Movie Review - Fitzcarroldo (1982)

FITZCARROLDO (1982) is the visually lush story of Brian Sweeney Fitzgerald, a dreamer in the Amazon jungle who is determined to open an opera house in a small godforsaken Peruvian town perched on the banks of the mightiest river in the world.

For this purpose he doesn't mind accepting a considerable cash infusion from his girlfriend Molly (Claudia Cardinale), who operates a bordello. This is the story of a passion for the highest art that will gladly accept sponsorship from the lowliest of all arts.

Fitzgerald is played with considerable flair and delirium by Klaus Kinski, the veteran German actor who usually shows up as a bad guy in most of his movies. In this Werner Herzog movie he is an incurable Caruso fan who has to endure the ridicule of the business barons of the town for dreaming the impossible dream.

The German-language movie (with English subtitles) works if one does not think too much about it. But the trouble starts after taking a step back and asking some questions.

This is a movie that seems to have grown out of a what-if question and soon took a life of its own in the able hands of Herzog. But at the end nothing is settled. There is no real closure to Fitzcarroldo's obsession. We are left twisting in the wind of unsettled possibilities.

Fitzcarroldo wants to go into rubber manufacturing business to finance the opera house that he dreamed of. That's why he undertakes the central plot action of the whole movie