Werner Herzog’s Heartburn of Darkness
I recently watched Les Blank’s excellent documentary Burden of Dreams about the maddening trials and tribulations Werner Herzog went through to film his Fitzcarraldo and found Herzog to be an utterly captivating figure, wisely retelling the tales of the daily chaos around him, both man-made and natural, in a darkly humorous way that reminded me of a much more subdued version of the oh-woe-is-me hijinx of the late great Brother Theodore. Harper’s recently published selections from an upcoming book by Herzog about the making of Fitzcarraldo called Conquest of the Useless (pre-ordered!). Unfortunately, the “Readings” selection entitled “THE JUNGLE IS OBSCENE” is hidden behind Harper’s subscribers-only wall on their web site, but I grabbed the first two excerpts for your enjoyment.
IQUITOS, DECEMBER 8, 1980
A still day, sultry. Inactivity piled on inactivity, clouds staring down from the sky, pregnant with rain; fever reigns; insects taking on massive proportions. The jungle is obscene. Everything about it is sinful, for which reason the sin does not stand out as sin. The voices in the jungle are silent; nothing is stirring, and a languid, immobile anger hovers over everything. The laundry on the line refuses to dry. As part of a conspiracy, flies suddenly descend on the table, their stomachs taut and iridescent. Our little monkey was wailing in his cage, and when I approached, he looked and wailed right through me to some distant spot outside where his little heart hoped to find an echo. I let him out, but he went back into his cage, and now he is continuing to wail there.
IQUITOS, DECEMBER 18
I have a snake on my roof again. A little while ago I heard something rustling up there, and then something dark fell into the banana fronds with a thwack. I took a look, and it was a poisonous brownish snake that had caught a bird, which was still peeping. I tried hitting the snake with a stick, but it disappeared like lightning into the grass. Only now and then did a blade quiver, and from the piteous cries of the bird I could tell where the snake was. I did not follow it into the grass, because I discovered that another snake was on the thatched roof, and directly above me a third snake was trying to get from a banana frond onto the platform of my hut. I tried to strike it with the machete, but the snake was too fast for me. The power is still out. Evening descended on the countryside. What would happen if the rain forest wilted like a bouquet of flowers? Around me insects are dying, for which they lie on their backs. A woman in the neighborhood is suckling a newborn puppy after her baby died from parasites; I have seen this done before with piglets. Outside a bright moon is floating now above the treetops. The frogs, thousands of them, suddenly pause, as if they were following an invisible conductor, and start up again all at the same time. Their conversations come and go in curious waves. Waxy moonlight, as bright as neon, is shimmering on the banana fronds. I was called to the telephone in the house and fell off the ladder that leads to my platform. It was one of very few phone calls that ever get through to us, and a stranger on the line was trying to make it clear to me that I was a madman, a menace to society.
Posted by Kevin K. on 05/20/09 at 07:45 AM • Permalink
Categories: Movies • Movie News •
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