the middle of this jungle stage, we become the audience inside an opera auditorium, and this one-minute long static scene is a breathtaking visual-musical opera spectacle. Despite the terribly scratchy quality of the opera recording, Caruso’s voice is with “an unspeakably dignified beauty, sad and strong and moving” (Herzog, 1982). To some extent, the steep mountain and the barbaric jungle and the steamship hauled by the “wild” Jivaro, are all working together to accomplish an opera performance. “We can feel the theatricality of the place, we see the image of the opera that surges from the sweat of the jungle” (Herzog, interview, 1982). The highly artificial, civilized high art is connected with barbaric jungle in harmony for the first time.

Herzog, with sense of irony, completes his use of opera in the rapids scene when the ship is careering down the impassable river. In Jivaro’s myths, the divine white ship could drift through the rapids to soothe the “the angry spirits” so the chief of the Jivaro's severs the rope and sending the ship floating down the Pongo River, the most dangerous place in the jungle. During the scene, Herzog adopts point of view shots. As the ship crashes helplessly through the raging river, the POV shots are violently shaking. In the shot when the ship is adrift in the treacherous rapids and slams into the cliff and jars the gramophone on, once again the off-stage operatic accompaniment resounds throughout the jungle and the rapids. The opera once again turns the struggle between the steamship and the jungle into a nautical ballet sequence. When the ship eventually drifts through the river, the arias slowly dissolve, completing the final performance.

Unlike the earlier scene when Fitzcarraldo using the opera as a weapon to dispel the violence, the rapids scene is not about the confrontation between civilization and barbarism, but about interconnection between opera and nature, or rather art and nature.


“Human articulation” against the nature

In Burden of dreams, Herzog describes the jungle as “the enormous articulation of vileness, baseness and obscenity”, compare to which human is only “badly pronounced and half-finished sentences”. I borrow the term “human articulation”, and to explore the attempt of human’s articulation against nature in both the ship-hauling scene and the rapids scene. In Herzog’s view, poetry, painting, filmmaking are all about articulation, in which we can reach a deeper truth –“an ecstatic truth”. In other words, art is, in essence, about articulating ourselves.

In the essay of musical and textual analysis in Fitzcarraldo, Rogers (2004, p97) asserts that Fitzcarraldo’s opera “is able to attack the Amazon on its own terms.” Likewise, in an interview, Herzog describe the moment when Fitzcarraldo plays the opera, “the jungle seems to be paralyzed with emotion by Caruso's beautiful, sad voice” (Herzog, 1982). To be fair, one must admit that the opera, whatever the form, stage performance or the scratchy recordings, has no power against the rapids or the nature. As Kant (2010) says, “the irresistibility of the power of nature forces us to recognize our physical impotence as natural beings, but at the same time discloses our capacity to judge ourselves independent of nature as well as superior to nature”. Art can never really “beat” or “conquer” nature, as much as human is never fully capable of expressing or articulating own self in relation to the nature. What lies in Fitzcarraldo is that self may encounters with other, but not subordinating the one to the other.

This is another aspect of “uselessness” I try to explore, which is the inability of self-expression, of “human articulation”. In several earlier scenes, Caruso’s voice resounds throughout the jungle, while nature is responding to this human articulation with enormous silences and overwhelming indifference. The strangeness and foreignness of opera echoes the earlier party scene that not a single guest seems to care or shows any interest in Caruso’s operatic voice, though Fitzcarraldo is desperate to attract other’s attention and express himself. “Opera’s use lies in its uselessness” (Koepnick, p161). Like poem, and other art, opera is highly artificial and aesthetic. Its values lie in a deeper, purer, more abstract dimension. In other words, in the final rapids scene, opera is not used as a civilization weapon or a practical tool to conquer the nature, but rather as the articulation of humans, an attempt to express the self toward the other.

In the ending scene, Fitzcarraldo brings a small-time opera troupe to a boat for a single performance. With a royal seat next to him, Fitzcarraldo is standing on the top of the ship Molly Aida, before his eyes is a sea of jubilant people –all people unite, his lover Molly, the locals and the entrepreneurs, waving and applauding. The ending is seen as a triumph. The triumph lies not in the achievement of wealth or good names, but the great efforts and desires to articulate, and the admiration of beautiful art.


Conclusion

In conclusion, by interpreting two particular scenes of Fitzcarraldo in detail, this essay examines the images of Fitzcarraldo and Herzog, and explores the interconnection of visual and musical aspects in this film. In section one, I examine the party scene in detail to explore the image of Fitzcarraldo, while he views himself as a dreamer, other may see him as “useless”. And then I explore the interconnection between Fitzcarraldo and the director Herzog. In section two, by interpreting the climactic ship-hauling scene, I look into Herzog’s view of nature and how his pursuit of visual authenticity affects the representation of natural landscape in his film. I then examine the visual and musical aspects of the film, and gain a better understanding that how Herzog attempts to use art as a “human articulation” against the nature.

Fitzcarraldo is such a complex and powerful statement and it is worth closely reading. Herzog is a genius auteur famous for his formidable gifts of expression. He writes and speaks with poetic precision and therefore sometimes it is difficult to paraphrase his distinguishing expressions. As a result, this essay frequently quotes Herzog’s words from different materials, including interviews, documentaries and articles, to directly show Herzog’s views. By doing this, I do not mean to assume the director’s intentions or find the “truth” of his works. The director is not the authority of films but a reader like us. As Dow (1996, p15) notes that, “the act of interpretation and argument by the researcher is paramount”.



Bibliography

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Ascárate, R. J., 2007. “Have You Ever Seen a Shrunken Head?”: The Early Modern Roots of Ecstatic Truth inWerner Herzog's “Fitzcarraldo”, PMLA, 122(2), 483-501, Published by: Modern Language Association

Chion, M., 1999. The voice in cinema. tr. C. Gorbman. New York: Columbia University Press.

Davidson, J. E., 1994. Contacting the Other: Traces of Migrational Colonialism and the Imperial Agent in Werner Herzog’s Fitzcarraldo, Film & History: an interdisciplinary journal of film and television studies, Volume 24, Numbers 3-4, 66-83

Dolkart, R. H., 1985. Civilization's Aria: Film as Lore and Opera as Metaphor in Werner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, Journal of Latin American Lore, 11(2), 125-141, Printed in U.S.A.

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这是一部疯子拍给疯子看的电影。

菲茨卡拉多（Fitzcarraldo）确有其人，19世纪的一个橡胶大王，为了运输橡胶拖着一条船翻过大山，也是一件真事。但是在历史上，菲茨卡拉多雇佣的印第安工人在最后关头松开了绳索，大船撞碎在河中。

在电影里，菲茨卡拉多一出场就是浑身偏执的梦想家：为了去听他崇拜的男高音卡鲁索的歌剧表演，他整整划了两天的船。接着，为了能让卡鲁索到秘鲁亚马逊雨林深处演出，他作出一个异想天开的决定：在雨林深处修建歌剧院。为了筹集资金，他瞄上了当时最赚钱的橡胶业，并买了一条船作运输。

然而水路不能直达橡胶林，他只能让船沿着另一条平行河流开过来，翻过一座大山，再到这一边的河里。《陆上行舟》，说的就是让这座船翻山的故事。


本来，这也不是一件特别难办的事情，毕竟在拍摄这部影片的1981年，好莱坞的特效技术已经相当可观。但赫尔佐格拒绝使用塑胶模型或任何特效技巧，也拒绝了到圣地亚哥香蕉种植园拍摄外景的建议。他就是要实景拍摄一艘船被人力拖着翻过山脊。

于是，他雇佣了上千名印第安人，教他们使用滑轮组，搭起高台，花了将近一年的时间，沿着40度的斜坡，用绳索一点一点地把340吨重的蒸汽船拉到了山上。

影片一共拍了四年多，男主角换了四次，因为前三个都被累跑了，直到克劳斯·金斯基跳出来说我来演。

熟悉他的人都知道，这是个比赫尔佐格还要疯狂的人。据说金斯基拍片子，只要觉得剧本好，对片酬、戏份什么的都不大考虑，也不怕路远，英国、西班牙、意大利的片子他都去演过，一生演了两百多部电影。但是这位金斯基对艺术极其执着和执拗。一次演舞台剧时，台下有观众睡着了，他抓起烛台就往观众身上扔。在拍《天谴》期间，他嫌剧组成员玩牌声音太大，连开三枪，打断了一位临时演员的手指头。

金斯基的坏脾气这次也不例外。拍摄过程中，参与演出的土著演员一度受不了他，向赫尔佐格提出要杀了他。

但是无论如何，金斯基是这部影片最恰当的主演。只有一个疯子，能演好另一个疯子。只有一个疯狂的金斯基，能和一个疯狂的赫尔佐格一起做一件荒唐透顶的事。在这荒唐的巅峰，他们真的把电影拍出来了。

有必要花四年时间拍一部电影吗？有必要拒绝特效吗？有必要真的靠人力拖一条船翻山吗？这些疑问很难有服众的答案。有人说实景拍摄自然比电脑做出来的特效要更震撼、更宏伟巨丽。我觉得，不一定。赫尔佐格和金斯基心中，或许有不必附丽于艺术追求或电影品质这些空大词语的、更切实关己的理由。这种理由无须说出，因为看了电影的人，自然各有各的揣摩。

我们生活，我们搬来搬去或选择一个地方定居，我们染上一个癖好或者戒掉它，在大雨中奔走或躲到檐下看飞鸟乱投，未必都有“非如此不可”的理由。


（Fitzcarraldo在秘鲁方言里的意思是：无谓的事物迷恋者。）